Jonathan Jones proudly announces that he has never read any of the late Terry Pratchett’s books and never plans to (Get real. Terry Pratchett is not a literary genius, 31 August). He then proceeds to denounce Pratchett as a “mediocrity”, bemoaning the “middlebrow cult of the popular” and implying that Pratchett’s work is “trash”.
If a music critic were to announce that they’d never listened to any of, say, Taylor Swift’s output, but then dismissed it as being utter tripe anyway, decrying the general public’s lack of interest in 19th-century grand opera and vaguely insinuating that the general public were idiots for preferring Swift to Verdi, I have little doubt that this newspaper’s writers, including Jonathan Jones, would be quick to denounce the critic as an utter snob, and rightly so.
Is literary criticism subject to different rules?
Alex Robinson
Oxford
• Usually if someone declares they don’t need to read something to know it’s bad, we ignore them. You gave Jonathan Jones a column. Shame on you.
Professor Farah Mendlesohn
Co-editor of Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature
