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A GRE verbal question:

Some academic criticism of popular novels has been (i)_____ in character, being based on the assumption that the wider the appeal, the more (ii)_____ the novel.

Blank(i) rigorous exculpatory elitist

Blank(ii) undesirable accomplished comprehensible

What does this sentence mean? Apparently, "appeal" should be a noun here, so appeal means "a quality that causes people to like someone or something" (Merriam-Webster). If so, I am a bit confused about "wider appeal," and I also don't understand why the answer to (i) is "elitist."

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    ELL is a great place to ask about sentences like this one, but questions such as "What does this sentence mean?" are typically too broad. Please provide more detail. (Do you know what "wider" means in this context? Do you know the construction "the [comparative], the [comparative]"? Do you understand what "elitist" means?)
    – MarcInManhattan
    Commented Sep 16, 2023 at 5:18

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"Wide appeal" is a collocation that means that there something appeals to a wide range of people.

The movie "Toy story" had wide appeal. It was enjoyed by children and adults. Very many ordinary people loved the movie.

An "elitist" point of view is that something with wide appeal is likely to be low quality. And in contrast, things that have high quality will appeal only to a few high quality people. This word is usually pejorative.

So "elitist criticism" of a novel would be criticism that states "This novel is no good because lots of ordinary people enjoy it."

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  • I don't disagree, but these questions are often such shite. An argument could be made for rigorous/comprehensible or rigorous/accomplished, if "rigorous" is defined as "based on quantifiable evidence". Certainly "undesirable" is very vague. To whom? If many people like it, it is clearly desirable.
    – TimR on some device
    Commented Sep 16, 2023 at 18:42
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    I'm really only focussing on the English learning aspect. That is, why "elitist" ane "undesirable" would form a grammatically correct sentence with a consistent meaning. I could go through the other options. They would not be the best choice, even if an argument could be made that they are correct.... "To whom? — To the "elitist critic".
    – James K
    Commented Sep 16, 2023 at 19:37
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    Yes, of course. But I just didn't want to give the impression that any native speaker would immediately be able to discern the answer to such a question. It's the rare GRE question that doesn't show the biases of the person or committee that wrote it.
    – TimR on some device
    Commented Sep 16, 2023 at 19:57
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The GRE question is the product of a slovenly mind that doesn't recognize that it is wallowing in its own slop.

"wider appeal" is a lazy phrase that could mean two very different things:

-a) appealing to (liked by) many people

-b) appealing to (liked by) people in different demographic segments of society and in different geographic settings (different age groups, different economic groups, different ethnicities, different living conditions, such as urban and rural and suburban) and so on.

A work of art with large numbers of people liking it who are males aged 25-40 who didn't complete secondary school and no one else, is very different from a work of art that is liked by people of all ages, educational levels, economic statuses, and living conditions.

I don't know of any elitist who would say that broad appeal under meaning b) is a sign that the work of art is trash, just the opposite, and I know of many elitists who would say that broad appeal under meaning a) is a pretty good indication that the work of art is something with little redeeming value, such as a movie with half-hour car chases and lots of things exploding.

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