I suspect you're purposely missing the point. A literary expert is going to be aware of how texts can be evaluated and s/he is going to be much more well-read than the typical "I read only Dan Brown and his ilk" reader of less than five books a year. Someone who is not well-read is worthless to me when I'm looking for an educated opinion on particular books. Who would you trust to know something about Nazi era religious history: me, whose graduate research delved directly into that topic, with literature read in multiple languages, or the homeless guy living under the bridge who dropped out of high school?

If you honestly say the other guy, I'll never listen to a word you say again




The only concession I'll make is that there can be different weighting to certain things. No expert worth her/his salt is going to evaluate a work that works only on a single level higher than a work that works highly on multiple levels. Now if you can find someone who is well-versed in Anglo-American literature (or any national literature) who would place greater value on say a Piers Anthony novel than a Doestoevsky, Mann, James, Joyce, Woolf, etc., then I might be shocked for one of the few times in my life.