[torben-friis]

>Can you even define "best" for creative media? Sure, there's obvious junk that most people will agree can be discarded, but culture is very subjective.

I think all disciplines start “hard” and objective, getting into the subjective at a more advanced stage - at the very least it is easy for a knowledgeable reader to know when an author is actively choosing to disregard an established rule and when it is incapable of following it.

Saramago, the novelist, is famous for writing unconventionally, with long phrases and sparse punctuation, but nobody doubts he could have written conventionally. Same for Picasso rejecting realism.

Many famous authors right now would clearly have a hard time following the “base” rules, and that for me warrants judging them by hard rules. If they could, and got into the twisting rules phase, then I agree it becomes a far more subjective matter.