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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course whatever information we get is biased and it is valid to discuss this, but I just meant that filling in the author's intentions is not something we should do. It makes it seem like this article used van Gogh's list of favourite books in bad faith just to gain attention to the author's own favourite books, which I think is unfair.
Nah. Never attribute to maliciousness, what mere incompetence will cover.
I think this article tells more about the author than about the artist. Out of hundreds of books in four languages, the author chose 6. Why not a statistical analysis of the whole set? Why not a distribution plot? Selecting your favorites tells us about … your favorites.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Firstly, who has the ability, will, and time to go through such a list, and draw conclusions from it? Also, a statistical analysis or distribution plot likely needs labels assigned to those works. That, too, likely would mean making subjective choices. Even a simple fiction/non-fiction distortion could be problematic in cases where a book is partly both, or where a work was thou…