Great Chefs

The Chef Rule

In our household, we have something called the 'chef rule'. It goes like this:

A good chef will serve you something you like.

A great chef will serve you something you don't like - and make you come back for seconds.

Right before Christmas, my mother-in-law took us to an exhibit of Rembrandt paintings. Now, when it comes to non-sequential visual art, the human form has to be my least preferred subject. In both painting and photography, I prefer landscapes. I seldom take pictures of people, unless it's as a record/memory of that person. So, an exhibition of portraits? Ugh.

Except that somehow, Rembrandt makes the portrait something special. It's what he did, and it's why he's considered a master.

Rembrandt is the art equivalent of a Great Chef.

In writing, of course, a Great Chef can serve you a genre you don't like. The problem is that because of the time investment in a book, most people don't want to spend time on genres they already 'know' they don't like. I'm guilty of it myself.

So, who are the literary world's Great Chefs?