Bad Books

Lewis remarks on the high difficulty of adverse criticism, noting that the difficulty lies partly in the fact that the defects of bad literature are found in good literature: “The novel before you is bad – a transparent compensatory fantasy projected by a poor, plain woman, erotically starving. Yes, but so is Jane Eyre . Another bad book is amorphous; but so it Tristram Shandy . An author betrays a shocking indifference to all the great political, social, and intellectual upheavals of his age; like Jane Austen.”

The other difficulty is the temptation to turn criticism into venting. Instead of displaying the specific badness of a work, the critic uses his criticism as “a blow delivered in a battle.”