This book has been an eye opener and a game changer. I expect to read it many more times and I look forward to learning even more about what it means to be a literary reader. ( )

C.S. Lewis and I are not the best match. I'm even in the small minority who don't appreciate the beloved Narnia books. He has a loopy excessive style which was very prevalent in this book. To me, it seems like the writing equivalent of thinking aloud. However in all that word salad, he did catch my attention a few times. I quite enjoyed his essay on Poetry. I also liked his thoughts on critical reading and the way certain books and authors come in and out of vogue over time. He asks the question, do we judge a book by the quality of it's reader, or a reader by the quality of the book? It's topsy turvey thinking but I've always been interested in what people are reading and why they love or hate it so these notions of what makes a good book are interesting to me. All said - I managed to take something away from this book despite struggling through much of it. ( )

C. S. Lewis and I don't agree on everything. But we both love words, books, and beauty. We're "kindred spirits" that way, to borrow L. M. Montgomery's phrase. I loved his musings on why we read, why we critique, and why art, specifically literature, is necessary in life. His words, particularly on how literature and art connects us, made me think about the amazing writers that have expanded my life, helped me see, fear, suffer, love, and rejoice with others who are not like me and, yet, are, like me, human. The list is long, but not long enough, and so I still read. ( )

I read this book during a C. S. Lewis class taught by Jerry Root. This is one of my two favourite Lewis works -- the other being "The Four Loves." Those who love words and reading and music and the arts should absolutely read this book. My copy is full of underlined phrases, and it is something I revisit every year or two to refresh myself after a long spell of dogged study. ( )

This is a fantastic short book on the purpose and value of criticism. I had read chapters from it previously, but this is my first read all the way through. This read through is prompted by my preliminary work on developing my thesis for the MA program at Mythgard Institute.

Not only does Lewis make a strong case for looking at literary criticism from a different perspective — that of how readers read, as opposed to what they read — but it ends strongly, stating what I think is at least a similar sentiment to my own about what literature does, and something that I strongly suspect is a universal experience for what Lewis calls "literary readers," even if not all of them acknowledge it.

As I've done before, rather than trying to sum up my thoughts, I'm going to note passages that I enjoyed while reading this:

p. 91-92: "In characterising the two sorts of reading [good and bad] I have deliberately avoided the word 'entertainment'. Even when fortified by the adjective mere, it is too equivocal. If entertainment means light and playful pleasure, then I think it is exactly what we ought to get from some literary work…. If it means those things which 'grip' the reader of popular romance—suspense, excitement and so forth—then I would say that every book should be entertaining. A good book will be more; it must not be less."

p. 106: "Observation of how men read is a strong basis for judgements on what they read; but judgements on what they read is a flimsy, even a momentary, basis for judgements on their way of reading. For the accepted valuation of literary works varies with every change of fashion, but the distinction between attentive and inattentive, obedient and wilful, disinterested and egoistic, modes of reading is permanent; if ever valid, everywhere and always."

p. 120: "The question is about the criticism which pronounces on the merits of books; about evaluations, and devaluations. Such criticism was once held to be of use to authors. But that claim has on the whole been abandoned. It is now valued for its supposed use to readers…. For me it stands or falls by its power to multiply, safeguard, or prolong those moments when a good reader is reading well a good book and the value of literature thus exists in actu."

p. 130: "Are you and I especially obliged or especially qualified to discuss what, precisely, the good of literature consists in? To explain the value of any activity, still more to place it in a hierarchy of values, is not generally the work of the activity itself."

p. 132: "A work of literary art can be considered in two lights. It both means and is. It is both Logos (something said) and Poiema (something made). As Logos it tells a story, or expresses an emotion, or exhorts or pleads or describes or revokes or excites laughter. As Poiema, by its aural beauties and also by the balance and contrast and the unified multiplicity of its successive parts, it is an objet d'art, a thing shaped so as to give great satisfaction."

p. 140: "Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality…. But in reading literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still I who see." ( )

I really quite enjoyed this long essay / short book. I particularly enjoyed Lewis’s early descriptions of the reading experience; I don’t think I’ve run across a more apt description of the pleasure of reading stories. In classic Lewis-fashion, the various distinctions he draws between the types of reading both ring true and prove enlightening. Additionally, Lewis’s approach seems a refreshing alternative to contemporary literary criticism, even if he is reacting to something quite different in his own times. (More on this below) For all the value of literary criticism (and I for one think there is some value), there’s something to be said for the more basic questions we should bring to a book: How and why does this story move us the way it moves us? If it works well, how does it work well?

Despite my absolute appreciation for much of what Lewis is doing here, I do have two criticisms. First, Lewis (unknowingly, I suppose) speaks very condescendingly toward non-literary readers. While I am tempted to agree with him on certain levels, I think my propensity is rooted in a rather subjective and prideful understanding of how much literary works are related to my own identity and how I see the world. I’d be quite hesitant to say all non-literary readers are lacking in something essential. Here is Lewis in his own words: “Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.” Cool up to this point. “We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend.” Possibly condescending turn. “He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world.” Ouch. Can he get more condescending? The answer is yes. “In it, we should be suffocated.”

Second, in attempting to free literature from the shackles of “evaluative criticism” and the bore of academia, I feel like Lewis actually removes some of the potential social value of literature, as it existed in the past and present. Lewis dismisses all readings that attempt to find in the literature a “philosophy of life.” Lewis essentially denies the artist the ability to be communicating something about his view of life or what it means to be a human person; or he at least says that a reader’s job isn’t about doing this, and discussing books in this way is in poor taste. I grant part of Lewis’s point: we shouldn’t take a story that is essentially a comic romp—even a comic romp done with wonderful artistry—and wring it out to find out what it’s “saying about life.” Not all, or perhaps even most, stories are attempts to demonstrate something about life or society. However, artists have historically engaged the world and society through their art, contemplating or exploring perspectives on important matters through their art—and some of the joy of reading these texts is the vicarious exploration of exactly these perspectives. I’m not speaking of didactic texts, which are rarely good art. I’m speaking of artistic forays into social issues, texts whose values are rooted both in their aesthetic qualities paired with their social values. Huck Finn, The Divine Comedy, and numerous other classic texts clearly engage the society they exist within. To tell the reader that they shouldn’t attempt to perceive the texts' social meaning (which isn’t the same as social “message,” i.e. a boiled down ideological statement) is to deny one of the great values of art, which is to engage the present culture in a meaningful way. There is a strong chance I misinterpreted Lewis’s section on this topic; and perhaps he was responding to a different sort of “reading” than I’m defending, a type of reading I don’t have immediate access to in 2017.

Lewis’s most important target for this “experiment in criticism” is the “evaluative critic,” the interpreter of texts who tells us which texts are good, which are great, and which should be avoided at all costs. Interestingly, this type of criticism doesn’t exist anymore—unfortunately this isn’t because we have taken Lewis’s challenges to heart. Whereas Lewis rejected evaluation is favor of understanding how to read and enjoy and engage meaningfully in texts, the contemporary literary world has rejected evaluation because of its claim to objectivity. We can’t judge a text because there are no objective standards. The cool bit (at least I think it’s cool) is that Lewis’s antidote—his “experiment”—would also help the contemporary literary world. Yes, we don’t proclaim texts objectively good or objectively bad anymore; but we’ve replaced this with a literary analysis that reduces all texts to ideological statements or material products of ideology. We don’t care about the beauty of the text or how it moves us; we care about it as a demonstration of market forces, or political ideology, or social naivetés, or social progressiveness. We could do well beginning with the fact that we human persons, or at least some of us, just really freakin’ like to read a good story.
( )

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like a night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

In “An Experiment in Criticism” by C. S. Lewis

Anarcho-punk, extreme literature..... Beware the coming revolution.

All the best writers are anarcho-punks:

- JJ Rousseau: A Discourse On Inequality
- Thomas Payne: The Rights Of Man
- Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
- Victor Hugo 'Les Miserables' set in the French Revolution in Paris.

Dostoevsky wrote his first novel 'The Poor Folk' aged 29. This resulted in him and his 3 co-radicals being sentenced to death by firing squad in the main public square in St Petersburg by the Tsar who was offended by their revolutionary contents. At the last second the Tsar commuted the punishment to 4 years hard labour in Siberia. Two of the writers went mad from this sadist act, but Dostoevsky kept on writing about being on death row, psychological torture, his time in jail and did so for the rest of his life. Orwell. 'Homage To Catalonia' set in Spanish Revolution in Barcelona where anarchists fight fascists.

The close reading of novels (not, interestingly, poems, stories, plays or biographies/general non-fiction) has come up glancingly in similar pieces over the last two decades. It's easy to interpret it as resulting from a generalized cultural anxiety over the apparently luxurious (or frivolous) apportioning of several hours and days for contemplation of long-form fictitious narratives with no obvious social or 'self-improvement' benefits, at least none that can be vigorously attested to. Add that to an increasingly competitive cultural scene, where every new TV show from singing to putting up wallpaper takes the form of a contest, and you have this weird impetus to 'prove' the practical and moral worth of an essentially solitary pursuit by subjecting it to blatantly unaesthetic and unhelpful criteria, where a reader is essentially apologizing publicly for an activity that can never be made socially correct - it simply isn't in the nature of concentrated reading. While speed-reading as a technique has been overvalued by diagnosticians (time-maximisation combined with cultural chicken soup for the soul) and clearly has its roots in the alleviation of guilt rather than the apprehension of art, it does have a legitimate tether to breathlessly enthusiastic page-turning, where either personal enthusiasm or the “skimmable” nature of the writing itself encourages faster than usual reading. But novels are neither instruction manuals nor paper-bound substitutes for TV, and the speed and quality of attention implicitly demanded by them cannot conform to the expectations of demonstrable expediency demanded by extra-literary considerations. In short, I can't reasonably claim to another person that the reading of a novel over two or twenty hours of your valuable time is a socially defensible act, precisely because novel-reading falls deliberately outside such parameters. I do find myself doubting the legitimacy of the things I used to read, and having published poems for a few years in the last decade I include my own efforts. I hope neither were ‘all bullshit’ as I sometimes tell myself nor I think I'm just wrongly attuned right now. Maybe the machine in my hands at this moment in time is involved, or the heavy breakfast I didn't go near in my 20s.

Back in the day I tended to read very fast, because I was a book glutton, i.e., I’d devour books. It can be great but it can also be a curse. A good book is over too quickly and I’d miss layers and complexity. I’d compensate by rereading books where I pick up things I missed on the first read. Grinding through exams at college left me with an overwhelming desire to get acres of really enjoyable fiction out of the public library and gorge on it until I had cleared my head of everything to do with the syllabus. For me, it's 'hearing' the words in my own inner voice, as if the sentences are being spoken out loud. If I skim over words, they're somehow lost. I've only got hold of the text in a generalised, floaty way. If I'm reading a classic and I begin to 'float', I realise that I'm 'reading without paying attention' in my inner voice and calm myself down so I can connect with each word. (Otherwise, what's the point of reading well-crafted text?). It's easy to skim across the surface. It's like pacing yourself for a marathon! Too fast and you'll get lactic burn and die. Too slow and you'll won't get momentum going. I start slow and build up my pace can be reading 60-80 pages a day in the main sections.

After a meaty epic, like “Crime and Punishment” I’d purposely like to blast-read through something pulpy or non-fiction like an appetiser for the next course. It helps my mind relax and reboot so I do appreciate the benefits of reading quickly, for people who are mentally tired or maybe have less time have. A lot of modern literature embraces that reality. ( )

I like the premise of this book. I like the idea that Lewis proposes here, that literature should not be measured by how it's written but how it's read. But I also thought his " experiment" idea could have been expressed more succinctly in an essay. Once again a lot of references Lewis uses went over my head. So unless you're very familiar w/British literature of the 1930's and before, most of the examples will be lost on you.



Just picked this one up again. I still have my tattered copy from college days. I expect I'll get much more out of this now, 35 years later ☺ ( )

I read this back in college days, I very much liked it then. I'd like to re-read this one. ( )

There are no good or bad books, only good and bad readers or perhaps more correctly good or bad reading methods. Even a "bad book" can be "read well". One shouldn't judge the work but rather how the reader receives and reads the work. ( )

If you can get past Lewis's snooty attitude here (LW3 called him a "pompous poot" in the margin in the copy I just read), he has some rather interesting and important things to say about how we judge books. In a nutshell, he thinks that considering how a book is read would be a much better endeavor than trying to use taste to judge a book good or bad. If a book invites readers to read it in a "literary" way, the book is good. (Much of Lewis's book is taken up in discussing what he means by "literary"; one part of his definition is that literary readers experience or "receive" while reading rather than "using" what they read). A complex text very well worth reading and which resists easy summary. Perhaps the best summary is to say that Lewis spends the book trying to prove the statement he makes to close his argument: "But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do." ( )

Critics are constantly attempting to separate bad from good in literature and the arts - but our reasons for drawing the lines where we do are obscure. Lewis asks: What if it isn't books (art, music, etc.) that are good or bad - what if it's methods of reception that are good or bad? That is, we don't have good or bad books but good or bad readers - and good and bad modes of reading can exist in the same person.
This explains why people may love a book, song, or movie that really isn't all that good. The mode of perceiving is one of using the work as a means to some private reflection which the perceiver enjoys. For example, a bad reproduction of the Madonna and Child can still inspire good devotional feelings, or an ugly children's book illustration will nevertheless inspire nostalgia for the story, or a not-particularly-artistic ad featuring an undressed woman can inspire lust. The receiver USES the work to get to something s/he already thinks and likes.
Good reading, or reception, on the other hand, examines the work carefully and with fewer preconceptions, to see what it has to say on its own. It is true, also, that "good" art and literature can be "badly" read or received - but if "bad" literature can be read in the good way, it can't really be all that bad.
Lewis says it better, of course. ( )

I believe Lewis is right that readability ND rereadability form the basic criterion of literary value.
My only reservation is his attempt to exclude
certain popular books from this criterion on the grounds that they merely pander to selfish (often snobbish) desires. I think even in this category of writing, some books are more effective, and therefore more read and reread, than others. ( )

A delightful short volume on literature. My favorite parts were the chapter on myth and the epilogue, along with the whole idea that literary criticism in its modern incarnation is dry, dull, and harmful to literature. ( )

This book was a formative influence in my approach to literature and reading. ( )

APPENDIX