Jun 13, 2012   14 Notes.

"One disastrous mistake, I cannot help thing, is the fantastic stress now laid on reading and writing ‘criticism’. The critics are often blind guides - and in any case there are many more valuable activities, for which the longest life is all too brief. And criticism is not a science whose elements can be mass-taught to adolescents - it is a difficult art at which even adults are seldom a notable success. With the young the result is often that they just regurgitate the judgements that they have been taught, or else, if they have a natural and healthy rebelliousness, the opposite of what they have been taught. Thence it is possible to arrive by easy stages at the happy notion, not uncommon among ‘intellectuals’, that taste consists of distate, and the the loftiest of pleasures is that of feeling displeased; and thus to end by enjoying almost nothing in literature except one’s own opinions, while oneself is incapable of writing a living sentence. "

— F.L. Lucas. Style : the art of writing well. London : Harriman House, 2012. (based on the 1964 Pan second edition)

(Source: my-ear-trumpet, via love-courage-ham-and-a-spoon)

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Sweeetposh Themes
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