Reviews

Literary Taste by Arnold Bennett

aftaerglows's review against another edition

5.0

The aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is to awake oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one's capacity for pleasure, for sympathy, and for comprehension. It is not to affect one hour, but twenty-four hours. It is to change utterly one's relations with the world. An understanding appreciation of literature means an understanding appreciation of the world, and it means nothing else.

It is well to remind ourselves that literature is first and last a means of life, and that the enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an enterprise of learning how best to use this means of life. People who don't want to live, people who would sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew literature.

But the greater truth is that literature is all one—and indivisible. The idea of the unity of literature should be well planted and fostered in the head. All literature is the expression of feeling, of passion, of emotion, caused by a sensation of the interestingness of life.

Literature does not begin till emotion has begun.

It is extremely important that the beginner in literary study should always form an idea of the man behind the book. The book is nothing but the expression of the man. The book is nothing but the man trying to talk to you, trying to impart to you some of his feelings. An experienced student will divine the man from the book, will understand the man by the book, as is, of course, logically proper. But the beginner will do well to aid himself in understanding the book by means of independent information about the man. He will thus at once relate the book to something human, and strengthen in his mind the essential notion of the connection between literature and life.

My second consideration (in aid of crossing the gulf) touches the quality of the pleasure to be derived from a classic. It is never a violent pleasure. It is subtle, and it will wax in intensity, but the idea of violence is foreign to it. The artistic pleasures of an uncultivated mind are generally violent. They proceed from exaggeration in treatment, from a lack of balance, from attaching too great an importance to one aspect (usually superficial), while quite ignoring another.

You do not exist in order to honour literature by becoming an encyclopædia of literature. Literature exists for your service. Wherever you happen to be, that, for you, is the centre of literature.

There is no surer sign of imperfect development than the impulse to snigger at what is unusual, naïve, or exuberant.

Honesty, in literature as in life, is the quality that counts first and counts last. But beware of your immediate feelings. [...] Demanding honesty from your authors, you must see that you render it yourself. And to be honest with oneself is not so simple as it appears. One's sensations and one's sentiments must be examined with detachment. When you have violently flung down a book, listen whether you can hear a faint voice saying within you: "It's true, though!" And if you catch the whisper, better yield to it as quickly as you can. For sooner or later the voice will win. Similarly, when you are hugging a book, keep your ear cocked for the secret warning: "Yes, but it isn't true." For bad books, by flattering you, by caressing, by appealing to the weak or the base in you, will often persuade you what fine and splendid books they are. (Of course, I use the word "true" in a wide and essential significance. I do not necessarily mean true to literal fact; I mean true to the plane of experience in which the book moves [...]).

My second counsel is: In your reading you must have in view some definite aim—some aim other than the wish to derive pleasure. I conceive that to give pleasure is the highest end of any work of art, because the pleasure procured from any art is tonic, and transforms the life into which it enters. But the maximum of pleasure can only be obtained by regular effort, and regular effort implies the organisation of that effort. [...] Your paramount aim in poring over literature is to enjoy, but you will not fully achieve that aim unless you have also a subsidiary aim which necessitates the measurement of your energy. Your subsidiary aim may be æsthetic, moral, political, religious, scientific, erudite; you may devote yourself to a man, a topic, an epoch, a nation, a branch of literature, an idea—you have the widest latitude in the choice of an objective; but a definite objective you must have.

Great books do not spring from something accidental in the great men who wrote them. They are the effluence of their very core, the expression of the life itself of the authors. And literature cannot be said to have served its true purpose until it has been translated into the actual life of him who reads. It does not succeed until it becomes the vehicle of the vital. Progress is the gradual result of the unending battle between human reason and human instinct, in which the former slowly but surely wins. The most powerful engine in this battle is literature. It is the vast reservoir of true ideas and high emotions—and life is constituted of ideas and emotions. [...] Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterwards live finely. It is a means of life; it concerns the living essence.

ipanzica's review against another edition

3.0

It had some great advice on how to get into reading and expand your reading taste. The author really loves to read and you can see that it is genuine from the excitement and passion the author gets when they mention the joys of reading. So while I am probably not going to read everything Bennett suggests I appreciate the enthusiasm and it has me excited to read my next book. At no point when reading this did I feel talked down to or bad about not reading or liking a book.

graydonoliver95's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

hayder_alabdaly's review against another edition

4.0

بالرغم من أن الكتاب عتيق ويركز على الأدب الإنجليزي دون سواه إلا أنه عظيم الفائدة.

yusrayusuf97's review against another edition

2.0

لا أظنّ أنّ هذا الكتاب لي.

nermin's review against another edition

2.0

غطرسة مع تحيز واستعلاء وبعض العبارات التي أعجبتني
الكاتب يتحدث عن الذوق الأدبي جميل لكن توقعته أن يطرح الموضوع بعمق أكثر, كانت هناك جزئيات في الكتاب لو أسهب فيها لكان خيرا من أن يملي علي القراء قائمة بالكتب التي يجب أن تكون مكتبته. لكان خيرا له بما أنه شدية التحيز للكلاسيكيات أن يتكلم ويحلل عنها في طرح يجعل القراء فعلا راغبين في النهل منها أكثر.

cinnamonandpancakes's review

informative inspiring medium-paced

2.5

This book is an opinion piece and, while it does have some great passages, it falls prey to a lot of the really annoying beliefs people held in the early 20th century which makes most of it really annoying.

glyptodonsneeze's review

5.0

Literary Taste: How to Form It by Arnold Bennett is delightfully didactic for us smart people. "You occasionally buy classical works, and do not read them at all; you practically decide that it is enough to possess them, and that the mere possession of them gives you a *cachet*. The truth is, you are a sham." Yes, you are, you great goof, but Arnold Bennett has something of a programme to solve that, which is different to other programs, because Arnold Bennett knows that you said to yourself, "I am going to read ten pages of Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire every day" and you failed. Arnold Bennett's program is halfways to "...surround yourself with books, to create for yourself a bookish atmosphere. For the present, buy—buy whatever has received the *imprimatur* of critical authority. Buy without any immediate reference to what you will read. Buy! Surround yourself with volumes, as handsome as you can afford." Then you can begin to read the classics. "A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature." He presents a plan for reading enjoying, with Charles Lamb as a gateway drug and Wordsworth as a waystone. But: "You need to think about what you read and apply it, otherwise reading is just a useless past-time that will not transform you." Arnold Bennett ends his essay with a comprehensive list of classic books one can purchase for the total cost of £26 14s 7p and, "When you have read, wholly or in part, a majority of these three hundred and thirty-five volumes, *with enjoyment*, you may begin to whisper to yourself that your literary taste is formed; and you may pronounce judgment on modern works which come before the bar of your opinion in the calm assurance that, though to err is human, you do at any rate know what you are talking about."

http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/2014/02/aladys-life-on-farm-in-manitoba.html