An Experiment in Criticism (1961)
C.S. Lewis (Canto, 1992)

143 pp. First reading.
Posted 18 October 2006.

The experiment is to criticize kinds of reading instead of criticizing books. Instead of judging people's reading by the kinds of books they read, let us judge books by the kind of reading they encourage. This experiment requires that we have criteria for distinguishing good reading from bad -- or, since Lewis does not consider literary aptitude a moral category, literary reading from unliterary.

The majority of people are unliterary readers, and we can identify certain common traits: they avoid reading anything that is not narrative; they demand that the narrative be swift-moving; they have no ears -- that is, they are inattentive to the music of words; and they are largely unconscious of style. Unliterary readers hunger after the Event, and the manner in which the Event is conveyed is not important to them. Unliterary readers read books only once, after which they are "used up", and have a preference for exciting, realistic (in the sense of theoretically possible, if not psychologically convincing) stories with happy endings. Books appeal to them as stimulation for their own imaginative lives or simply to pass the time. They use books.

By contrast, a literary reader is fundamentally receptive. When he reads, he makes an effort, more or less consciously, to "get out of the way". He does not want his own present state of mind or habits of thought to interfere with his reception of the author's work. Yet receptivity does not imply passivity, for the negative effort to cultivate an "inner silence" in which the author's voice can sound is succeeded by a positive effort of imagination in which the inner eye and ear are responsive and obedient to the promptings and suggestions of the literary work. Though a literary reader does not "use" books in the way an unliterary reader does, he paradoxically makes better use of the words he reads, for he is attentive to nuance and tone in a way that the unliterary reader is not.

A good book, then, is one which is able to endure the close attention that a good reader gives it. It does not follow, of course, that only good readers will enjoy good books. Good books, after all, may be exciting, fast-moving, and have happy endings, and so satisfy unliterary readers. Good reading comprehends the pleasures of unliterary reading, but goes beyond them to other, profounder pleasures. While good books will permit both literary and unliterary reading, bad books permit only unliterary reading.

If it is true that a literary reader reads well by opening himself to a work, and judges the book by the quality of reading it can sustain, it follows that he cannot judge books with which he is out of sympathy. If, for instance, he has a dislike of a particular genre, then he cannot be a good judge of good or bad books in that genre. After all, if one is receptive then one must allow a book to be what it is, not condemn it for not being what it is not trying to be.

This principle inspires in Lewis an extended discussion on the merits of fantastic and realistic fiction. There is a tendency today, due largely to the great novelistic achievements of the nineteenth century, to maintain that good and serious literature must be realist. Fantasy is said to be childish. Acknowledging that children have a taste for fantasy, Lewis sensibly denies that that is sufficient grounds for regarding it as a genre suitable only for children. Surely a quality can be called "childish" in a negative sense only if adults are better off without the quality, but is this the case with the sense of wonder, on which so much fantastic fiction thrives? He thinks not. Great works have been written in both genres, and the prejudice in favour of realism is but a local taste.

The fact of this common disdain for fantasy opens a discussion of subtler ways in which unliterary reading can afflict even talented readers. He identifies a group of readers he calls the Vigilants. These readers are mentally policing books to see that they conform with a set of moral or political principles. "To them criticism is a form of social or ethical hygiene." He cannily predicts that the increasing formalization of "English literature" as a subject of study, and the shift of the academic ideal toward the model set by scientific research, would result in university English departments being filled by Vigilants:


Hence the politicization of the canon and the rise of odd-ball interpretive schools -- Marxist, feminist, queer, deconstructionist, post-structuralist -- that afflicts our modern humanities departments. These are our modern Puritans, defending their political ideals and seeing literature as a tool which can advance their cause. Yet in this hubbub the receptivity of the literary reader is abandoned; the specifically aesthetic appreciation that Lewis values is lost. They are poor readers. "There is for them no specifically literary good."

This specifically literary good is the primary good that Lewis seeks to defend in this book. Literature is not for self-improvement -- though it may improve us -- nor for social revolution. The reason for reading is to see the world through another's eyes, to rest in that vision, and so to enlarge oneself and one's understanding of the world. Good books are treasures worthy of contemplation, not tools. Lewis closes his book eloquently:


As always with Lewis, the book is beautifully written. I was encouraged to read it by Adam Hincks, whom I thank.

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