Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson. She asks the question and provides the answer to "what makes
for literary quality" in the books that we chose to read? Here are the author's thoughts:
- High Quality of Language. "A good book wields language with skill and insight, using words that help you to see in a fresh way; that bring a person, a landscape, or a history to life...As Mark Twain said, "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter---- 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.""
- Showing, not telling. "It's probably the first thing you'll be told to do in a beginning creative writing class, but it's vital, the thing great writers do without even thinking about it....To tell is simply to relate facts; to show is to place a reader in a world."
- Concision. "With all this praise for good words and evocative descriptions, you might think good novels have to be hundreds of pages......Good writing is taut. It doesn't waste words; it puts them to swift, disciplined work."
- Humanity (the particular and the universal). "By which I mean the capacity of a book to realistically describe the human experience on the level of the individual....and through that depiction to say something universally true about what it means to be human, to suffer, to hope, to love, to work. A good book should ring true to human experience, regardless of character or setting."
The author shares C.S. Lewis's description:
"Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of
individuality. . . 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."
I encourage you to think upon these points with the current book in your hand. Perhaps
you are reading our next discussion book Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. . .