I can speak of my own criterion for judging whether or not a book is good or bad. I ask of it a single question, From how deep and true an impulse did it spring? Was it written merely to shock? Only to make money? Or was it written to create something more perfect and more lasting than the life experience from which it came?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of authenticity and depth in literature over commercial motives.
Lawrence Clark Powell's quote reflects his personal standard for evaluating literature, focusing on the origins of the impulse behind a book's creation. He suggests that a truly good book should arise from genuine inspiration and insight, rather than superficial goals like shock value or profit, ultimately aspiring to create a lasting impact that resonates with life's deeper experiences.
In practice
This quote could be used in a lecture on literary criticism to highlight the value of genuine creative impulses in writing.
A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library...witho ut cost to the reader.
Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.
Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.
No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library... When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end.
What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.
This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.
Many of us grow up thinking of mistakes as bad, viewing errors as evidence of fundamental incapacity. This negative thinking pattern can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which undermines the learning process. To maximize our learning it is essential to ask: "How can we get the most from every mistake we make?"
The surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definitive, and concrete. The greatest writers - Homer, Dante, Shakespeare - are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their words call up pictures.
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
Every woman needs to know when she's being discriminated against and what the reasons are why she isn't getting equal pay so we can close that pay gap.
There are only two kinds of books -- good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the democracy of time.
The wrong things are predominantly stressed in the schools - things remote from the student's experience and need.
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