In talking only about the books we like and recommend, we sometimes lose sight of the famous question of what makes a bad book. Beyond a very smug relativism, I propose below to dissect the harsh world of the mediocre. I hope that these observations can easily be applied to all other fields, artistic or otherwise, where man decides to offer the worst of himself to the world's bewildered gaze.
What makes a good book? I don't know what readers think about this. As for mine, it's firmly fixed: there can be no good text that isn't the work of an exalted soul; everything else lodges in the hovel of drivel. This, it seems, was the lightning bolt of truth thrown down by our Romantics, who expressed this idea beautifully in the image of the artist bewitched by the muses, who, in a few rare moments of lucidity, is able to see the light of day.
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