Oct 16, 2022
I submit that great literature is like spinach. I read somewhere that although spinach is indeed a valuable source of iron for human beings, only a small percentage of the iron that spinach contains is of a sort available to the human digestive system. I may be entirely misinformed about spinach, but what matters here is that, regardless of its accuracy, the analogy is usefully illustrative of the discrepancy between what a critic can say we see or learn from a work we value and what in fact we do value.
— Stephen Booth, Precious Nonsense
