Honesty, in literature as in life, is the quality that counts first
and counts last. But beware of your immediate feelings.
Truth is not always pleasant. The first glimpse of truth is, indeed,
usually so disconcerting as to be positively unpleasant,
and our impulse is to tell it to go away, for we will have no truck with it.
If a book arouses your genuine contempt, you may dismiss it from your mind.
Take heed, however, lest you confuse contempt with anger.
If a book really moves you to anger, the chances are
that it is a good book. Most good books have begun by causing anger
which disguised itself as contempt. Demanding honesty from your authors,
you must see that you render it yourself. And to be honest with oneself
is not so simple as it appears. One's sensations and one's sentiments
must be examined with detachment. When you have violently
flung down a book, listen whether you can hear a faint voice
saying within you: "It's true, though!" And if you catch the whisper,
better yield to it as quickly as you can. For sooner or later
the voice will win. Similarly, when you are hugging a book,
keep your ear cocked for the secret warning: "Yes, but it isn't true."
For bad books, by flattering you, by caressing, by appealing to the weak
or the base in you, will often persuade you what fine and splendid books
they are. (Of course, I use the word "true" in a wide
and essential significance. I do not necessarily mean true to literal fact;
I mean true to the plane of experience in which the book moves.
The truthfulness of *Ivanhoe*, for example, cannot be estimated by
the same standards as the truthfulness of Stubbs's *Constitutional History*.)
In reading a book, a sincere questioning of oneself,
"Is it true?" and a loyal abiding by the answer, will help more surely
than any other process of ratiocination to form the taste.
I will not assert that this question and answer are all-sufficient.
A true book is not always great. But a great book is never untrue.