The Friday Clive

"Being fallen creatures we tend to resent offences against our taste, at least as much as, or even more than, offences against our conscience or reason...The tendency is easily observed among children; friendship wavers when you discover that a hitherto trusted playmate actually likes prunes. But even for adults it is "sweet, sweet, sweet poison" to feel able to imply "thus saith the Lord" at the end of every expression of our pet aversions. To avoid this horrible danger we must perpetually try to distinguish, however closely they get entwined both by the subtle nature of the facts and by the secret importunity of our passions, those attitudes in a writer which we can honestly and confidently condemn as real evils, and those qualities in his writing which simply annoy and offend us as men of taste. This is difficult, because the latter are often much more obvious and provoke such a very violent response."