Orwell was no fan of literary criticism

I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary criticism is fraudulent, since… every literary judgement consists in trumping up a set of rules to justify an instinctive preference. One’s real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually “I like this book” or “I don’t like it,” and what follows is a rationalisation.

— George Orwell, “Writers and Leviathan” (from an interesting reflection at The Bygone Bureau on film criticism.)

Via clusterflock