A Taste for Quarantine

It has always seemed strange to me that bad books aren't a prominent part of our school and college literature curriculum. How do we expect students to learn to tell the difference between good and bad books unless we assign some bad ones for comparison? Don't you need badness in order to know goodness?

I can only conclude that those who have determined the literature curriculum have been more interested in protecting the good or great books from contamination—that is, in feeling virtuous about their own tastes—than they are in helping students understand what they read. There is also the view, though, that reading good books is itself sufficient—no reason to read bad ones for comparison, especially since some students might think some of the bad ones are good and vice-versa, or might catch on to the fact that which books are good or bad is often alarmingly debatable.

The best thing I've ever read on the question of literary value, by the way, is a chapter entitled "Evaluation" in Making Sense of Literature (1977) by the late John Reichert. This book deserves greater prominence.