As readers, we remain in the nursery stage so long as we cannot distinguish between taste and judgment, so long, that is, as the only possible verdicts we can pass on a book are two: this I like; this I don’t like.

For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don’t like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don’t like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don’t like it.

— W.H. Auden, A Certain World, 1970

After Hart Crane’s death in 1932, scholars discovered that his poem “Emblems of Conduct” was largely a collage of lines borrowed from an unsuccessful Austrian poet named Samuel Greenberg, who had died of consumption in a New York hospital in 1917.

Critic William Murrell Fisher had shared some of Greenberg’s work with Crane in the early 1920s, noting that “when his eyes lighted on some of the poems, he became very excited. He flared up in a corner with it.” Crane later called Greenberg “a Rimbaud in embryo” whose work radiated “a quality that is unspeakably eerie.” To a friend he praised the “hobbling yet really gorgeous attempts that boy made without any education or time except when he became confined to a cot.”

Crane borrowed Greenberg’s notebooks from Fisher and began to arrange his favorite lines into a collage, which he called “Emblems of Conduct” after Greenberg’s poem “Conduct,” and Allen Tate and Malcolm Cowley persuaded him to include it in his first book of poems without knowing its origin.

Discovery of the debt raised charges of plagiarism against Crane, but there’s little indication that he intended to take credit for Greenberg’s work, and “Emblems of Conduct” brought attention to Greenberg that he might never have found otherwise. “All artists are plagiarists until they become transcenders,” wrote Clive Fisher in his 2002 biography of Crane, “but the fact remains that although we can never know what Greenberg might have achieved in a fairer world, there is nothing in the corpus of his work to equal even the secondary achievements of his famous admirer.”

Once there was a blue Dyspeptic, who attempted to Kill Time by reading Novels, until he discovered that all Books of Fiction were a Mockery.

After a prolonged Experience he came to know that every Specimen of Light Reading belonged to one of the following Divisions:

1. The Book that Promises well until you reach the Plot, and then you Remember that you read it Summer before last.
2. The book with the Author’s Picture as a Frontispiece. The Author is very Cocky. He has his Overcoat thrown back, so as to reveal the Silk Lining. That Settles it!
3. The Book that runs into a Snarl of Dialect on the third Page and never gets out.
4. The delectable Yarn about a Door-Mat Thief, who truly loves the Opium Fiend. Jolly Story of the Slums.
5. The Book that begins with a twenty-page Description of Sloppy Weather: ‘Long swirls of riven Rain beat somberly upon the misty Panes,’ etc., etc. You turn to the last Chapter to see if it Rains all the way through the Book. This last Chapter is a Give-Away. It condenses the whole Plot and dishes up the Conclusion. After that, who would have the Nerve to wade through the Two Hundred and Forty intermediate Pages?
6. The Book in which the Pictures tell the Story. After you have seen the Pictures there is no need to wrestle with the Text.
7. The Book that begins with a Murder Mystery — charming Picture of Gray-Haired Man discovered Dead in his Library — Blood splashed all over the Furniture — Knife of Curious Design lying on Floor. You know at once that the most Respected and least suspected Personage in the Book committed the awful Crime, but you haven’t the Heart to Track him down and compel him to commit Suicide.
8. The Book that gets away with one Man asking another: ‘By Jove, who is that Dazzling Beauty in the Box?’ The Man who asks this Question has a Name which sounds like the Title of a Sleeping Car. You feel instinctively that he is going to be all Mixed Up with that Girl in the Box before Chapter XII is reached; but who can take any real Interest in the Love Affairs of a Man with such a Name?
9. The Book that tells all about Society and how Tough it is. Even the Women drink Brandy and Soda, smoke Cigarettes, and Gamble. The clever Man of the World, who says all the Killing Things, is almost as Funny as Ally Sloper. An irritable Person, after reading nine Chapters of this kind of High Life, would be ready to go Home and throw his Grandmother into the Fire.
10. The dull, gray Book, or the Simple Annals of John Gardensass. A Careful Study of American Life. In Chapter I he walks along the Lane, stepping first on one Foot and then on the Other, enters a House by the Door, and sits in a four-legged wooden Chair, looking out through a Window with Glass in it. Book denotes careful Observation. Nothing happens until Page 150. Then John decides to sell the Cow. In the Final Chapter he sits on a Fence and Whittles. True Story, but What’s the Use?

Why continue? The Dyspeptic said that when he wanted something really Fresh and Original in the Line of Fiction he read the Prospectus of a Mining Corporation.

MORAL: Only the more Rugged Mortals should attempt to Keep Up on Current Literature.

— George Ade, Fables in Slang, 1899

Jack Kerouac typed the first draft of On the Road in three weeks on a 120-foot scroll of paper.

Truman Capote famously dismissed it, saying, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

In 2008, conceptual artist Simon Morris typed it again, publishing 400 words a day as a blog.

“One would hope for some truly profound response, but really there is none,” he said. “I don’t feel anything at all.”

In 2009 experimental poet Robert Fitterman erased most of The Sun Also Rises, retaining only phrases that begin with the word I. The result can sound strangely like the diary entry of a random Saturday afternoon:

I went up to the flat. I put the mail on the table. I heard the door-bell pull. I put on a bathrobe and slippers. I filled the big earthenware jug with water. I dressed slowly. I felt tired and pretty rotten. I took up the brandy bottle. I went to the door. I found some ash-trays and spread them around. I looked at the count. I had that feeling of going through something that has already happened before. I had the feeling as in a nightmare of it all being something repeated, something I had been through and that now I must go through again. I took a note out of my pocket. I looked back and there were three girls at his table. I gave him twenty francs and he touched his cap. I went upstairs and went to bed.

Of Hemingway, Tom Wolfe said, “People always think that the reason he’s easy to read is that he is concise. He isn’t. The reason Hemingway is easy to read is that he repeats himself all the time, using ‘and’ for padding.”

For her 1974 book Lighter Side of the Library, Janice Glover asked American librarians to recall titles requested by confused patrons, and the books they turned out to want:

Requested: Who Is Your Schoolmaster?
Book wanted: Hoosier Schoolmaster

Requested: Entombed With an Infant
Book wanted: In Tune With the Infinite

Requested: The Missing Hand
Book wanted: A Farewell to Arms

Requested: The Armored Chinaman
Book wanted: The Chink in the Armour

Requested: King of the Ants
Book wanted: Lord of the Flies

Requested: The Wooden Kid
Book wanted: Pinocchio

Requested: Five Pennies and the Sun
Book wanted: The Moon and Sixpence

And so on: From Here to Maternity; The Merchant of Venus; “Allergy in a Country Churchyard”; My Heart Is Wounded, They Buried My Knee. One inspired library staff finally sent a student home with Homer’s Iliad; he had come in asking for Homeless Idiot.