Loving Bad Writing

What constitutes bad writing, anyway? Apparently, cliches. Laura Miller talks about why we love bad writing, prompted by an article by Edward Docx. From reading Miller's article, I was expecting Docx's to sound much more snotty than it actually was. It wasn't very snotty at all.

One unexpected bit from Laura Miller's article: C.S. Lewis wondered why people liked bad writing, too. He even wrote about it.

Until recently, hardly anyone considered why some readers might actually prefer clichés to finely crafted literary prose. A rare critic who pondered this mystery was C.S. Lewis, who -- in a wonderful little book titled "An Experiment in Criticism" -- devoted considerable attention to the appeal of bad writing for what he termed the "unliterary" reader. Such a reader, who is interested solely in the consumption of plot, favors the hackneyed phrase over the original

... because it is immediately recognizable. 'My blood ran cold' is a hieroglyph of fear. Any attempt, such as a great writer might make, to render this fear concrete in its full particularity, is doubly a chokepear to the unliterary reader. For it offers him what he doesn't want, and offers it only on the condition of his giving to the words a kind and degree of attention which he does not intend to give. It is like trying to sell him something he has no use for at a price he does not wish to pay.

A hieroglyph of fear. What a great turn of phrase. Is that the difference between good writing and bad writing? Does it matter, so long as we enjoy it?