Lewis remarks on the high difficulty of adverse criticism, noting that the difficulty lies partly in the fact that the defects of bad literature are found in good literature: “The novel before you is bad - a transparent compensatory fantasy projected by a poor, plain woman, erotically starving. Yes, but so is Jane Eyre . Another bad book is amorphous; but so it Tristram Shandy . An author betrays a shocking indifference to all the great political, social, and intellectual upheavals of his age; like Jane Austen.”

The other difficulty is the temptation to turn criticism into venting. Instead of displaying the specific badness of a work, the critic uses his criticism as “a blow delivered in a battle.”