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About this quote

What does it mean?
Strachey's writing style is so joyful that criticism only arises when a kinder treatment of a subject is encountered.
In plain terms
His writing is so fun that you only get mad when someone else is nicer to the people he writes about.
What can you take from it?
Joyful writing can mask harsh treatment of subjects until contrasted with kindness.

Where it applies

  • literary criticism
  • biography review
  • comparing authors

Putting it to work

  • evaluate tone in biographies
  • compare subject treatment

Questions to consider

  • Does joy justify harshness?
  • How does tone affect perception?

Another view

It assumes the reader values joy over fairness in storytelling.

More from Lytton Strachey

  1. It is not [the biographer's] business to be complimentary; it is his business to lay bare the facts of the case, as he understands them...dispassionately, impa…

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  2. One observed a number of discordant features - a feminine sensibility, a delight in the absurd, a taste for exaggeration and melodrama, a very mature judgement…

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  3. It is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.

    Permalink to quote #4

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