In a recent piece for Literary Hub, writer Ben Dolnick talks about the shame he felt when he heard a book he enjoyed being described as “junk”:

“Until then I’d existed in a literary Eden: a book could be good or bad, dull or transfixing, but there was no way of predicting its quality other than to plop down on the couch and read it. Yes, I’d observed that some books—often the ones involving detectives and/or serial killers—had protagonists whose names had a certain extruded-plastic quality (Jake Brigance, Rob Reilly). And sure, I’d wondered why some novels included ten-page previews of others of the author’s books. But these had been curiosities, no more substantively telling than the font in which a book happened to have been printed. Now, though, I’d eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Junk, and when I looked at a book whose back jacket consisted of nothing but an enormous author photo, I felt shame.”

You’ll be pleased to hear that Dolnick’s story has a happy ending.