In 2004, he published "The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories", a Jungian-influenced analysis of stories and their psychological meaning, on which he had been working for over 30 years. The book was dismissed by Adam Mars-Jones, who objected to Booker employing his generalisations about conventional plot structures prescriptively: "He sets up criteria for art, and ends up condemning "Rigoletto", "The Cherry Orchard", Wagner, Proust, Joyce, Kafka and Lawrence – the list goes on – while praising "Crocodile Dundee", "ET" and "Terminator 2"".