Except for all the male pronouns, Alfred Kazin’s credo remains good advice:<\/p>\n
“A critic must reveal why<\/em> we read him [a writer]. \u00a0Everything else\u2014the historical associations, the comparison with other writers, the placing in a school, the social, moral, and political significance thereof\u2014all that comes later. \u00a0The first question a critic should ask himself is: in what does this man’s interest to us as a writer primarily consist? \u00a0Why do we read him and what<\/em> do we read first? \u00a0The value of a critic can be defined by the extent to which he remembers that he is a reader and by his cleverness and passion in applying that remembrance to the service of his readers…. \u00a0I go further: reading should be a sensual experience, and the critic is useful only in so far as he opens our senses to the work before us.”<\/p>\n \u2014Alfred Kazin, Dec. 20, 1947, in Alfred Kazin’s Journals <\/em>(Yale, 2011), p. 109. \u00a0Thanks for the gift, \u00a1Braulio!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Except for all the male pronouns, Alfred Kazin’s credo remains good advice: “A critic must reveal why we read him [a writer]. \u00a0Everything else\u2014the historical associations, the comparison with other writers, the placing in a school, the social, moral, and … Continue reading