Appraising a Certain Praise

A critic who offers nothing but praise to an established author inevitably steps on discards of his own making. It does not take discerning imagination to build a critic's winning pedestal. Just straighten the otherwise spiral staircase of literary criticism using power as the stepping stone. The laboriously made curves, the balusters resisting a certain order, the forbidden words crowded for refuge in an irregular turn, the polished surfaces of handrails detesting the linear touch, are all turned into debris: A pile of litter, for some, to erect recognition; a restless assemblage, for others, to keep shaking the regular column of canonical criticism.