Robert Lecker on the Responsibilities of Criticism

Robert Lecker on the responsibilities of criticism:

I began to see that there were responsibilities attached to criticism. If you were going to be really honest, you would have to show how the reading process could throw you off track, take you away from what you were supposed to be focusing on, run you around and around until you saw all the routes you could take that you weren't taking, all the things you should know that you didn't. You could keep all those inadequacies and detours out of the reading, or you could take the risk that maybe a few other people might be interested in the problems posed by reading, and not just the reading itself. For it was the problems that made the process interesting and valid as an aesthetic pursuit.

From Robert Lecker, Dr. Delicious: Memoirs of a Life in CanLit (2006).