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But first I want to quote some favorite lines in The Character of Criticism. They appear in a section drawing out, at some length, the parallel between literary criticism and the kinds of responsiveness and responsibility before “The Word” one finds in, say, Saint Augustine.

“The act of writing a critical text,” as Harpham puts it, “reaches deep into oneself, testing one’s acuity, responsiveness, erudition, and staying power. But critical writing also tests attributes normally considered as moral qualities, including the capacity to suspend one’s own interests and desires and to make of oneself a perfect instrument for registering the truth of The Word.”

Easier said than done, of course. Harpham goes on to describe the obligations thus imposed on the critic, thereby fashioning a new identity in the process. Here’s a passage in a format suitable to be printed out, clipped, and posted near one’s computer monitor for sober contemplation:

“One must .... wish to be regarded as a person who can overcome insubordinate impulses, remove clutter and distractions from the field of vision, isolate the main issues, set aside conventional views, persevere through difficulties, set high standards, see beneath appearances, form general propositions from particulars, see particulars within the context of general propositions, make rigorous and valid inferences from concrete evidence, be responsive without being obsessive, take delight without becoming besotted, concentrate without obsession, be suspicious without being withholding, be fair without being equivocal, be responsive to the moment without being indiscriminate in one’s enthusiasms, and so forth.” —Geoffrey Galt Harpham

That final clause — “and so forth” — is really something. Talk about criticism and crisis! The prospect of adding more to that list of demands is either inspiring or terrifying, I suppose, depending on the state of one’s character....

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To me, the most powerful instances of criticism are those in which the drama of perception and understanding, which is also a moral drama in the broadest sense, is somehow visible in a shadowy way, encoded or encrypted in the critical text. I’ve always been struck by the fact that the criticism that impressed me most deeply managed to suggest an intimate encounter, even a kind of wrestling, between a strong, committed, informed, and responsive mind and a cultural text that probed and tested that mind, revealing its powers, limitations, and dispositions — in short, its character. Part of the character of criticism is its capacity to reveal the character of the critic, even in ways the critic has no knowledge of. In fact, I think that criticism is, or can be, one of the most interesting ways of manifesting character.

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I agree that the optimal “critical character” is rare, and for good reason. First, one has to be not only a critic, with a certain kind of education and professional opportunities, but also an unusually interesting person, one whose responses to the world are consistent, valuable, and meaningful, significant in a larger sense because they seem to proceed from some set of commitments and convictions rooted in human experience. Then, one has to be willing and able to expose oneself to a text, to respond without defensiveness, to be alive to a challenge. And lastly, one has to be able to write in such a way that both adheres to professional decorums and does something more by giving the reader some sense of the experience of coming to grips with an object of great significance and value.

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