no reason

"If we are not careful criticism may become a mere excuse for taking revenge on books whose smell we dislike by erecting our temperamental antipathies into pseudo-moral judgments."

C.S. Lewis via Ben Yagoda, on Michiko Kakutani. I think this quote could easily apply to most critics, irrespective of field, but particularly to a critic like Armond White, whose tiresome moralism seeps through in all of his reviews. Most criticism is steeped in the critic's morality, which is shame because I couldn't give two shits about someone's morals, least of all a critic's. I don't care to interpret a protaganist through a moral filter. I don't care whether a character is "likable" or whatever. What does that even mean? Do you think that Armond White is a "likable" person? I'd be cruious to know what the people in his life would have to say to that. Is Michiko Kakutani a likable person? Dale Peck? Is any critic more "with it" than the artist he loves to single out? Who is a critic to pass moral judgments?