What gets us closer to a work of art is not instruction but another work of art. Only a plurality of choices can open up the new thinking in a work of literature that excites and liberates us. But in giving his Massey lectures at Harvard the title Writing Was Everything , Kazin means to call attention to a largely bygone age when writing mattered , and also to suggest what the role of the critic-reviewer of such writing ought to be. Whatever it may be, it is not literary criticism. On this crucial point he differs sharply from Rhodes.
Interpretation is generally loose, tries to make points.
But criticism dominates when readers are insecure and easily impressed by any show of guidance. If Rhodes's message is that those who wish to write, in fact, can, Kazin's is less reassuring. Literature is not theory, but, at best, the value we can give to our experience, which in our century has been and remains the imagination of mankind. Of course not everyone has had the same experience. There are participants and there are by-standers.