Literary critics must carefully fill in ‘incomplete work of sculpture’

As Joseph Conrad was taking down notes in the jungles of Congo, he would not have foretold that his work would arouse debate involving a future American president at a university café nearly one hundred years later. But there was Barack Obama at Occidental College, having to defend Heart of Darkness from the charge of racism. He tells a lady whom he names Regina that “the book teaches me things, about white people....... The book is not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European....... I read the book to make me understand just what makes the white afraid the way ideas get twisted around. It helps me understand how people learn to hate.”

Here, we can call Obama a critic. For every reader becomes willingly or inadvertently a critic of same sort. But today we will focus on the professional critic. He, who reviews, teaches at the university and earns his living by methodically poring through other people’s works.