[The] special quality of a critic like R. P. Blackmur … can be understood only when one realizes that [in The Expense of Greatness] he writes the kind of criticism, superb though it be, which is possible only in an age that has no literature and no confidence in literature. As a critical performer—and the best criticism has reduced itself to a series of performances—Mr. Blackmur is almost appallingly brilliant. There has probably been no other critic in our time who has displayed so devouring an intensity of mind, so voracious a passion for the critical process. Yet with all his power there is something monstrous about Mr. Blackmur, a perfection of skill, an obsession with skill, that is something different from and something less than the quality of the greatest critics. In practice Mr. Blackmur's use of criticism affords us only the highest and most significant...