the problem with literary criticism, clearly defined at last

If one regards fiction as an act, or "act"'s more pragmatic and perhaps politically aware sibling, activity, litcrit cannot be understood as anything other than mere explication, failing (in general) to reach even the vaguely, slightly dizzying heights of exegesis. An observation of activity, no more revelatory in apposition to the activity itself than taking a photograph is to experiencing a sunset, for example.Literary criticism can only, at very best, restate the content of fiction. No, not even that: it can only present the facts of fiction in a fashion more palatable to ready assimilation than the original text. The "unpacking" with which students of the Western academy are (if they've taken the right classes) variously amorously or nauseously familiar doesn't and cannot remove anything from the box that wasn't there to begin with.Now, if you're the sort of person who may desperately want to understand, say, Ulysses or The Corrections or whatever, but maybe you don't really like reading books, I guess lit-crit is for you.Amendment: One variety of literary criticism with which I cannot find fault is the sort exemplified here. I enjoy the process of conceiving of a category, defining it with reference to actual works, and mercilessly excoriating (in more or less vicious terms) the practitioners. But I don't have a great deal of faith in the capacity of this sort of practice to rival the perpetration of literature itself for thought-provoking engagement, personally.Just One More Thing, Really: One habit I dislike in N+1's book reviews is the tendency to credit authors with absurdly subtle gestures; e.g., "In a wry nod to 14th century Turkic haberdashery, Philip Roth/Nathan Englander/Harold Bloom says of the United Nations (etc)".