I am serious about criticism. The critic has a moral requirement. He may write about a book from any view whatever, but he owes it to his audience and to the book to separate the book’s ideas from his own, and to follow it with a warning that his reaction to the particular work must be seen within that context. Without such a demurrer, all integrity leaves criticism, and one is merely producing propaganda.
– Norman Mailer, Letter to Max Glissen, 17 December 1951, published in the New York Review of Books, 12 February 2009
Norman Mailer.