It is notoriously difficult to make a strong case for the enduring vitality of criticism written for a weekly or monthly magazine. [...] of course we find, among other things, a variety of local insights or judgments that may seem to us, and often are, ephemeral. [...]

But then all worthwhile insights are at bottom local, or are founded on close readings of texts, sentenes, loosely or tightly formulated ideas. [...] To speak of Steiner's observations in such a reading as "local" is to say in fact only that he was willing to do the essential work of the critic acutely responsive to a novel he took to have some genuine value.