The return to primary texts is always refreshing, when I have been away from them for a while. The one thing that makes the biggest difference in a literary critic is how much really good reading has taken place--having read, and read well, a lot of the primary works.
Think of it this way: you could gain a kind of instant expertise simply by reading every significant work by a major author over the course of a month or two, and ignoring the secondary literature altogether. This is a valuable shortcut, since the secondary texts are going to make for much less efficient and rewarding reading.
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