Troubling Trouble Troubles Me

I came across this troubling quote in an essay on Jean Rhys's Quartet this week: "Central to modernist art is the concept best exemplified in English by Joyce and Eliot of the impersonality of the arts; the notion that the artist was to be refined out of the work of art: an art so impersonal that subject might well follow the contours of the autobiographical self such as Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, but the artist himself remains beyond his handiwork, refined out of existence." According to this critic, however, Rhys's work is not a product of this particular distancing characteristic of the modernist movement because her work is too personal. I am troubled with the distinctions this writer makes. How can the artist be "refined out of the work of art" yet still offer a work that is autobiographical? And why is Joyce such a success at this while Rhys's "developed out of an intensely private world?" Is it the character of her work or merely her character as a woman? Theses questions might be difficult to answer - and might very well be what my dissertation is in part based on. Although I am committed to unwrapping this particular package, I am perturbed by this writer's confident assertions. His tone seems to imply that the reader should know exactly what he is talking about, when in fact he has a lot more to do if he is going to convince this particular reader.