Can we conceive of theory without criticism? Recent literary manifestos lay claim to a set of related practices and ethics variously known as “surface reading” or “post-critique.” This scholarship asks us to focus on textual presence rather than absence, favoring description over interpretation, literal over figurative readings, text over subtext. Through my readings of Assaf Inbari’s Home (2009) – a novel that makes complex use of the tension between surface and depth in both its form and content – I develop my own critique of these practices and manifestos, calling attention to the possibilities inherent in thinking – critically and noncritically – through metaphors of surface about form, content, and ideology.