This article seeks to establish the idea that literary style can only exist there where there is an established literary culture capable of appreciating the new way language is used in an innovative text. Two conditions are necessary to have what we call literary style: a certain patterned arrangement of stylemes in a text and certain expectations among readers outside the text. The article goes on to argue that in the world of globalized literature the second condition no longer pertains. In the absence of a literary community with a shared tradition the role of criticism changes and the critic is pushed toward becoming an apologist or worse still a publicist.