The author has a positive attitude toward Mphahlele’s concern with conveying a social message. This is shown by the use of the word “wonderfully” in connection with Mphahlele’s articulation of a vision for the future, and by the author’s emphasis on Mphalele’s concern for social message as a response to criticism that his works don’t adhere to sharp distinctions between autobiography and fiction.

This is very tempting, because it’s easy to get the impression that the author values Mphahlele’s lack of concern for sharp distinctions between literary categories. But the passage doesn’t actually contain any words or phrases that indicate an especially strong positive attitude toward this. Nowhere do we see a word like “wonderfully” used in connection with the autobiographical features in Mphahlele’s fiction or the fictional elements in his autobiography.

There’s no indication that Mphahlele redefined literary categories. Although he wrote in a way that ignored distinctions between these categories, that doesn’t imply his work changed prevailing consensus about the definition of each category. Maybe Mphahlele was unique, and no one else followed his lead in blurring distinctions between categories.

There’s no evidence of a positive attitude toward the details in Mphahlele’s work. Although Mphahlele believes “details must be drawn from the writer’s work,” we don’t get any positive words in connection with this claim about details.

Although Mphahlele’s work displayed a vision of the future, he didn’t provide any “road maps for bringing such a future about.” So, it wouldn’t make sense for the author to have a positive opinion about Mphahlele’s “plan for bringing about the future he envisions,” when that plan wasn’t part of his work.