Something Rotten in the State of Literature

Deep Furrows wrote the other day about the disconnect between the love of literature that often inspires people to go into Literature as an academic field, and the often highly anti-literary modes of analysis that are currently in vogue thoughout great swaths of the academic establishment in Eng. Lit. faculties.

One of the commenters linked to an article in the New York Review of Books on the same subject which is also very much worth a read, if only to hear the sad tale of how the phrase "the invaginated eyeball" came to be presented in all supposed academic seriousness.

It all reminds me of the high-school-clever comeback I developed by Junior and Senior years when people kept asking me "if you're so into books, why aren't you planning to study English?" Answer: "Why, because I like literature." In all too many of today's elite colleges, though who actually love the written word (especially if they love it for what it is rather than what can be done to it) would be well advised to stay far away from the English department.