I agree. The worst class I ever took in college was some short story literature class. The instructor was some pervert who took pleasure in finding outrageously kinky subtexts in every story. I did horribly in that class cause I just don’t and cannot think in that fashion. My mind isn’t warped enough.
Good riddance is in order.
I’ve only known about Klavan for roughly 2 years, but I have said the EXACT same thing: only the good and great writers know how to delight: a corollary of recognizing that for writing to be worthwhile, it has to be alive in THE WRITING, not the SENTIMENT. THere are plenty of writers who would have, could have been much better had they forsaken some of that hectoring, lecturing,didactic, master-of-the-obvious stuff, for more “artistry”. No, their biggest talent is their basic humorlessness, and the desire to INSTRUCT. Think of the late Arthur Miller, not without talent, and the occasional flare-ups of artistry, but all of it subservient to the BIG POLITICAL LESSONS he thought were more important.He produced drama that teaches you WHAT to think, rather than HOW to think, (if think is important at all in drama, which I am not so sure about)/
As for the academics, the current vogue is probably still “deconstruction” , a subsidiary tool in the political toolbag which can be handed over as needed, on approval, for would-be deep thinker academic critics.
“I can deconstruct it for you” is what they say when you ask them how they liked a certain poem.
I once mentioned how much I liked a poet named C. K. Williams, and this prof, a female, said “He’s a womanizer!”
This was most likely based on a piece of scuttlebut that circulated around the English Department around the time Mr. WIlliams did a poetry reading at this University, but it certainly had nothing to do with his poetry.....
yet it was enough as a first and last statement about him from the tendentious academic critic: after all, what “deconstruction” technique is all about is finding
“the weakest link” in any writer’s perceived mindset, those little deeply hidden pseudo-Freudian “assumptions” that reveal the Colonialist, the Imperialist, or the Misogynist Within.