This is what has become of college English Departments.
THey HATE literature, and they HATE life.
Reading any of their work is drudgery, and the drudgery that got it produced in the first place was carried on by them as if it constituted some deadly serious yet necessary cultural pursuit.
I have always read for pleasure, and all the great novels can be and should be read that way.
I even read critics for pleasure, and none of these types of critic yields ANY pleasure. The terminology of all the various “Studies” fields taught now, and for the last 3 decades or so is like a high fence designed to keep normal people out, and most of us will stay out by choice.
These critics always seem to be practicing some form of forensic medicine on the written word: they go poking around with their instruments on the bodies in the morgue, to see what caused the death, and they never realize it’s them and their “techniques” that killed the patient, Literature. They drain the life out of everyone and everything they study.
Reading for pleasure, SD? Me, too. ‘Twas Andrew Klavan, I believe, who recently wrote, “The single hardest thing to do in the arts is not to shock or disturb or sear or radicalize—but to delight.” God bless Klavan, and God bless all authors who do endeavor to delight.
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.