Joseph Epstein: What Killed American Lit.

8/27/11.

..."A stranger, freshly arrived from another planet, if offered as his introduction to the United States only this book, would come away with a picture of a country founded on violence and expropriation, stoked through its history by every kind of prejudice and class domination, and populated chiefly by one or another kind of victim, with time out only for the mental sloth and apathy brought on by life lived in the suburbs and the characterless glut of American late capitalism. The automatic leftism behind this picture is also part of the reigning ethos of the current-day English Department..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576468011530847064.html?KEYWORDS=joseph+epstein