Literary Criticism

I enjoy reading literary criticism for its own sake-- especially poetry criticism. But contemporary literary criticism is almost unreadable, for one primary reason: that, instead of any real interest in what the writer is trying to say, or the inherent merits of the text, the contemporary literary critic is only interesting in projecting their own obsessions with race, gender, and other fashionable topics onto it.

Whether or not this is really their own obsession, or just something they feel obliged to obsess over, doesn't make a difference.