Indeed - my replies were based on the very slight chance that "Captain Oats" is actually genuine and not a troll...

A day late and a dollar short.

A day late because this should surely have been published yesterday?

A dollar short because it does seem to take itself a little too seriously.

>>The immediate aim of criticism is to decide which works of literature offer the greatest insight into the human condition, and to describe, if possible, how they do it; the broader aim is to improve society by cultivating individual taste and morality, using the "best" works of literature as a kind of moral compass<<

Quite a task that LitCrit has set for itself. Big, bi-i-i-i-g challenge. All those books, all those bus tickets, so little time.

I find myself reasonably comfortable with the first part, about deciding which books are cleverer than others, just so long as the lit critters understand that they are only talking to themselves.

You can tell this is the case by measuring the jargon quotient, which - as with any other science - is designed to to convey meaning only to similarly-equipped peers. Anyone who has inadvertently dropped in upon a discussion on econometrics or quantum theory knows this to be the case.

Understand that these folk do not actually possess the necessary skills to communicate outside their own narrow species. The language they speak has been created specifically so that they can understand each other, but is impossible to translate for the benefit of the rest of us.

Unfortunately this means thay they will inevitably fail in the second of their self-imposed tasks - to "improve society by cultivating individual taste and morality" - simply because no-one understands a word they say.

And hey, you may think you understand, but the rules of postmodern theory actually guarantee that you don't. Because "understanding" is not actually a valid postmodern construct.

But I love these articles anyway.

Over time, I have come to believe that the less of them I actually comprehend, the smarter I must be. It's a good feeling.

The irony in all of this of course is that if English weren't a compulsory subject, few people would do it. There are a lot of people crunching the numbers so to speak and working out just how much interest they have to feign in order to get the marks to get into their med/science/IT/business/marketing course, after which time, they can forget they ever studied any of this.

Of those who do take an interest, some become academics, some become lawyers, and some become teachers. The rest end up doing a BA and then end up getting a boring, low-paid office job where they can take cold comfort in the fact that their idiot boss (who does enjoy his job and earns much more money) doesn't remember any of what he studied in high school English (and certainly didn't study it at university), and is, therefore, an oaf.

Don’t be disheartened, Captain Oats. I got it – probably because I studied English in its pre-post-modernist phase.

Who's buying the bus tickets. If it's the author of the syncretism of classic literature and pomo relativism then each person will have to be hand held from place to place by the author. It wont be a matter of having not read or being able to read the ticket. It will be whether or not one should trust the ticket to get them from point A to point B. Can tickets do that? Then there is the bus driver to consider. Has he/she been educated by the author and are all his or her educational, cultural, religious and life perspectives relative to the ticket holders. And if not will the bus follow the route implied by both the ticket and the buses habitual course. What's your sign? Because if it's Gemini your probably on the wrong bus. Check your star chart. That's not your ticket.... check the sign post ahead...you have entered the realm of "The Scary Door".

Thank you Brian Moon for a stimulating article. I think it would be great if there were time for the study of both Lit Crit and Cultural Studies.