Books, Articles, and Items of Academic Interest.

Literary Imagination, the Review of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, comes out three times a year and has been publishing since spring 1999. Blessedly free of "critical theory," it aims to "refocus literary studies on literature" and includes both creative and critical work. Early issues feature, among many notable articles, Robert Coles's personal reminiscence of William Carlos Williams, William Arrowsmith on Euripides, and Clare Cavanagh on Nobel Laureaute Wislawa Szymborska.

John Ellis writes a marvelously astringent review of David Macey's The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory (Penguin, 2000). Ellis's conclusion: "It is high time this fraud [i.e., critical theory] was exposed." ("In Theory It Works," Times Literary Supplement, 29 September 2000).

In Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism (University of Nebraska Press, 2000), Joan Acocella reclaims the work of Cather from the distortions of identity politics. She argues that all the critical schools, past and present, have failed to do justice to Cather, but her discussion makes clear that feminism has done the most damage.

Stanley Fish reviews the updated version of the popular television series, The Fugitive, the well-known saga of a doctor convicted in the death of his wife and on the run from the law, and compares it unfavorably to the original series that ran in 1963-67 and starred David Janssen. Fish finds that the new series substitutes stereotypes and spectacular feats of escape for the richer and quieter pleasures of the older version, in which each episode turned on "the formation of character in situations of intense and private moral choice." It is ironic that the man who did so much to destroy the traditional moral frameworks that made even a popular cultural artifact like the old Fugitive series cogent and compelling, now deplores the results of his own deconstructive efforts. Or perhaps Fish is performing yet another transgressive act, throwing in our faces that which we have lost, thanks in part to his and his fellow theorists' machinations. ("Running away from a Daunting Television Legacy," New York Times, 22 October 2000).

In "Defying Proposition 209" (Weekly Standard, 24 July 2000), Glynn Custred and Roger Clegg describe how the measure prohibiting race, gender, and ethnic preferences in California has been faring since its passage by popular vote in 1996, and report that the law is being brazenly flouted by city governments and state universities. The authors conclude that those who fought for Proposition 209 "cannot yet declare victory.... It remains up to the people--especially those in the trenches who see the law being violated--to insist that it be followed. This will require lawsuits, confrontation, and a willingness to be called names. But it's the only way to prevail."

James McWhorter, in Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (Free Press, 2000), provocatively argues that racism and poverty cannot explain low black academic achievement. Young black students from integrated, middle class environments also perform at a lesser level than their white counterparts. McWhorter, a professor of linguistics and himself a product of the black middle class, locates the cause in a black culture of victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism.

David Oshinsky's article, "Humpty Dumpty of Scholarship: History Has Broken into Pieces," New York Times (26 August 2000), details the ambiguity of the profession toward the new social history. Some professors of history believe that it has enhanced their work, some that it has caused them to lose the broad picture. The argument is clinched when Oshinsky relates how the most widely read narratives in American history today are no longer written by academic historians. This was not the case in the past, when figures such as George Bancroft, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Charles and Mary Beard commanded both scholarly and general audiences.