Reading these back issues (of Diacritics) brought me back to a debate about style in literary criticism. Certain theorists were admired for their rhetorically wrought prose: Bloom and Jameson especially. Eagleton, writing on Jameson, says he cannot imagine anyone not deriving intense aesthetic pleasure from Jameson's style. (To which I would say: "Your imagination is very limited, Terry.") He reaches for Jameson instead of a book of poetry, etc... Another, related idea that was circulating in this period was that we were living in an age of criticism, in which the Blooms and Jamesons were producing more compelling work than the poets and novelists du jour.

You know where I'm going with this, don't you? Accomplished style was identified with a clotted, overwrought academic manner. English professors praising other English professors for their fine style seem never to ask themselves whether this is the only variety of style that might be aesthetically pleasing--and to whom? I simply don't agree that Jameson's style is exquisite. I'm all for blurring the boundaries between theory and poetry, but doesn't this imply, also, that we hold the theorists to a higher standard of writing? That is, if Harold Bloom is a poet, a creative figure, by virtue of his writing, shouldn't we say he is a very, very bad poet?