NEWS FLASH! In the last days of the last year of the twentieth century, The New York Review of Books has made an amazing and horrifying discovery: that the teaching of literature in our university English departments is in deep—well, let us say trouble. Just imagine! So grave has the situation now suddenly been discovered to be by the New York Review’s editors that they have thrown all caution to the winds and actually published an article in their issue of November 4 that poses the question: “What does it all mean? Should the teaching of English be given a decent burial, or is there life in it yet?” While the answer to this question remains moot, both in the article and in the academy itself, its author— Andrew Delbanco, the Julian Clarence Levi Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University—doesn’t hesitate, except in one important regard, to describe the wounds that have been inflicted on the patie ...

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