The exposition of these essays is tortured, bloated, meandering, pretentious, confused.

I have't read it yet but look forward to doing so at some point. Putting it here to keep track of it.

Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf by Camille Paglia.

On the back of David M. Halperin's One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, a series of American academics tells us that this book "shakes what has long been considered the foundations of Western culture." Halperin "takes giant strides" after Foucault; his book is "an intellectual feast," characterized by "remarkable elegance of style." It is "a major contribution" that will "leave an indelible mark." It shows "the breadth and daring" that have made Halperin's work "almost legendary in gay studies."

As I read these passages, I ask myself, what profession am I in? What are its values? What forces are at work in the world that would produce such quotes for so shoddy a book? In this article I will review two closely associated new books and then analyze the sorry state of literary criticism that has produced them. Finally, I will make proposals for educational and professional reform.

One Hundred Years of Homosexuality is a short collection of essays that seems to have only one coherent aim: the nomination and promotion of David Halperin as a major theorist of sex. But Halperin, like most of the American academics who have wandered into sex studies, lacks the most elementary understanding of the basic disciplines of history, anthropology, and psychology necessary for such work. The exposition of these essays is tortured, bloated, meandering, pretentious, confused.