In Defense of Naïve Reading - NYTimes.com
Valuable discussion of the current state of literary criticism and why, even (perhaps especially) with the aid of the social sciences, it fails to present a valid teaching method to students at all levels. Sometimes, reading a novel for it's story and characters is greatly more valuable than generating a meta-critical chain which leads to complex abstractions entirely out of context. As fat as i'm concerned, belletristics is alive and well, even if it dares not whisper its name in academic circles.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/in-defense-of-naive-reading/