Those who blame theory are right to some extent. I'm currently in an interdisciplinary Humanities MA program, and I regularly meet people who are well-versed in Foucault, Lacan, and Baudrillard, but have an entirely blank slate when it comes to classic literature, preferring instead to apply theory to comic books or the Internet. On the other hand, this is what most of them started out wanting to do, and it's not certain that they would have done literary studies otherwise.

Part of the blame actually lies indirectly with Philosophy departments rather than English or Cultural Studies. The thing is that most Philosophy departments in English-speaking countries focus exclusively on analytic philosophy (plainly written logical arguments about very specific points) and entirely exclude continental philosophers such as Nietzsche, Sartre, and the later poststructrualists (basically all the wide-sweeping 'meaning of life' stuff that people normally associate with philosophy). This is almost the opposite case in Europe and the rest of the world. But of course American students still want to study that kind of philosophy, so English departments are usually the ones that have to fill in the gap and offer courses in theory. So what may seem like theory siphoning away English majors who would have otherwise focused on literature may actually be the English departments attracting students who can't find what they want in the Philosohpy department.

In fact, most larger schools have multiple cultural studies departments that are separate from English, which allows English to maintain a certain autonomy. This raises the more interesting question for me, which is what does literary criticism look like without theory? From what I remember in undergrad, it either involves historicism or formalism (like New Criticism), both of which are just boring as all hell. The reason a lot of people are drawn to theory as an alternative is because it offers rich new ways of reading literature that are, well, fun. At least at first. The problem is that the deeper you go into it, the more it becomes metatheory (that is, theory about theory and method rather than about literature). But it's still very possible to use theory to create interesting and illuminating readings of texts (for example Barbara Johnson's reading of Billy Budd) rather than just interrogating them for hidden biases and the like.

Basically my point is that theory isn't necessarily opposed to literature, and unless you're in a particularly theory-heavy English department it isn't really forced on you anyway. In my case I actually had to go out of my way to learn it. So I would be inclined to think that the real root of the problem really is that people just aren't very interested in reading novels anymore. Which is sad.

I really wish this wasn't on Salon's front page. I read the article and it's pretty cautious, but it still comes off like a passive-agressive whispering campaign exactly of the same sort as Rove's in 2000. Not only does it make me kind of queasy, but think about how it will look plastered all over right-wing blogs.

Look, I can understand the urge, but please...do we really want to take a page out of the Karl Rove playbook? I don't think Obama would stoop so low as to make this an issue, and neither should we. And it's not just a matter of principle - making an issue out of how someone's military service may have affected their mental health when our candidate has no military service of his own would be likely to backfire. Please, McCain has enough legitimate weaknesses to go after without us stooping to this level. No good can come of this.

I think someone else already made this point, but who actually buys products this way? This seems like something geared towards people who aren't very web-savvy, the type who would just open up a browser and type in what they want. Most people I know already have a sense of where to find good deals (Newegg for computer stuff, Half.com for books, etc.) Not to mention eBay. Are these searches so reliable that they would give you a lower price than knowing where to look?