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Public Access: Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics (The Haymarket Series)

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Straight out of grad school, literary scholar Michael Berube became a public intellectual in record time, using the techniques of deconstruction and textual analysis to write devastating and accessible attacks on the academy-bashers of the Right. What's amazing about his writing, particularly in the essays collected here, is that--following the advice of his wife's Aunt Judy--he does a remarkable job of making it funny. There are place in his later work where that humor degenerates into cheap shots, as when he disses Saul Bellow because that author's son publishes racist propaganda. But here, it's fresh, spot-on, and memorably hilarious. It's not often that an expose of mendacity and injustice can make you laugh your head off.