Literary Theory and what people really want...

Yet while English departments may indeed fall prey to what Ruddick calls “a postmodern affinity for what is flat or depthless,” writers continue returning to “problems of the human heart in conflict with itself,” as Faulkner put it, “which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about.” Readers, in turn, continue craving explorations of the inner life and moral dilemmas—literary theorists be damned.