Yeah, when I read the example I didn't get much farther than "Hush Puppies" before laughing out loud. I had to decide whether it was an elaborate bit or the author was a credulous dope. What does "Start with the subject and move swiftly and smoothly to the object" mean, other than "this is the sort of thing I think literary critics do, but I don't want to actually read all the fiction that James Wood did."

I think there's an idea out there that when your faves become (and they always do) Problematic, it's time to defend them with a kind of partisan zeal that approaches the absurd. It's like ok man Gladwell sold a lot of books, no need to create a shadow culture around him.