Flashback Sunday: In which I pontificate (er, twenty-two years ago)

I was engaging in some virtuous procrastination this afternoon by sorting/throwing out lots of old stuff that had remained stubbornly boxed since my move three years ago.  (I'm sure there's a reason to hang on to old floppy disks that none of my computers are capable of reading, but...)  Along the way, I stumbled onto my "relics of my undergraduate education" box, which included this letter to the editor of the UCI paper.  Here is my nineteen-year-old self opining on, of all things, "the canon":

This was the age of the campus culture wars, so canons and canon-breakers were out and about.  This outburst was prompted by one of the (many) poststructuralists on the faculty, who a week or so previously had said something to the effect of (paraphrasing) "we should continue to read the canon--just read it against itself!" Bear in mind that this was the age of high deconstruction, which, as a theoretical approach, tended to focus on high culture.    And yes, in 1991, you really could get through the English major at UCI without reading any Shakespeare, as he wasn't required--but, to be fair (in extremely distant retrospect), you would have to plan your program pretty carefully in order to avoid any taint of the big S.  (Moreover, Shakespeare courses were always packed, because students were actually--get this--interested in the topic.)