Why Are Critics These Days So Defensive?

“People who enjoyed what were once known as guilty pleasures have absolved themselves of guilt. Arguments that people should be ashamed of lower-order tastes – like Ruth Graham’s attack on adults who read young-adult books – are actually quite rare. Yet anxiety about all this is pervasive, as if everyone’s high-school English teacher were lurking around the corner, ready to scold us for skipping Middlemarch on the summer reading list.”