is implied by the ominous, condensed allusion to 'less prestigious writings' in the counterpointing of 'traditional intellectual qualities represented by the classics of literature versus social values of equality of gender and race represented by less prestigious writings.'" J. Robert Barth wrote in CrossCurrents: "This is a strange and aggravating book." Barth went on to question the truth of Kernan's dismal assessment university literature departments. "Kernan's major argument is that a broad-based revolution, whose driving energy was 'classically Marxist,' overthrew 'the old literature with its quaint beliefs in creative geniuses, iconic works of art, myths, and eternal meanings'.... But Kernan seems to recognize no middle ground between complete capitulation to the 'revolution'—which I suggest only a very few departments have accepted—and a more responsible evaluation of the insights of new critical theory. I do not recognize the barren landscape Kernan paints as the one I have inhabited for the past thirty years." Sanford Pinsker, reviewing the book in The Georgia Review, stated that "one comes to an attention-grabbing title like The Death of Literature with a certain amount of skepticism." Pinsker added: "[T]he salient point of Kernan's thesis is that the death of the old literature must be understood 'not as a culpable act but as part of a broad cultural change.'" Pinsker concluded: "There are good reasons to regard Kernan's witty, provocative, altogether fascinating report about the death of literature as greatly exaggerated." D. B. Jones in Modern Language Studies found The Death of Literature to be a "brave and solid book," and stated that Kernan "supplies better arguments than many of literature's detractors for the relativism of its authority." John Ramage reviewed the book in the Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, and conclude that "[m]uch of the considerable pleasure to be gained from reading The Death of Literature derives from the vigor of Kernan's prose, which in turn follows largely from the decisiveness of Kernan's moral judgments. He is less concerned to trace his way through the labyrinthine arguments of contemporary critics than he is to judge the social consequences of their ideologies." Frank McConnell in The Wilson Quarterly found that Kernan's book compared favorably to two other best-selling books by humanities professors both published a few years before The Death of Literature, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987). "Kernan