I tried to avoid bringing the postmodernists into this back in >>31, but apparently that didn't help.

Point is, postmodernist literary criticism is largely a huge failure. It's grown into a self-contained and self-congratualting mass incapable of questioning itself, and heading straight into irrelevance.

But just because they like to deconstruct texts, and make up any kind of crazy meanings for it they see fit, does not mean that some deconstruction and criticism isn't both possible and valid.

(For more on the postmodernists, I recommend reading http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue22/epstei22.htm. It's long, but definitely worth it. For incurable nerds, there's also the less insightful but still entertaining http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html.)