Parks vs Dyer (vs the academy)

Borderline personal (and misleading) piece on criticism and its discontents, by Tim Parks. Couple of viable comments from the voice-of-the-dog, though, of which my favourites are:

If every one in America with a Ph.D. in physics suddenly died, what would happen to physics in this country? Now consider what would happen to literature in this country if everyone with a Ph.D. in literature died?

and

Accepted into a Ph.D. program in literature many years, I decided to find a life outside the academy, thinking then, as I do now, I had no wish to write more and more about less and less for fewer and fewer.

and (brilliantly)

I was unable to comprehend at least half of the writing in the recent inaugural issue of the journal "Translation"

Also true

The more bad books you finish, the fewer good ones you’ll have time to start.

- Tim Parks, NYRB