Anyone who has toiled in the rottingnvineyard of contemporary literarynstudies but has stood apart from the avidndeconstructors, post-structuralists, newnMarxists, vindictive feminists, and homosexualnpolemicists is rich with horrornstories. The ones Lehman has to tell arenas instructive and devastating as any:nthey feature once eager young scholarsndriven out of the academy by the maddeningnobfuscations of their tenurednseniors; authors central to the shapingnof the Western literary and philosophicalntraditions removed from the curriculumnand replaced by vociferous enemiesnof our common culture; and the rise ofna species of critical prose so willfullyndense and neologistic as to be essentiallynincomprehensible.nLehman is not only a teacher ofnliterature in whose courses one wouldnbe happy to have one’s son or daughternenrolled, but is a poet of considerablenaccomplishment and commendation.nTo the descriptive task of limning thenbrave new worid of some of his nihilisticnand intellectually disordered fellows henbrings the poet’s saving graces of witnand multi-shaded wordplay, and also thenconsoling hope that the waves of culturalndestructiveness that have flooded overnuniversity shores will inevitably ebb.nIndeed, the reaction against the newnnihilism has been rising: Allan Bloom’snbook The Closing of the AmericannMind struck it a glancing blow; RogernKimball’s Tenured Radicals drew thenbattle line intelligently and persuasively;nand Lehman has now advanced thenstruggle in a distinctive way. He hasngiven back to his colleagues a witty,ninformed, and detailed indictment ofnLIBERAL ARTSnLET THE REVOLUTIONnBEGINnThe Federal Election Commission reportednlast March that Midwesternersnare the Americans most reluctant toncontribute one dollar of their taxes to thenpresidential election campaign fund bynchecking the appropriate box on IRS taxnforms. In 1989 only 18.2 percent optednfor the checkoff in the Midwest, comparednto 28.5 percent in the Northeast.nThe percentage of Americans nationwidenearmarking a dollar for campaignnfunding dropped from 28.7 percent inn1980 to 19.9 percent in 1989.n36/CHRONICLESnthe new barbarism that could tilt somenconfused minds back toward reasonnand the reasonable uses of tradition. Atnthe same time he has provided thengeneral reader, who has heard thendistant rumbles of these new academicnwars, with a coherent account of whonhas been doing what and with whichnand to whom. All of this he has done innthe first half of his fervent but paradoxicallyngood-humored volume. The secondnhalf shifts to the central scandalenof the whole affair: the case of Paul denMan.nDe Man was to Derrida as St. Paulnwas to his greater mentor. From YalenUniversity —and in his peregrinationsnto the English departments of thenWestern world — he proselytized deconstructionnwhile transforming it intonsomething even more veiled yet morensevere and more destructive of moralnintelligence than was the case withnDerrida. He became, in the generalnestimation of the ever-growing deconstructionistnmovement, the perfect exemplarnof their doctrine.nBorn and raised in Belgium, hencame to this country only after WorldnWar II and completed his graduateneducation at Harvard. It was generallynunderstood that during the war he hadnbeen “in the resistance” or perhapsnhad been a refugee. Beyond suchnvague hints he never spoke of his past.nIndeed, after his fateful encounter withnDerrida, and his transformation intonthe leading American deconstructionist,nhe often argued that no “text”n(including the text of a human life) cannor should be understood historically.nNevertheless, his own history, as it wasnrevealed after his death in 1983, shooknand appalled his many deconstructionistncolleagues and disciples. In effect,nthe truth about the man De Man,nonce it was revealed, propelled deconstructionninto a basic crisis in which thenfaith was to be tested.nWhat was discovered was that duringnthe war he had been a Nazincollaborator. As a literary and culturalncritic for both the major collaborationistnFrench-language and Flemishnnewspapers of occupied Belgium henhad commented with consistent enthusiasmnon the new Nazi order. Furthermore,nhe had welcomed the expungingnof Jewish influence from thencultural life of Europe, and had endorsednthe plan to ship all Jews off tonnnsome distant African location. In general,nhe had, in his wartime journalism,nbeen a major voice in the attempt tonsell Nazism as a revivifying resourcenfor the new Europe that he expectednwould emerge, racially cleansed andnculturally purified by the inevitablenGerman victory.nIn addition to the uncovering of hisncollaborationist journalism it came tonlight that De Man was a bigamist: henhad abandoned his European wife andnchildren without a divorce and hadnstarted a new American family. He hadnalso been a shady, probably larcenous,nbusinessman until 1948, when henmanaged to slip into the United States.nDeconstruction does not stand ornfall on the private moral failure of onenof its major proponents — no morenthan the aesthetic quality of Wagner’snoperas can be judged by reference tonthe monstrous aspects of his personalitynand life story. But the De Man casendoes illuminate deconstruction (andnthe related, newer forms of criticalntheory that it has spawned) in twonways. It, like the nihilism from which itnarose, is a doctrine particularly usefulnin freeing the guilty from their guilt.nBy destroying continuity and meaningnin any narrative, including real humannlives as they have been lived, it freednnot only De Man but his enthusiastsnfrom that moral responsibility that isnthe anchoring condition of civilizednexistence.nThe larger illumination shed by thenDe Man case comes not from his storynbut from the pitiful eflForts of his apologists.nReviewing the rush of essays thatnflowed from the deconstructionists afternthe revelations, Lehman shows thatnin their exculpations of De Man, hisnfollowers were in almost all instancesnlame, evasive, morally incompetent,nand, in some instances, demonstrablyndishonest as well.nBy their works shall ye know them.nThe real scandal of the De Man case isnthat his doctrine was used by his disciplesnto avoid the claims of truth andnmoral judgment. But that, of course, isnwhat the movement has always beennabout. One ends the book grateful tonLehman for his efforts and for hisnskilled and valuable achievement, butnwondering whether the new nihilismnwill continue to prosper, or whethernthe voice of reason may again come tonprevail in the academy. <§>n