SOURCE: A review of Doing What Comes Naturally, in World Literature Today, Vol. 64, No. 4, Autumn, 1990, p. 707.

In the following review of Doing What Comes Naturally, Hauptman commends Fish's writings on academic professionalism and the impossibility of “critical self-consciousness,” but finds much of the collection jargon-ridden and unconvincing.

Stanley Fish is one of the most important practicing critics of the U.S. His previous works, especially Is There a Text in This Class?, have been extremely influential; his studies of the intersection of literature and law are at the cutting edge of criticism; and his writings on professionalism are amazingly astute. Finally, it is obvious that, as chairperson of English at Duke, Fish has been instrumental in developing one of the finest departments in the country as well as in helping to reinvigorate the South Atlantic Quarterly, which is now a superb journal.

Why is it then that the...