SOURCE: A review of Doing What Comes Naturally, in Modern Language Review, Vol. 87, No. 1, January, 1992, pp. 160-61.

In the following review, Bertens offers a positive assessment of Doing What Comes Naturally, which he concludes is “an irreverent, important book that addresses highly interesting issues with force and clarity.”

In his preface, Stanley Fish tells us that he can imagine at least two objections to this massive collection of essays [Doing What Comes Naturally]. A first charge might be made against the extraordinary diversity of a collection that offers essays on Austin’s speech-act theory, on the work of Wolfgang Iser, on the (supposed) idiosyncrasies of legal interpretation, on the blind submission of articles to professional journals, on professionalism and anti-professionalism within academic criticism, on the reception of Paradise Lost (from 1942 to 1979), on change, on rhetoric, on the theoretical impossibility of theory, and so on. Paradoxically, the other objection...