SOURCE: A review of Self-Consuming Artifacts, in Journal of English and German Philology, Vol. 72, No. 4, October, 1973, pp. 536-43.

In the following review, Miner praises the achievement of Self-Consuming Artifacts, though he takes issue with Fish's interpretation of Plato's Phaedrus and his dismissal of Thomas Browne. Miner also discusses Fish's perspective and importance as a leading practitioner of reader-response criticism.

Critical movements are made up of people who find each other’s ideas or personalities congenial, or who share common enemies, and there seldom exists a common method of doctrine agreed upon in detail. The so-called reader-response school of criticism resembles the late New Criticism, and the present nouvelle critique, in meaning different things to its members, who nonetheless share certain common preoccupations. Most of the first generation of reader-response critics live in California, with Joan Webber (University of Washington) being the major exception. There are Stanley Stewart (Riverside...