"Kernan is deaf and blind throughout to how powerfully the electronic word feeds back on Western literary history," Lanham wrote.

"[3] Peter Erickson, writing in Criticism delivered a harsh assessment of Kernan's book, finding it written at times in "catchy, superficial style of tabloid reportage.

But its life has shifted in large measure to emergent minority literatures....Kernan can neglect major new literary developments only by seeing them as noncanonical, inferior, and incidental.

"Kernan's major argument is that a broad-based revolution, whose driving energy was 'classically Marxist,' overthrew 'the old literature with its quaint beliefs in creative geniuses, iconic works of art, myths, and eternal meanings'....

"[8] Pinsker added: "[T]he salient point of Kernan's thesis is that the death of the old literature must be understood 'not as a culpable act but as part of a broad cultural change.

'"[9] Pinsker concluded: "There are good reasons to regard Kernan's witty, provocative, altogether fascinating report about the death of literature as greatly exaggerated.