Recent trends in both literature and literary criticism have created a disturbing situation in critical academia. Literary criticism has ceased in many ways to be a dialogue between scholars and has become largely a string of monologues. Critics have largely abandoned relevant issues and, in their quest to say something (anything) new, have turned to the intensely obscure, the irrelevant, and over-wrought analyses. This thesis addresses the trends that have created this phenomenon, and explores specific examples of critical abuses pertaining to the work of John Barth, Donald Barthelme, and Thomas Pynchon.