The Emperor was outed on day one, which sort of underlines my point. The new clothes story could also reflect the intelligence of crowds. Or the inability to dupe a crowd for very long. Life isn't beholden to the story, obviously, but I have some faith in the intelligence of groups of people. Too much faith to believe that we can be tricked outright for decades. There's no incentive to keep quiet about a conspiracy in the field of lit crit. There's little money in it, and little power. If there were a conspiracy, there would be plenty of whistle blowers within the fold of lit critics who would lose interest in the farce and call out their peers. Since that's not happening, it seems much more likely that there's less BS in the field than us outsiders would like to believe.