Scott McLemee has some harsh words for Princeton’s Cornel West. In reviewing West’s new memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, McLemee dissects West as a celebrity academic whose emphasis has long since shifted to the “celebrity” and not the “academic”.

McLemee dredges up all the lowlights of West’s recent career—(the spoken-word album, the Matrix cameos—almost unsportsmanlike, by the second paragraph

West described his projects as “bold,” “challenging” and “exciting.” These are adjectives, it must be said, better left in someone else’s hands…

Cornel West’s work was once bold, challenging, exciting. The past tense here is unavoidable.

West’s memoir sound like a bizarre piece of work, for sure. McLemee looks at one section on marriage terrifying to any and all students with crushes on Prof. West:

I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!

One of the critic’s main grievances with the work itself: West’s choice to work with a coauthor in crafting what West calls a “‘conversational’ voice.” (Oh snap!) McLemee devotes an entire paragraph of his review to a strangely drawn-out comparison of West to David Hume, who “published numerous very popular essays with the help of a writer from Entertainment Weekly.”

After the jump, deep analysis and videos of insane professors.

To a certain degree, though, why does the entertainment value of Brother West matter? A public intellectual, even one whose work is specious and self-aggrandizing, is still an intellectual. In publishing work that’ll be read outside the classroom, Cornel West has had his ideas more widely received than any professor we can think of.

West has provided ample entertainment over the past decade, sure. Try taking these things out of context. What if Harold Bloom played one of the elders of Zion in the Matrix series. (It would be awesome.) And if Joyce Carol Oates got a mention in a Lupe Fiasco song? (Sweet.) How dope would it be if James Wood stopped writing for the New Yorker and just started freestyling.

Relax, critics of conversation. Cornel West is actually kind of cool when you stack him up next to, well, most faculty. The only person who can beat this:

Is Charles Nesson:

Oh and if McLemee doesn’t know what to make of West’s imbroglio with Larry Summers, we’re certainly not going to touch it. Again.