Yeah, I consider complaining about academic writing like this to be just as curmudgeonly. I remember when I first got access to a good university library and could read all the criticism written about books and authors I had read – knowing that people like Watterson, Gene Wolfe, or Victor Davis Hanson had tarred it – and I found the vast majority to actually be valid and insightful, giving me an expanded appreciation of the book or an understanding of its place in the greater social discourse.

Yes, literary criticism often focuses on highly specialized concerns and not everyone is interested in e.g. queer perspectives, but can't we be happy that it exists for those who do want to read it?