As we French say, "nul n'est prophète en son pays". I'd never heard of Derrida until I read mention of him in some American academic journal. Writers are the most esteemed of artists in France, but that doesn't mean the French take superficially brilliant nonsense seriously as anything but wordplay.

This stuff is all true. Lacan also had a habit of permanently "borrowing" people's collectible books, charging Felix Guattari to drive Lacan home, sleeping with his female clients, and many, many other despicable things. He was, by all accounts, a complete scumbag.

I still read him because his ideas are brilliant and helped me in innumerable ways. He's dead now and his books can't hurt me. They're not even ideological, so you can't make the same case as you could for avoiding, say, a certain Austrian political theorist. However, if we somehow resurrect Lacan, I won't be lending him any first editions from my collection.