The use and abuse of literature

Even as the decline of the reading of literature, as argued by the National Endowment for the Arts, proceeds in our culture, the author, gives us a meditation on the usefulness and uselessness of literature in the digital age. What is literature, anyway? How has it been understood over time, and what is its relevance for us today? Who are its gatekeepers? Is its canonicity fixed? Why has literature been on the defensive since Plato? Does it have any use at all, or does it merely serve as an aristocratic or bourgeois accoutrement attesting to worldly sophistication and refinement of spirit? Is it, as most of us assume, good to read literature, much less study it, and what does either mean? This is a book about our culture in crisis, as well as an appreciation of popular culture. The winning aim is to reclaim literature from the margins of our personal, educational, and professional lives and restore it to the center, as a fierce, radical way of thinking.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Philosophy, Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.