On Performative Reading Highlight

Our present emergency is decidedly language-based. Social media. LLMs. These are language-based enterprises. What lends books their modern moral valence is that literature stands in opposition to the Goliath of our age. As low-effort distractions monopolize our attention, literature challenges us in the right way. Where social media makes us incurious, reactionary, and cynical, literature requires nuance, patience, and critical thinking.