How Much Does Literature Weigh? On Taste, Waste, Value, And The Canon

What Does it Mean to Read? When you read do you cross, uncross, and recross your legs? Do you pull at your hair or grind your teeth? Do you rest your book on different surfaces? Do you slowly annihilate your body in any way, shape or form? In other words, when you read do you wrestle with the text in front of you? If so, congratulations! You’re a student of something called ‘literature’. But what is literature? How is its weight felt in the Western world today? Perhaps more importantly, why would anyone willingly subject themselves to a run-in with it?