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Why Literature Still Matters, 2nd Edition - Paperback
In this second edition of his wide-ranging and accessible work, Jason M. Baxter puts our contemporary culture in conversation with literature and its “sister arts” to make the compelling—and sometimes chilling—case not just for the relevance but urgency of the humane tradition as we enter our “digital apocalypse.” Baxter draws on his areas of expertise, Dante and C.S. Lewis; his background in teaching the great books, art history, and music history; as well as his own travel literature to give his readers an almost sensuous feeling for what the alternative to our tech-obsessed culture is.
88 pages
Published February 7, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 22, 2025
I really enjoyed this book. It was short and to the point and a good start to helping the reader see why we need to slow down and read literature. I want to read it again.
November 14, 2025
Short, succinct, with a good range of examples. A bit annoying that he kept advertising the footnotes/paintings/pictures to be found in his blog but then his blog appeared to only have content for paid subscribers.
p. 8: According to this tradition, man and world were made for one another. We belong to it, as much as it belongs to us. The natural world is a great book of "symbols," that is, natural phenomena that - somehow, someway-resonate and awaken some inner part within us. When we look at the moon over the sea-or a waterfall or cliff or skylark or nightingale-we sense a corresponding quality within. The world is like a tuning fork which, brought near to a second tuning fork-in this case, our hearts-causes the latter to vibrate as well. Inspired by what we see, we reach down into that inner depth, adn, if we are able, pull out words or images or chords and scales for what we find, words or pictures or sounds we did not previously know we had.
p. 12: What would happen, for instance , if my face-to-face relationship with you began to feel like a subset of my virtual interaction with you? In other words, if all day, every day, when you send me a text which amuses me and I "like" it, and then I send something back to you and you "love" it, is it possible that the I am I front of you and you say something I agree with, that how I respond to you could begin to feel like an imperfect attempt to "like" what you're saying, with slam effect? What I really need you to do is text that to me to be "real" so I can express my "like" properly. Otherwise my assent does not feel complete.
Similarly, if I am in the habit of consuming information and news on Facebook, where I am allowed a restricted set of six reactions (like, love, wow, angry, sad and haha), could it happen that, over time, my mind and heart would cease feeling anything more than these primitive motions of affirmation and disaffirmation, in which adverbs of quality and qualification disappear? Of the vast range of difficult, evasive, and fugitive spiritual impulses, could we be voluntarily cooperating in the simplification of our interior lives, and, by doing so, begin to lose the ability to feel the need for anything greater?
p. 17: But the most brilliant feature of Zuckerberg's meta-world is this: once we have packaged our experiences in digital shrink-wrap--the pictures of the kids on the iPhone the little nibbled designer cookie at the boho coffee shop downtown, the selfie of me at the game-we then post them, so that others can consume our personal life, our manufactured feelings, as entertainment. We get "likes," our followers consume bits of emotion, platform makers get data, and our favorite brands purchase our interiority so they can inseminate their products into our imaginations by means of the people we are following.
p. 28: ...what Lewis thought was the fundamental characteristic of beauty: that is, when we encounter beauty, it is almost always accompanied by a strange note of sorrow, a sorrow that arises because beauty feels like something over there, something external to me. And in my gazing upon it, what I find myself wanting is not just to see beauty, but to be beauty, to make that which I see (or hear or read) become a permanent part of my being. I want to make that thing out there something in here. I don't want to be a tourist. I want to be local.
p. 31: If we keep in mind that literature is driven by the desire to close the gap between what I see and what I am, then we will be more patient with the old authors, especially in those passages which might otherwise seem slow or strange or overly rhetorical.
p. 66: But precisely because I've lost the ability to be nourished by anything outside of me, the images leave me hungry, and so I keep consuming, and keep posting and posting. Hans summarizes this bottomless pit: "The addictive taking of selfies points toward the inner emptiness of the ego The contemporary ego is very poor in stable forms of expressions with which it may identify, which would give it a solid identity...And just this insecurity, this anxiousness about oneself, produces the addictive taking of selfies, produces a self that is idling, and never comes to rest. Faced with its inner emptiness, the subject of the selfie tries in vain to produce itself...it is not a narcissistic self-love or vanity which generates the addictive taking of selfies, but an inner emptiness.
p. 67: But what is more, when I post these images, the reality is that I have forgotten to look at the thing itself. instead, as I snap that picture, I am already, in my mind, looking at how you will look at me: I am the sort of person who stands in front of so many things worth looking at. In other words, the attention moves from the phenomenon of wonder onto how I look in front of it, and, thus, the life giving, nourishing encounter with beauty I described above is perpetually deferred. ...unbeknownst to me, I am using what I stand in front of merely to amplify the power of my image, rather than allowing what I see to empower my interior life. I starve my inner heart, while consuming outer experiences. The whole world becomes nothing but a series of changing backgrounds for my face, experiences I purchase in order to enhance my social value in the currency of "likes."
p. 74: nevertheless, we know that old things are deep things, and that they are written on the human heart, and that, accordingly, they emerge, sometimes, when we least expect them.
p. 8: According to this tradition, man and world were made for one another. We belong to it, as much as it belongs to us. The natural world is a great book of "symbols," that is, natural phenomena that - somehow, someway-resonate and awaken some inner part within us. When we look at the moon over the sea-or a waterfall or cliff or skylark or nightingale-we sense a corresponding quality within. The world is like a tuning fork which, brought near to a second tuning fork-in this case, our hearts-causes the latter to vibrate as well. Inspired by what we see, we reach down into that inner depth, adn, if we are able, pull out words or images or chords and scales for what we find, words or pictures or sounds we did not previously know we had.
p. 12: What would happen, for instance , if my face-to-face relationship with you began to feel like a subset of my virtual interaction with you? In other words, if all day, every day, when you send me a text which amuses me and I "like" it, and then I send something back to you and you "love" it, is it possible that the I am I front of you and you say something I agree with, that how I respond to you could begin to feel like an imperfect attempt to "like" what you're saying, with slam effect? What I really need you to do is text that to me to be "real" so I can express my "like" properly. Otherwise my assent does not feel complete.
Similarly, if I am in the habit of consuming information and news on Facebook, where I am allowed a restricted set of six reactions (like, love, wow, angry, sad and haha), could it happen that, over time, my mind and heart would cease feeling anything more than these primitive motions of affirmation and disaffirmation, in which adverbs of quality and qualification disappear? Of the vast range of difficult, evasive, and fugitive spiritual impulses, could we be voluntarily cooperating in the simplification of our interior lives, and, by doing so, begin to lose the ability to feel the need for anything greater?
p. 17: But the most brilliant feature of Zuckerberg's meta-world is this: once we have packaged our experiences in digital shrink-wrap--the pictures of the kids on the iPhone the little nibbled designer cookie at the boho coffee shop downtown, the selfie of me at the game-we then post them, so that others can consume our personal life, our manufactured feelings, as entertainment. We get "likes," our followers consume bits of emotion, platform makers get data, and our favorite brands purchase our interiority so they can inseminate their products into our imaginations by means of the people we are following.
p. 28: ...what Lewis thought was the fundamental characteristic of beauty: that is, when we encounter beauty, it is almost always accompanied by a strange note of sorrow, a sorrow that arises because beauty feels like something over there, something external to me. And in my gazing upon it, what I find myself wanting is not just to see beauty, but to be beauty, to make that which I see (or hear or read) become a permanent part of my being. I want to make that thing out there something in here. I don't want to be a tourist. I want to be local.
p. 31: If we keep in mind that literature is driven by the desire to close the gap between what I see and what I am, then we will be more patient with the old authors, especially in those passages which might otherwise seem slow or strange or overly rhetorical.
p. 66: But precisely because I've lost the ability to be nourished by anything outside of me, the images leave me hungry, and so I keep consuming, and keep posting and posting. Hans summarizes this bottomless pit: "The addictive taking of selfies points toward the inner emptiness of the ego The contemporary ego is very poor in stable forms of expressions with which it may identify, which would give it a solid identity...And just this insecurity, this anxiousness about oneself, produces the addictive taking of selfies, produces a self that is idling, and never comes to rest. Faced with its inner emptiness, the subject of the selfie tries in vain to produce itself...it is not a narcissistic self-love or vanity which generates the addictive taking of selfies, but an inner emptiness.
p. 67: But what is more, when I post these images, the reality is that I have forgotten to look at the thing itself. instead, as I snap that picture, I am already, in my mind, looking at how you will look at me: I am the sort of person who stands in front of so many things worth looking at. In other words, the attention moves from the phenomenon of wonder onto how I look in front of it, and, thus, the life giving, nourishing encounter with beauty I described above is perpetually deferred. ...unbeknownst to me, I am using what I stand in front of merely to amplify the power of my image, rather than allowing what I see to empower my interior life. I starve my inner heart, while consuming outer experiences. The whole world becomes nothing but a series of changing backgrounds for my face, experiences I purchase in order to enhance my social value in the currency of "likes."
p. 74: nevertheless, we know that old things are deep things, and that they are written on the human heart, and that, accordingly, they emerge, sometimes, when we least expect them.
October 1, 2025
Not readingthis book is not an option for you.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews