It’s our job to convince the 95 percent of people who don’t read books, who instead medicate themselves in front of screens, that literary art isn’t some esoteric tradition, but a direct path to meaning, to an understanding of the terror that lives beneath our consumptive ennui. It’s hard to make this case, though, if all we do is squabble with each other and lament our obscurity. – Steve Almond at The Rumpus
I saw this mentioned on Bark the other day. Such a great freaking essay. The Rumpus has been knocking it out of the park lately between this and the Write Like a Motherfucker column by Sugar.