If you closely observe your reading mind, you’ll find that as you encounter an excess in a story (some non-normative aspect), you enter into a transactional relationship with the writer. When Kafka writes, “Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams…changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin,” you don’t say, “No, he didn’t, Franz,” and throw the book across the room. You add “impossible incident: man just turned into bug” to your TICHN cart, then enter a period of “waiting to see.” What’s Kafka going to do with that? Your reading state has been affected. You are, let’s say,
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