I’m the last person who would ask us to read less (although I do often think it would serve us to read fewer books, and more slowly, to dispense with a practice of reading that serves as yet another anxious rite to keep cultural FOMO at bay), to remove authors, even ones like Handke, from our shelves—but we have to push back against the idea that engaging with our art in ways that look beyond the aesthetic is a cheapening of our engagement.
