In Fall 2024, in collaboration with House of Humane Letters, I will publish a short book on not only why literature still matters, but why it is more urgent than ever. The book engages Lewis, Yeats, classical music, the painting of the old masters, and puts the old, venerable beauties into dialogue with pop culture, Zuckerberg, and pop music. In particular, I’m concerned about our collapsing vocabulary and the fact that we think of ourselves more and more as machines.