The Last Reader: A Fantasia for Cynthia Ozick

1 The Last Reader in the Whole World
All things come to an end. The history of reading begins in the shadows: clay tablets in Mesopotamia; finger-marks on cave walls. How this history ends is more obscure. But it will end. Consult any literary periodical, and you’ll see that the demise of reading is prophesied daily. I can’t live without reading, and perhaps neither can you. Humanity, however, can survive without it. After all, we’ve lived with less.