A Wunderkind’s Best-Selling Nostalgia

“Make it new,” proclaimed the poet Ezra Pound early in the twentieth century. It was his advice to fellow-modernists, and it became the de-facto slogan of a movement that sought to unsettle convention and reinvigorate language. The motto of our contemporary cultural apparatus might as well be “make it old.” Even before A.I. threatened us quite so acutely with the prospect of eternal recombination, a spate of period dramas, remakes, sequels, and adaptations had already paved the way for a future consisting of regurgitated scraps of the past.