I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States.

Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements of plutocracy, oligarchy, and mounting theocracy that rule our state? How do we address the self-inflicted catastrophes that devastated our natural environment? So large is our malaise that no single writer can encompass it. We have no Emerson or Whitman among us. An institutionalized counterculture condemns individuality as archaic and depreciates intellectual values, even in the universities. (The Anatomy of Influence)

We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.

Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.

I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States.