Whatever Judt’s initial ideological commitments, he later concerned himself with a stark and important question: “how so many smart people could have told themselves such stories with all the terrible consequences that ensued.” The story was that of Communism, which perpetrated “the intellectual sin of the century: passing judgment on the fate of others in the name of their future as you see it, . . . concerning which you claim exclusive and perfect information.”

Russell Banks

Birnbaum: I would like to think that people who read are keeping alive a certain sense of humanity. But then what about e-readers (laughs)?

Banks: That’s OK. It’s still story. Stories are what connect us to each other, face-to-face. When you read a novel, whether you hear it on an audio tape or see it on a Kindle, you are seeing the world through the eyes of someone other than yourself. You are inhabiting another human being. It’s a deeply personal encounter. It gives meaning to someone else’s subjective experience, a single person’s experience. That’s a different kind of experience than a movie allows. A movie—you don’t interact with it, you just accept it. It takes you over like a very powerful drug. Story is a different thing and there are many delivery systems for story.