American Letters Will Endure the End of “BookTok” – Michael Lucchese

Frida Ghitis: TikTok is democracy in its rawest form, all that matters on the video-sharing platform is mass appeal and virality.

She says the app debases its users to anonymous atoms, only powerful insofar as they belong to a crowd.

Ghitis says the collapse of “ BookTok ’s” could be a moment to push for cultural renewal.

Frida Ghitis : Tocqueville wanted to build what Russell Kirk would later describe as “a democracy of elevation against a democracy of degradation” She says a democratic age is more concerned with the peaks of greatness than those of aristocracies.

Ghitis says the Great Books curricula that are experiencing a resurgence in higher education and the classical school movement growing at the K-12 level are evidence of Americans need for a deeper rootedness.

“ BookTok ” is one symptom of American writers’ abdication of their responsibility to follow in Faulkner ’s footsteps, Frida Ghitis says.

Ghitis: Instead of taking up the high charge of pioneering a literature for a democracy of elevation, they embrace the degradation of the social media marketplace.

The good news for American letters is that there is a world elsewhere.