As a long-time reader and fan of RF Kuang, her new book, Katabasis, was an instant buy. However, as a “reading list” of recommended novels such as The Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno came out, controversy began to spark, even months before the release of the actual book.
People were already complaining about a repeated critique of Kuang’s library: being too academic. I was also wary of the reading guide, as I was hoping to read Katabasis for fun and not as another assignment, so I elected to ignore it. Even after the book came out, critiques of her heavy-handedness continued. I’ve been hesitant to agree with these comments, but with each new book, I find these criticisms harder to ignore.
Her first novel, Poppy War, was a brilliant depiction of the brutality and necessity of war. It described the horrors of desperate acts, malnutrition from limited resources, and the cruel acts done to innocents, but it also had moments where it showed the enemy invading force as human, as innocent children forced to the front lines. It also handled the main character perfectly – depicting her need for war and violence because that’s all she’s ever known and all she’s ever been good for. Her violent actions are not received or written as defensible, but condemned, and aid the narrative of how war affects society and individual mindsets.
Her next book Babel, while one of my favorites, handed you the themes on a silver platter, though I excused this because colonization itself is not quiet and had to be blatantly described to certain characters who didn’t understand. Moreso, the novel focused more on the individual characters and how they interacted with each other despite being from different backgrounds, which made it a very compelling story.
Now, with Katabasis, her message on the toxicity of academia was both blunt and elusive. Someone named her “Schrodinger’s author,” and I think that is an apt description. It felt like I was being hit on the head with a hammer with the blunt messaging, while also being lost in what exactly she was trying to say. The issue is not being too academic – the additions weren’t too confusing or distracting and make sense, seeing as the main character is a Cambridge student – but within all the academic jargon, Kuang lost the emotional impact of her message.
The start was interesting, the middle slowed, and the end – in my opinion – really fell off. There was no character growth; we only learned more about the main character’s histories to explain their current behaviors, but their adventure into hell barely changed them. Overall, it was an enjoyable read that made me think about morality and the finite time we have to live and follow our dreams, but it highlighted something more.
The slow descent into literalism throughout her publications follows a similar trend among today’s media. Shows and movies flat-out state and overexplain everything to the point that it ruins it completely.
The idea of literalism began with an article on the New Yorker by Namwalli Serpell, where he critiques the overly literal strategies of modern media.
“When I say literalism, I don’t mean realistic or plainly literal. I mean ‘literalist,’ as when we say something is on the nose or heavy-handed, that it hammers away at us or beats a dead horse,” he explained.
This literalism has plagued media from movies to songs to books, and to every aspect of life – as Serpell says, it’s an act of violence to art.
There are no new TV shows or movies that have stuck out to me in recent years. They all seem so bland and lifeless because the overly literal subtext – that just becomes text – is not how human interaction works. No one walks into the kitchen saying, “Hello, sister. Are you pondering the death of our mother that, as you know, happened last year in a car crash?” It takes the audience out of the show, makes them see the characters as nothing but three-dimensional figures that only serve to push the plot forward. It’s impossible to gain emotional attachment to these characters or care about anything that occurs in the story.
It’s not only the dull literalism that ruins the media, it’s that studios are producing the same story over and over again – sequels, reimaginings, new live actions – it’s all reused. I’m no longer excited about the new Disney movie because it’s just the same movie that came out ten years ago, but now with CGI instead of masterful, colorful animations.
As Serpell explains, retellings have always been done, but there needs to be some kind of novelty that makes it special. “Freud’s notion of remembering, the inexact reiteration of what came before, is where creativity emerges — that slight drift from the original that lets something unlikely slip in. It is the warped note in a Nina Simone song, the uncanny stutter of Samuel Beckett’s prose, the trippy trail of Andy Warhol’s prints, the eerie flatness of David Lynch’s films, that we love,” he said.
The negative end of the repetition spectrum is redundancy. Rather than aiming for a unique take that might pierce our haze of distraction, art has become marketable generalities with consistently similar plots, characters, and songs. Serpell believes this is nothing new; people have always misunderstood media, but the idea that someone could be definitively wrong about a piece of art is new.
“Complaints about our inability to read, interpret, or discern irony, subtlety, and nuance are as old as art. What feels new is the expectation, on the part of both makers and audiences, that there is such a thing as knowing definitively what a work of art means or stands for, aesthetically and politically. This strikes me as a blatant redefinition of art itself,” he said.
Art is subjective for a reason; people naturally imbue more meaning and feelings than any spoken thematic statement could convey.
It’s hard to determine which came first: literalist media or people’s inability to understand subtext? According to the National Literacy Institute, 54% of U.S. adults read below the sixth-grade level, and 64% of our country’s fourth graders do not read proficiently. A common misconception people have with these statistics is that they correlate illiteracy with the inability to read basic words. However, literacy does not just mean reading the words, but comprehending them. You may be able to read a passage from a classic novel, but if you can’t understand the meaning and nuances behind the words, that is not literacy.
Kansas is the 19th state with the worst literacy rate, and it’s just getting worse. According to the Kansas Policy Institute, there was a 50% increase in Kansas from 2015 to 2025 in illiteracy rates, going from around 98,000 to 150,000. 19,000 students are below the literacy level in Johnson County, specifically. These statistics are terrifying. With the rise of new technology in an age of late-stage capitalism and political division, being able to critically engage and understand media is more important than ever.
The literacy rates are only going to continue decreasing if nothing is done to prevent it. It may seem like a daunting task, but it all begins with the individual. Pick up a book, research a random topic, think critically about the media you consume – your mind will thank you.