Mark Bauerlein response to Philip Rosedale

If it's the case, Philip, that a "deep understanding" of a text nicely follows the "cliffnotes + chat + a couple of pictures + a couple of blogs model," then why bother reading all of Great Expectations at all? Why not just work with the condensations?

Apart from that, there is a faulty premise here. You refer to brain activity as "store and manipulate information internally," but the novel is much more than information. It also possesses literary language, irony, moral ambiguity, psychological complexity, . . .