Book excerpt: Early 20th-century literary critics Joseph Collins, Hermann Hesse, and Percy Lubbock concluded that the pages of a book present a succession of moments that the reader visualizes and reinterprets. They feared that few would actually commit themselves to memory, and that most were likely to soon disappear. As you turn these pages, you will (re)discover the value of the literary canon through the Self. My objective is to examine how the Self is formed, lost, and regained through creative strategies that confront and define its shapes and distortions on nearly every page of a canonical work. You can consider Confronting / Defining the Self: Formation and Dissolution of the ‘I’ from La Fayette to Grass as offering an apology for the study of literature and the humanities in an era when technology and commerce dominate our consciousness, drive our daily expectations, and shape our career goals.