On reading Literature (with a capital L)

I read this Atlantic Monthly article which was linked to in Smart Bitches Who Read Trashy Books. Which, although I didn't agree with it completely, romanticizing the past and past writers as giants of the literary world doesn't sit well. Essentializing anything doesn't sit well with me. However, the gist of the article, that the cycle of today's literary world is a self-referential cycle of producing high literature for the sake of being reviewed confirmed some of my own private suspicions. Even if I've been reading Chinese poetry and Chinese translations of manga for the last couple years, I still remember some things about the literary world.