" Maybe “texts” get worn out. I once debated with Alan Sinfield, a professor in England, who argued that even classics like Shakespeare’s plays lose their appeal or relevance over time. Or maybe he was just saying, as Foucault might have said, that works of literature are “constructed” by cultural materialism and can’t be separated from their political context—just the opposite view from all our “humanists” who think the classics are eternal. "

― Edmund White , The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading