[...] DeWitt’s novel hopes for a world that might make it possible to write a better sort of literature and be ready to receive that literature. The Last Samurai is not an example of that hypothetical literature. DeWitt knows perfectly well—though she may not always admit it in interviews and essays—that such a vision of literature is, under current institutional arrangements, improbable. But the improbability of its own aspiration is part of what makes The Last Samurai compelling. As long as we live in a world of wasted potential, the book will continue to speak to those who might hope to build a better world, a more rational institutional life, and who hope art might play some role in the making of such a world.