Deals with the devil aren't what they used to be

Reading level, style, and media literacy

• Several readers found the prose dense, meandering, or “pompous,” while others argued it’s standard college-level reading and that discomfort signals weak humanities training.
• Debate over whether such literary nonfiction is worthwhile or self-important filler.
• One commenter explained how to use publication and section (New Yorker “Books”) to infer genre and expectations, encouraging broader reading.
• A subthread joked that a meta-explanatory comment “sounds like GPT,” prompting discussion of how LLM prose differs from human writing.

Assessment of the article as a book review

• Many felt the piece lacks a clear thesis: it starts with disenchantment vs. magic, detours into a long literary history of Faust, and tacks on a modern tech/EULA angle at the end.
• Some see this as typical New Yorker book-review structure: broad hook → dense middle → rushed contemporary tie-in.
• Others thought the final sentence is strong but not well prepared by what precedes it.

Literacy, education, and “deskilling”

• Commenters cited statistics claiming over half of U.S. adults read below a sixth-grade level and linked this to decades of underfunded public education.
• Concerns that even elite students struggle with 19th‑century prose; fears of a bifurcated future with a small literate elite and a large underclass.
• Some defend older literature as only slightly different dialect; others argue archaic style is not inherently superior to modern language.

Faustian bargains, folklore, and favorite stories

• Large subthread trading devil-deal tales: Faust variants, folklore (crossroads, devil’s bridges, Pan Twardowski, Stingy Jack), novels, songs, films, and TV episodes.
• Recurrent motifs: strict contracts, temptation of power/knowledge, hubris, pride, and attempts to outwit the devil (sometimes successful, sometimes not).
• Several summarize the core lesson as “be careful what you wish for,” with elaborations about greed, overconfidence, and inability to handle what you get.

Technology, magic, and modern bargains

• Multiple comments link Faustian themes to AI, smartphones, EULAs, surveillance capitalism, fossil fuels, and climate change: short‑term convenience or growth vs. long‑term harm.
• Discussion of “disenchantment” vs. a new “remagicalization” as tech becomes too complex for lay understanding, making experts feel like wizards.

Religion, magic, and power

• Extended side debates on: Adam and Eve’s “knowledge of good and evil,” ancient myths about forbidden knowledge, Job’s wager, and whether magic is literal or psychological.
• Some argue Christianity historically “disenchanted” the world and that modern superstition simply wears new labels (economics, tech, etc.).
• Others emphasize deals-with-the-devil as allegories about our own choices rather than literal demons.