On a school night at 2:13 a.m., the rectangular glow on a teenager’s face looks a little like faith and a little like interrogation. Their thumb performs its nocturnal liturgy—scroll, tap, scroll, watch—as if some unseen officer were “waiting for a confession,” the only act that matters, the rest—breathing, thinking, sleeping—“peripheral.” In  How to Quiet a Vampire , Borislav Pekić gives the interrogation-room its chilling operating manual: keep the captive focused on one outcome; permit “purposeless” distractions that repel thought; above all, control the air. Gen-Z does not live in cells, but the feeling is uncomfortably familiar. In a decade when adolescence moved indoors and online, the primary function became engagement; the algorithm’s question (“confess your attention”) never stops. Jean-Baptiste Santerre’s “Girl Reading a Letter by Candlelight” (c. 1700): A solitary glow, a stolen night — from secret correspondence to the endless scroll, the posture of distraction has scar...