Thanks. I thought I had arrived at an understanding that this is basically a driver issue. So I tried remotely installing the driver, but was still was not able to read from the device.
I tried to install by downloading the drivers to the device and using the method suggested in the kernel-module-build repo, with help from this thread. When I use lsmod, I see my driver:
> lsmod
Module Size Used by
xr_usb_serial_common 40960 0
But I still have the same issue when I try to read from my device using my script from my original post. Maybe there is something else I am missing (very possible).
@gmerciel has it been your experience that you need to install drivers for CH340 or CP210X? Or are these already present because they are so common? Pardon my ignorance.