The Gutenberg Elegies The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age

by Birkerts, Sven

• ISBN13: 9780865479579
• ISBN10: 0865479577
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-14
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

A reissue of the book that first examined the future of reading and literature in the electronic age, now with a new introduction and Afterword In our zeal to embrace the wonders of the electronic age, are we sacrificing our literary culture? Renowned critic Sven Birkerts believes the answer is an alarming yes. InThe Gutenberg Elegies, he explores the impact of technology on the experience of reading. Drawing on his own passionate, lifelong love of books, Birkerts examines how literature intimately shapes and nourishes the inner life. What does it mean to "hear" a book on audiotape or decipher its words in electronic form on a laptop screen? Can the world created by Henry James exist in an era defined by the work of Bill Gates? Are books as we know themvolumes printed in ink on paper, with pages to be turned as the reading of each page is completeddead? At once a celebration of the complex pleasures of reading and a bold challenge to the information technologies of today and tomorrow,The Gutenberg Elegiesis an essential volume for anyone who cares about the past and the future of books.

Author Biography

Sven Birkerts is the author of five books of essays and a memoir. Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard and a member of the core faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars, he also edits the journal Agni, based at Boston University. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the 2006 Edition	xi
Introduction: The Reading Wars	3	(8)
Part I The Reading Self
Mah VuhHuhPuh	11	(22)
The Paper Chase: An Autobiographical Fragment	33	(37)
The Owl Has Flown	70	(7)
The Woman in the Garden	77	(10)
Paging the Self: Privacies of Reading	87	(8)
The Shadow Life of Reading	95	(14)
From the Window of a Train	109	(8)
Part II The Electronic Millennium
Into the Electronic Millennium	117	(17)
Perseus Unbound	134	(7)
Close Listening	141	(10)
Hypertext: Of Mouse and Man	151	(16)
Part III Critical Mass: Three Meditations
The Western Gulf	167	(16)
The Death of Literature	183	(15)
The Narrowing Ledge	198	(12)
Coda: The Faustian Pact	210	(21)
Afterword to the 2006 Edition	231	(20)
Cited Material	251