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In The Gutenberg
Elegies, nationally renowned critic
Sven Birkerts powerfully argues that we are living in a
state of intellectual emergency -- an emergency caused by
our willingness to embrace new technologies at the expense
of the printed word. As we rush to get "on line,"
as we make the transition from book to screen, says Birkerts,
we are turning against some of the core premises of humanism
-- indeed, we are putting the idea of individualism itself
under threat. The printed page and the circuit driven information
technologies are not kindred -- for Birkerts they
represent fundamentally opposed forces. In their inevitable
confrontation our deepest values will be tested.
Birkerts begins his exploration from the
reader's perspective, first in several highly personal accounts
of his own passion for the book, then in a suite of essays
that examines what he calls "the ulterior life of reading."
Against this, Birkerts sets out the contours of the transformed
landscape. In his highly provocative essay "Into the
Electronic Millenium" and in meditations on CD-ROM,
hypertext, and audio books, he plumbs the impact of emerging
technologies on the once stable reader-writer exchange.
He follows these with a look at the changing climate of
criticism and literary practice. He concludes with a blistering
indictment of what he sees as our willingness to strike
a Faustian pact with a seductive devil.
Sven Birkerts is the author of three
books of criticism, most recently American Energies:
Essays on Fiction. He has won the National Book Critics
Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, a P.E.N. Spielvogel/Diamondstein
Special Citation for The Electric Life: Essays on Modern
Poetry, and Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation and
Guggenheim fellowships. His essays and reviews have appeared
in The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic,
Harper's, and The New Republic.
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