SVEN BIRKERTS, THE GUTENBERG ELEGIES

Sven Birkerts. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994.
BIOGRAPHIC AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC

Birkerts has written three books of criticism, most recently American Energies: Essays in Fiction. His reviews and essays appear in NY Times Book Review and other magazines.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: The Reading Wars

PART I: The Reading Self

1. MahVuhHuhPuh 11

2. The Paper Chase: An Autobiographical Fragment 33

3. The Owl Has Flown 70

4. The woman in the Garden 77

5. Paging the Self: Privacies of Reading 87

6. The Shadow Life of Reading 95

7. From the Window of a Train 109

PART II: The Electronic Millennium

8. Into the Electronic Millennium 117

9. Perseus Unbound 134

10. Close Listening 141

11. Hypertext: Of Mouse and Man 151

PART III: Critical Mass: Three Meditations

12. The Western Gulf 167

13. The Death of Literature 183

14. The Narrowing Ledge 198

CODA: The Faustian Pact 210

QUOTABLE QUOTES

work in progress

SELECTED SUMMARY NOTES ON THE TEXT

work in progress

SIGNIFICANCE, EVALUATION, AND RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER WORK
Birkerts speaks for the cohort of contemporaries who abhor the advent of electronic technologies. He laments the end of the book culture. The note of elegy is accurate because of his resigned but reluctant acceptance of the rise of the new culture. It is as if a Roman poet were standing on the wall of the city, singing the praises of Rome's glory while the Visigoths storm the breach. He evokes a romantic personal remembrance of the development of his love of books. We fully share his passion for the central importance of books in our life. He is so deeply embedded in the print culture and so haphazardly informed about the new electronic environment that his lament, graceful and engaging as it is, sometimes seems bathetic. A Pickwickian posture just won't do if the intent is to demonstrate the cultural degradation descending on us through hyperspace.

But we want B. in our bibliography. He represents one of the understandable and widespread reactions to the information revolution. Books have meant as much to us as to him in the making of our life. Yet the creative and cognitive possibilities to be found in electronic media have the allure of the horizon, even for those steeped in a lifetime of print. Birkerts seems not to be looking in that direction. From the perspective of critical theory, Birkerts is blind to the Landow hypothesis--that the revolution in technology and the change to a postmodern cultural and critical theory are facets of a single large movement in sensibility.

CRITICAL EVALUATION FROM THE WORLD WIDE WEB:

19 January 1996; updated 3 June 1996
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