The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age - Hardcover

Birkerts, Sven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 057119849X ISBN 13: 9780571198498

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1994

Synopsis

Arguing that we are living in a state of intellectual emergency, a renowned critic fears that the transition from book to screen threatens basic premises of humanism and that information technologies and the printed page are not compatible. IP.

About this title

Review:

What hath the inexpensive personal computer, the portable cassette player, and the CD-ROM wrought? Are books as we know them dead? And does--or should--it matter if they are? Birkerts, a renowned critic, examines the practice of reading with an eye to what the future will bring.

From the Inside Flap:

"[A] THOUGHTFUL AND HEARTFELT BOOK...A literary cri de coeur--a lament for literature and everything implicit in it."
--The Washington Post
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. In The 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, decipher its words on a screen, or interact with it on CD-ROM? Are books as we know them dead?
At once a celebration of the complex pleasures of reading and a boldly original challenge to the new information technologies, The Gutenberg Elegies is an essential volume for anyone who cares about the past and future of books.
"[A] wise and humane book....He is telling us, in short, nothing less than what reading means and why it matters."
--The Boston Sunday Globe
"Warmly elegiac...A candid and engaging autobiographical account sketches his own almost obsessive trajectory through avid childhood reading....This profoundly reflexive process is skillfully described."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Provocative...Compelling...Powerfully conveys why reading matters, why it is both a delight and a necessity."
--The Harvard Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 057119849X
• ISBN 13: 9780571198498
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256