Browser's Ecstasy

This is a prose poem about reading--a playful, epigrammatic nocturne upon the dream-state one falls into when lost in a book, and the uncanny, trancelike pleasure of making silent marks on paper utter sounds inside one's head. A meditation on reading, the book goes both far and deep, resisting easy summary and classification.

Geoffrey O'Brien is editor-in-chief of the Library of America and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His latest books are Early Autumn and The Fall of the House of Walworth. He is a widely published poet, critic, editor, and cultural historian and has been honored with a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Institute for the Humanities. He lives in New York City.