Browsing

For any reader who has ever plunged joyously headlong into a book—or a roomful of them, or an entire library—this one will be a special treat. John Barth's Browsing takes us on a literary ramble through the history of libraries (both real and imagined) and of his own lifelong encounters with books. As we have come to expect from the author of The Sot-Weed Factor and Lost in the Funhouse, this extended essay combines humor, erudition, and an exuberant intellectual energy. En route to a deeper understanding of what he calls "the browserish aspect of human consciousness," Barth visits such topics as the joys of marginalia and the hazards of reading on the beach; the Library of Pergamum and the Library of Babel; Bakhtin, Borges, and Barthelme; hypertexts and the Pandemonium Model of Utterance. Browsing is a book for true book lovers, a delight to the mind as well as the eye.

Browsing was adapted from a speech given by Barth at Washington College's Clifton Miller Library on October 1992, at a celebration of its 200,000th volume. The book features linoleum cuts by Mary Rhinelander.