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The Gutenberg Elegies The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age Sven Birkerts 9780865479579 Books

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The Gutenberg Elegies The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age Sven Birkerts 9780865479579 Books

Although time moves quickly in the world of technological innovation, this collection of essays has fared well. Birkerts has clearly thought long and hard about the changing role of reading and writing in the age of the web. Sven had me running for my (electronic ) dictionary every page or so to check out phrases and words I hadn't even heard of. But I love that. And I love having to read an essay twice because I gobbled it up the first time through with the pure enjoyment of his language. The second time through I force myself to slow down and deep read for the argument and insights.
If you love good books and great writing and are concerned about their place in a Facebook world, I highly recommend 'The Gutenberg Elegies'.


Tags : The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age [Sven Birkerts] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>A reissue of the book that first examined the future of reading and literature in the electronic age,Sven Birkerts,The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age,Farrar, Straus and Giroux,0865479577,Authors and readers,Authors and readers.,Books and reading,Books and reading.,041006 FSGFA Original paper,Books & Reading,GENERAL,General Adult,LITERARY CRITICISM Books & Reading,Literary Criticism,Literature - Classics Criticism,Literature - Criticism,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Modern General,Non-Fiction,Reference,United States

The Gutenberg Elegies The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age Sven Birkerts 9780865479579 Books Reviews

I was very sympathetic to Birkerts's argument and point of view, and I agree with reviewer "3131," who "didn't see a technophobic don't-read-it-online argument." Birkerts is making a case for both reading and thinking, which do seem to be rapidly slipping away -- and I am grateful for his observations, and hope that the image-besotted younger generation pays attention (which they probably won't). I did, however, find that, although Birkerts's prose is always intelligent and articulate, and sometimes eloquent, it was too often tedious and redundant. In some of the later chapters of Part 1, in particular, he really tends to bang the reader over the head with ideas that are interesting but perhaps not quite as profound as he seems to think they are. And some of the sentences would make the wonderful William Zinsser cringe (e.g., "The postmodern artifact manipulates its stylistic signatures like Lego blocks and makes free with combinations from the formerly sequestered spheres of high and popular art. Its combinatory momentum and relentless referencing of the surrounding culture mirror perfectly the associative dynamics of electronic media," p. 123 -- now there's a man who's a little too much in love with alliteration and the sound of his own words, tho' I'm aware this may have been his attempt to have a little fun with the reader and/or attempt to mimic the technology that he's critiquing . . . but still, one wishes Mr. Birkerts and/or his editor had brushed up on Zinsser's ON WRITING WELL . . . ).

Nonetheless, I was gratified to find and read this book Birkerts has something important to say, and often says it well. I despair, though, that it will reach the right people, or enough of them . . .
The ELEGIES are a series of essays in which Birkerts explores the act of -, the pleasure in -, the meaning of -, the function of - and the future of reading. The author has read widely and thought deeply about print and the information revolution happening around us. His delicious descriptions of a lifelong love affair with books urged me to drop everything and get to work on the pile beside the bed. His use of language is brilliant, evocative and precise. Postman's TECHNOPOLY (Vintage, 1993) illustrated the unseen impact of various techniques/technologies, from language to microelectronics. Birkerts brings our focus to bear on Gutenberg's converted cider press. The shift from oral to print culture changed how we thought, how we stored those thoughts and how we exchanged them. Authorship and the concept of owning a creative work emerged. Knowledge rapidly became global and general rather than local and specific. Learning priorities shifted from memorization and observation to the deciphering and enciphering of code. Today we are in the throes of a similar shift. This time the change is from vertical understanding to lateral -- that is, the printed book moves from beginning to end, and our personal reading history stacks up (often literally! see above) to compose our world view, while the electronic media experience is all-at-once. If the old method was step by step, the new is essentially channel surfing. It is, in many ways, a return to the sensibility of the preprint oral culture. What does that do to our understanding? Birkerts reports that most of his college students are unable to read deeply -- that is, they come equipped to read the words but not the meaning of texts, and are increasingly uncomfortable with the pace and linearity of the written word. They get the story line but not the irony, the pathos, the juxtaposition of assertion and intent, the metaphors or the nuances of great fiction. He sees a widening gulf between two cultures. While reading this author's piercing assessment of new media, I found myself musing about the strange duality of this computer age. The technology which is undoing literacy has delivered desktop publishing -- and makes this Soupletter affordable for both you and me, as a case in point. But amidst the avalanche of print, readership is dwindling. Publishers are cutting back on serious books for lack of a market. Meaningless data and advertising abound. Books-on-tape receive Birkerts' mixed review Better than exhaust sounds or radio commercials, occasionally excellent, but definitely not the same as reading. His observation that listening to a recorded book ensconces him in the comfy memory of being read to by his mother rings very true. The fact that most books-on-tape are somewhat or massively excerpted comes in for his particular wrath. Again, we get the story line without the depth. Hypertext fiction is here deemed a failure, entirely sacrificing thoughtfulness to action. One hallmark of a great novel is the co-creation of a complex world by a writer and reader, the depth and power of which depends on associations brought by each. Linearity allows us to attune to the writer's view, to absorb the profundities, and to be involved enough with the characters to laugh or weep at the finale, to be viscerally wrenched by ill fortune or injustice. Hypertext sends us skittering around the mansion in a high tech version of the board game Clue. At best, we are impressed with the author's cleverness in arranging the hyper-links, at worst we are left with a meaningless jumble of trivialities. When hypertext is used to permit interactive story telling, everything dissolves into randomness. Without the tyranny of authorship (as some cyber-fans would paint the old paradigm), that is, the inspiration, thought and voice of a directing intelligence, why would anyone bother to read? Interactivity gives us the inspiring intellectual opportunity to gabble in a chat room, where timeless questions become FAQs, and gadflies are flamed. Like, wow. In assessing the shift from book to instantized networks, Birkerts observes, "The slow conventions of narrative will be overwhelmed by simultaneity. The time line, that organizing fiction that served us for so long, will go the way of Ptolemaic reckoning, we will have it only as a vestige." Whether or not you reach agreement with Birkerts, THE GUTENBERG ELEGIES will stretch your understanding of both print and the brave new multimedia world, as well as your relationship to each. His words again, "To me it is more a question of how I want to position myself as history makes a swerve, not only ushering in new circumstances and alignments, but changing its own deeper nature as well."
While I understood the author's points and even agree with some of them, I could not get over my dislike of the author's tone. He says things like "None of this I'm afraid will seem very obvious to the citizen of the late twentieth century. If it did, there would be more outcry, more debate" (p. 15). I found this off-putting and slightly offensive. Don't buy the book, find one of the author's articles online and read that. Same ideas, less money.
this is my husband's book, so I don't have to much to say about it but it has to be good because he reads it everyday.
A wonderful surprise loved it. Esoteric essential work erudite writer essential reading esdpecially pa teaching Henry James to a new generation enry ;ames
Another screed about how technology is killing culture. Which appears to have a lot of truth to it, until you notice the copyright date & see that books are indeed still selling. Hey, it could still happen; just ask Paul Ehrlich, who predicted in 1970's THE POPULATION BOMB that we'd be suffering worldwide famine today. I assume those who read this are still finding food.
very philosophical,and insightful. It examines what it means to be a writer and why its important.
Although time moves quickly in the world of technological innovation, this collection of essays has fared well. Birkerts has clearly thought long and hard about the changing role of reading and writing in the age of the web. Sven had me running for my (electronic ) dictionary every page or so to check out phrases and words I hadn't even heard of. But I love that. And I love having to read an essay twice because I gobbled it up the first time through with the pure enjoyment of his language. The second time through I force myself to slow down and deep read for the argument and insights.
If you love good books and great writing and are concerned about their place in a Facebook world, I highly recommend 'The Gutenberg Elegies'.