FROM THE PUBLISHER

Readings combines the best of Sven Birkerts's dazzling criticism with vital new essays. Here is Birkerts the literary critic in top form discussing authors ranging from Elizabeth Bishop to Don DeLillo, and topics such as biography and the enigma of poetic inspiration. A brilliant cultural commentator, Birkerts also offers important insights into contemporary nostalgia, our modern sense of time, and the future of the creative spirit.

SYNOPSIS

A champion of reading in the electronic age, Birkerts (Mount Holyoke College) combines selections from his four previous books with new essays to discuss authors ranging from Robert Musil to Don DeLillo and topics such as biography, the enigma of poetic inspiration, nostalgia, the modern sense of time, and the future of the creative spirit. The collection is not indexed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

John Flesher

Although not lengthy, this is not a quick read. Like individual courses of a gourmet meal, each essay should be savored and slowly digested. They serve to remind even the avid reader, who surely needs no persuading, just why reading books is among life's great joys—and will always be so. -- ForeWord Magazine

Book Magazine

...Birkerts is one of the few who stands distrustingly to the side...asking the world to stop and think a minute. It is a reasonable request and one that should be heeded.

Library Journal

For the most part previously published in general periodicals, these short essays by the well-known, provocative, and sometimes eloquent critic of the information age is divided into three sections: comments on the qualities of self and the pace of life in the electronic era, examinations of the experience of reading in various contexts, and literary criticism of modern writers and poets. While effective, the essays in the first section don't go much beyond Birkerts's earlier work in The Gutenberg Elegies (LJ 1/95), and they lack the specificity and analytic depth of the work in an anthology such as Resisting the Virtual Life (City Lights, 1995). The other selections are engaging and well written, if nostalgic. As a whole, this collection may serve as an introduction to Birkerts's ideas and a defense of the humanist tradition.--Julia Burch, Cambridge, MA

Kay Ryan - Hungry Mind Review

...Birkerts is strong and eloquent in the many essays in which he..."upstreams"...slows down and deeply enters the act of reading to describe the individual graces and beauties of the literate world....[He] regularly falls into glorying over what is beautiful and amazing.

Brooke Allen