Quotessence
Home / Books / The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age

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

Book by Sven Birkerts · 4 quotes · Book, Reading, Ideas

Filter quotes by topic

The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age Quotes

“I often find that a novel, even a well-written and compelling novel, can become a blur to me soon after I've finished reading it. I recollect perfectly the feeling of reading it, the mood I occupied, but I am less sure about the narrative details. It is almost as if the book were, as Wittgenstein said of his propositions, a ladder to be climbed and then discarded after it has served its purpose.”

“Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started.”