Sven Birkerts (born 21 September 1951) is an American essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies (1994), which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture." In 2006 he published a revised edition with new introduction and afterword, reflecting on the endurance of reading.
After publishing several well-received books of collected essays on literature, Birkerts was appointed to many prominent editorial and teaching positions. He became the Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars, a position he assumed after the death of Liam Rector. Birkerts was the editor of AGNI, the literary journal and has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, Amherst College, and Mount Holyoke College.
His father was noted architect Gunnar Birkerts, who based his practice in the Detroit area after immigrating to the United States following completion of his architectural degree in Stuttgart. He was born and grew up in Latvia, leaving as a young man before the Soviet Army occupied the nation in the last days of World War II.
Works
An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th Century Literature. (1987). New York: William Morrow.
The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry. (1989). New York: William Morrow.
American Energies: Essays on Fiction. (1992). New York: William Morrow.
The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. (1994). Boston: Faber and Faber.
Readings. (1999). St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press.
My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time. (2002). New York: Viking.
The Other Walk. (2011). St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press.
Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age. (2015). St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press.
Thomas Gray was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751.
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA, was an English writer, literary historian, critic, teacher and wine connoisseur. He is regarded as a highly influential critic of early 20th century.
Eamon Grennan is an Irish poet born in Dublin. He has lived in the United States, except for brief periods, since 1964. He was the Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English at Vassar College until his retirement in 2004.
John Haffenden is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield.
Gunnar Birkerts was a Latvian American architect who, for most of his career, was based in the metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan.
Moses Coit Tyler was an American author and professor of American history.
Carole Maso is a contemporary American novelist and essayist, known for her experimental, poetic and fragmentary narratives which are often called postmodern. She is a recipient of a 1993 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction.
Anthony Dey Hoagland was an American poet. His poetry collection, What Narcissism Means to Me (2003), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other honors included two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and a fellowship to the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His poems and criticism have appeared in such publications as Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, Agni, Threepenny Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ninth Letter, Southern Indiana Review, American Poetry Review and Harvard Review.
Bernard O'Donoghue FRSL is a contemporary Irish poet and academic.
Paul Lisicky is an American novelist and memoirist. He is an associate professor in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden, and the author of several books.
William Corbett was an American poet, essayist, editor, educator, and publisher.
Bradford Morrow is an American novelist, editor, essayist, poet, and children's book writer. Professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow at Bard College, he is the founding editor of Conjunctions literary magazine.
Ander Monson is an American novelist, poet, and nonfiction writer.
AGNI is an American literary magazine founded in 1972 that publishes poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, interviews, and artwork twice a year in print and weekly online from its home at Boston University. Its coeditors are Sven Birkerts and William Pierce.
Slow reading is the intentional reduction in the speed of reading, carried out to increase comprehension or pleasure. The concept appears to have originated in the study of philosophy and literature as a technique to more fully comprehend and appreciate a complex text. More recently, there has been increased interest in slow reading as result of the slow movement and its focus on decelerating the pace of modern life.
Graywolf Press is an independent, non-profit publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Charles Whibley was an English literary journalist and author. Whibley's style was described by Matthew as "often acerbic high Tory commentary". In literature and the arts, his views were progressive. He supported James Abbott McNeill Whistler. He also recommended T. S. Eliot to Geoffrey Faber, which resulted in Eliot's being appointed as an editor at Faber and Gwyer. Eliot's essay Charles Whibley (1931) was contained within his Selected Essays, 1917-1932. Whibley died on 4 March 1930 at Hyères, France, and his body was buried at Great Brickhill, Buckinghamshire.
Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains! is a magazine article by technology writer Nicholas G. Carr, and is highly critical of the Internet's effect on cognition. It was published in the July/August 2008 edition of The Atlantic magazine as a six-page cover story. Carr's main argument is that the Internet might have detrimental effects on cognition that diminish the capacity for concentration and contemplation. Despite the title, the article is not specifically targeted at Google, but more at the cognitive impact of the Internet and World Wide Web. Carr expanded his argument in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, a book published by W. W. Norton in June 2010.
William St Clair, was a British historian, senior research fellow at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and author.
A classic is a book accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy. What makes a book "classic" is a concern that has occurred to various authors ranging from Italo Calvino to Mark Twain and the related questions of "Why Read the Classics?" and "What Is a Classic?" have been essayed by authors from different genres and eras. The ability of a classic book to be reinterpreted, to seemingly be renewed in the interests of generations of readers succeeding its creation, is a theme that is seen in the writings of literary critics including Michael Dirda, Ezra Pound, and Sainte-Beuve. These books can be published as a collection, or presented as a list, such as Harold Bloom's list of books that constitute the Western canon. Although the term is often associated with the Western canon, it can be applied to works of literature from all traditions, such as the Chinese classics or the Indian Vedas.
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