The Edge of the Precipice: Why Read Literature in the Digital Age?

In a wired world, what of literature? Editor Socken, himself a veteran of academia, has gathered an international cast of authors from a wide variety of fields from archivists to philosophers, from writers to critics to consider the issue. Their views are similarly varied. While they for the most part agree on some points%E2%80%94in particular that the medium of paper books and literature seem inextricably linked; e-books, whatever their virtues, are seen as sufficiently different to fall outside literature's borders%E2%80%94on many other points there is wild divergence. For Drew Nelles, literature is ideally a glorious solitude that seems to border on catatonia; for others like Leonard Rosmarin and Lori Saint-Martin, literature offers intimate contact with strangers and friends. Still others see in the changes forced on literature by changing media reflections of a world pushed in unknowable directions by protean technology and in the dwindling world of the humanities shadows of inexorable global corporatization. While some arguments herein carry more weight than others, the authors present their cases firmly in rigorous prose. The impression is of Cassandra in Troy or Canute knee deep in rising tides; foresight brings such figures only austere comforts. (Sept.)