Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts ( born September 21, 1951 in Pontiac ) is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry.

Biography

Birkerts was born as the son of Latvian architect Gunnar Birkerts. He studied at the Cranbrook Kingswood School and the University of Michigan, at which he graduated in 1973. He taught literature, among others, at Harvard University, at Emerson College, Amherst College, finally at Mount Holyoke College. Birkerts is currently a member of the " Bennington College Writing Seminars ", editor of the literary journal AGNI.

His most famous work is "The Gutenberg Elegies " (engl.: " The Gutenberg Elegies " ), in which he laments the loss of the ability to read through the supposed benefits of the Internet and similar technologies the so-called "electronic culture" and using examples to thereby deriving showing damage to the dissemination of educational traditions of Western society.

Works

  • An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th Century Literature. (1987). New York: William Morrow.
  • The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry. New York, William Morrow, 1989.
  • American Energies: Essays on Fiction. New York, William Morrow in 1992.
  • The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in the Electronic Age to. . Boston, Faber and Faber, 1994 in German were published under the title:
  • The Gutenberg Elegies. Reading in an electronic age. Frankfurt, S. Fischer, 1997. ISBN 3-10-003508-9
  • Readings. St. Paul ( MN), Graywolf Press, 1999.
  • My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time. New York, Viking, 2002.

Div. Journal articles, among others:

  • Postmodern Picaresque. In: The New Republic 200:13 (27 March 1989), 36-40

Quotes

  • The time of reading, the time is defined by the resonance of the language of the book in the author's ego, not world time, but soul time.
  • Committed to the duration, the reading against the idea of ​​time as a simple succession locks.
  • Who voluntarily open a book, stated so on some level, either the inadequacy of his own life or his attitude to life.
  • Thinking is an intricate choreography of movement, transition and rest, a appear of the muscles of the mind.
Pontiac (Michigan) Integrated Authority File
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