Birkerts talks of technology as if it is the end of all of life and individuality.

Nature

“Nature was then; this is now. Trees and rocks have receded.” pg 120

Birkerts speaks as if the world is ending now that technology is ever expanding in society. The world is not over isolation has not ended. Nature still exists and the earth’s natural habitat was receding even before technology. Reading and books have destroyed nature because the very material aspect of the book is paper, which must be extracted from trees in nature.

Birkerts says “There are no more wildernesses, no more lonely homesteads, and, outside of cinema, no more emblems of the exalted individual.”

-Reading is not the only way to be secluded. First when a person goes to a library, to find a book, they are around other people. Where as people who are on computers don’t have to be connected to the outside world. I actually disagree with Birkerts assumption that those who are involved with technology are always connected to everything. Some people today are developing serious issues with socialization because they spend much of their time on computers instead of involving themselves with the outside world. Why is isolation such a good thing in Birkerts mind? Isolation means deprivation in my opinion. How can one evolve and think intellectually when their minds aren’t stimulated?

Individuality

Birkerts is also considered that with computers and technology individuality will be lost.

“I have a great feeling of loss and a fear about what habitations will exist for self and soul in the future.”

-His fears are a bit extreme. Maybe Birkerts just fears change. He believes that “language erosion” will occur.

I believe that exposure to technology opens the mind because people are exposed to new things they would not normally have access to, such as photos or books that are from other countries. People become ignorant when they are not exposed to other societies and cultures. This goes back to my opinion that isolation would make someone unintelligent. The people who are small-minded today are the ones that aren’t exposed to the unfamiliar. Technology is unfamiliar to Birkerts so maybe he is the unintelligent one. Birkerts also fails to address the transfer of knowledge. Youth today may not have a large list of books under their belt but students’ math skills and scientific knowledge has increased in the past 50 years. Youth may not know how to go to a library look up a book using the card catalog, but they are very capable of finding the book online and reading the exact same literature. What does it matter if the same goal is reached? It seems to me that Birkerts is just more afraid of change than the actual influx of technology into today’s society. At one point in time books were the new and unfamiliar in society, which Birkerts admits himself, but he fails to address that these changes are constantly occurring and that this evolution of technology in society is just progression in society.

An interesting quote that Birkerts used from Paglia’s work is that “Baby boomers have a multilayered, multitrack ability to deal with the world.” This quote makes sense because the world is in chaos and when a person steps outside sensory overload can occur—people learn to multitask because they have to survive in the natural environment. Reading patchwork girl is somewhat like dealing with the outside world, only people aren’t accustomed to that sensory overload after being exposed to linear and sequential literature. Birkerts generalizes that all youth may think and focus in spatial terms but what he fails to recognize is that not all youth flourish with that environment. What I mean to say is that patchwork girl is a spatial or web organization of words and I struggle when I read that work. The reason people may struggle reading patchwork girl could be that everyone was first taught to read in linear terms. If everyone were taught to read how they thought, spatially and unorganized, then patchwork girl would be easily read and other more traditional works would be the difficult ones to read. This may actually explain why some children have extreme difficulty learning to read, some children read and write backwards. Problems such as dyslexia occur, where the letters or words are rearranged. This could be due to the fact that the brain doesn’t think in linear terms and the specific order of the letters or words is unnatural to the brains processing.

Birkerts seemed to have somewhat of an identity problem. At first I thought that he wanted to live like his characters, a life full of adventure, and he did this by reading their stories. Now I believe that Birkerts might have no sense of personal identity. I quote “I wanted to be those characters, to have their lives,” I think this quote shows Birkerts deep desire to be one of the characters he read about (pg 44). He wanted to create himself in a sense, “those years of urgent self-making was tied up with fantasy” (pg 45). I think this fact is what made Birkerts miserable for most of his life. He was trying to be something that he wasn’t. When he finally moved to Maine with his girlfriend, it was the perfect life and the perfect place for peaceful writing, but he couldn’t write. I think the reason this is was because he really didn’t want to be a writer during that time. He wanted to be a character, and live that sort of life. When he was most happy was when he was reading, and divulging into others lives. He refused to accept himself, and this led to his misery. Then his desires change. He no longer wants to be a character, but a writer; when I say writer he doesn’t want that occupation, he wants that writer’s life. A repeated word in this book is “fantasy” and that was what composed Birkerts life wholly and entirely. Then Birkerts goes through a terrible breakup and again books come to his rescue and save him. He began to read compulsively again and he “told [himself] that [he] was happy,” the wording of this quote suggests that Birkerts wasn’t actually happy. My observation of this man has led me to the conclusion that he is deeply conflicted, he wants to live an impossible fantasy life and not accept who he is as a person.

Isolation:

“Everything I had repressed after my breakup with S. came flooding forth. I wrote and wrote, and stuffed the poems away where no one would see them.” (pg 62)

Reading was a distraction and writing was a way for Birkerts to express his feelings. This writing was private, so I guess Birkerts learned as a child to keep his feelings private (probably the masculinity of his father told him that he wasn’t supposed to express emotions—like crying—publicly). But maybe only certain aspects of writing he believes should be kept private, because he discusses readings with his friend George. I’m unsure of what Birkerts thinks should be private and what should be publicly discussed…

After reading part of Ch 2, I realized almost all of Birkerts statements in Ch 1 about reading and technology result directly from his childhood. A lot of emotion is associated with reading for Birkerts. My theory is that a lot of Birkerts’s father’s comments were extremely painful for Birkerts to hear. He had a deep passion for reading and thoroughly enjoyed almost all aspects of literature. When reading Birkerts could escape his world; he looked for characters in his stories for advice and companionship. This section of the book was extremely captivating to me because of all the psychology involved—I’m a psych major.

Birkerts’s father

Some of Birkerts’s father’s thoughts about reading were extremely negative. Birkerts’s father believed that reading was “feminine” and that Birkerts should not spend his time isolated in an imaginary world (pg 38). His father also believed that “doing is prized over being or thinking”, one only read when “all other options have been exhausted” (pg 38). Maybe a somewhat casual comment this left Birkerts extremely tortured. In a sense it was wrong for Birkerts to enjoy reading, so he read in private. This could be why Birkerts believes that reading in privacy is the only way to fully experience writing–when Birkerts most enjoyed reading, and possibly when he most enjoyed his life.

Isolation

Reading in a secretive manner became a thrill for Birkerts because it was forbidden and this was how he expressed teenage rebellion. Birkerts said he was most attracted to books with “moody-looking young [men] with some suggestion of meditated rebellion” (pg 36). This sentence is particularly revealing. Earlier in chapter one Birkerts states there are no leaders outside of literature. That statement he truly believes because when he was growing up the characters in Birkerts’s books were his idols and mentors. Even in school Birkerts felt isolated from his peers. English was his second language and he enjoyed school (pg 39). Birkerts said he was “playing the role of the normal American kid” (pg 40). He “concealed” his life and hid “behind the mask” 9pg 40). How awful it must have been for Birkerts to pretend to be someone else his entire life; his only escape was the literature. What’s worse was that “private absorption” was challenging his father’s authority (pg 37). Birkerts states: “this notion of hiding, secreting myself in a text was important to me—it underlies to this day my sense of a book as a refuge” (pg 35). Reading was the only time Birkerts felt he wasn’t being judged and it also served as a way for Birkerts to fight his “father’s strictness” (pg 34).

Attachment

Birkerts believed that reading was rebellious and exciting. He also believed that reading was a way he could find acceptance and role models.

Are there other attachments that Birkerts has towards reading?

Well Birkerts describes his feelings towards reading as “love”, “pleasure”, “sensuousness”, and “finding joy” (pg 39). Those are very strong emotions. I’m not sure if there are more reasons why Birkerts loves reading so much, but it is clear that he is quite captivated by literature. Also Birkerts realized that many authors had exciting and unusual background stories—in laments terms…unique—so he felt he could relate with them. From this evolved Birkerts’s desire to become a writer (pg 41).

Connection to Technology

One sentence I found particularly unusual was when Birkerts described his favorite books. Growing up he referenced “James Bond” as a favorite series with its reek of “high-class gadgetry” (pg 36).

If Birkerts hated technology so much then why would he enjoy reading the James Bond books AND particularly mention the gadgetry involved?

This question I pondered for a bit and realized that in fact Birkerts does not dislike technology. He may admire the times of the past before technology, but he really doesn’t hate technology. In today’s society technological advances, such as television, iPods, and internet, have replaced reading. There lies the problem. Birkerts loves literature so much that anything that may impact its success is automatically an enemy. If all of a sudden sports were the most important thing in American culture I believe that Birkerts would take offensive to that as well. Birkerts will defend literature until his death, because as a child it was his only source of safety and pleasure. I believe this is why Birkerts seems so close-minded towards the benefits of technology.

Ch 1 Glog

Summary

Birkerts’s opinion of society today is that technology is greatly influencing today’s youth and culture. He believes that literature helps one grow into a unique, focused, and intelligent being and that too much technology can lead to attention disorders (such as add or adhd) and a lack of language understanding(pg xiv). SB argues that literature takes a person to place of fantasy and glorious isolation, expanding their creativity and imagination. SB experiences the world a century ago by removing all aspects of communication for one week (pg 25). He admires the intense focus it takes to remove oneself from all of reality’s basic chaotic distractions and he imagines living in the 20^th century with no transportation except a borrowed wagon and the serenity of silence. Birkerts doesn’t believe that all technology should be erased from the planet, but that literature should be pushed to the front. Birkerts expresses his opinion on reading as slipping out of one’s “customary time orientation;” reading may be an amazing escape from reality but a person growing up in a world filled only with fantasy in their thoughts and ignorant of the world’s technology would not be able to survive in society. Birkerts fears conformity in a society overruled by technology.  Human nature leads one to desire acceptance and therefore embrace conformity.

Disagreements

In my opinion Birkerts’s ideas are too reminiscent of the past. One cannot stop change; it is inevitable. His opinions of technology are too harsh in my opinion. Technology has brought people together, which shouldn’t be considered atrocious. I also don’t think that “looking out at our society, we see no real leaders, no larger figures of wisdom” because there are no “points of moral and psychological reference” (pg 21). There are presidents, prime ministers, scholars, scientists, and teachers that many children learn from and get inspiration from. I would consider these people to be points of moral and psychological reference. I understand that some of these role models do not always behave perfectly, but perfect characters created in a perfectly crafted world of fiction would neither be realistic or relatable role models. Birkerts is convinced that a world of simplicity would be better for today’s youth, but simplicity does exist in the world today. In third world countries even a wagon isn’t an available source of transportation, so technology is not prevalent among all countries. I also think that Birkerts’s view of television and the “Beauty and the Beast” movie are a bit severe (pg29). A person cannot “evolve an independent identity” just from reading. Reading someone else’s thoughts does not make someone an individual and, with encouragement from a parent, a child’s love for literature wouldn’t be of their own will (pg 29). By calling literature “the good and true” Birkerts is denouncing all modern forms of technology, which seems intolerant and ignorant (pg 30). Without technology literature could not be shared throughout the world as readily as it is today.

Agreements

I do agree with some of Birkerts’s points; reading is more difficult for people who enjoy fast paced entertainment such as movies and television. Also patience and attention spans of much of today’s youth is deteriorating because of the fast paced technological world. I do think that Birkerts’s fear of the elimination of language in modern society is too extreme and an unfounded thought. How can humanity exist without the basic form of communication, language? Further still even though technology runs rampant in society how can there be book crazes such as The Da Vinci Code or the phenomenon that is Harry Potter? Obviously literature still has a tremendous impact on society.

Questions

Birkerts opinions do leave me with some thoughts:

o   What is the best way to embrace literature in a technological world?

o   If Birkerts embraces isolationism and individuality how is one supposed to survive in an ever populating social existence?

o   Birkerts believes that literature in society is diminishing, that the printed word is lost due to the World Wide Web and other flashier attractions, such as television. I disagree…in a physical form books deteriorate from wear and tear. On a hard drive in a computer the work cannot be lost. One can make infinite copies. In a physical form can’t a books lifespan increase due to technology?

o   With the availability of books and writing online what role does plagiarism play? Are authors more vulnerable to theft through internet printing?

o   I would also like to have more evidence that technology is destroying the world of literature. Where are SB’s statistics? His only evidence thus far is one class reaction to James’s prose. How is this one incident give proof to the elimination of literature’s influence in an entire culture?

Conclusion

My opinion about literature in today’s society is that it is disappearing. Many children don’t read for enjoyment anymore, they only read what is required for school. I also think how a child was raised, which would include those in a technology centered society, influenced their own reading habits. I don’t feel that literature is the only source of learning though, and I don’t think characters in literature are the only people to admire. Birkerts believes that reading should be a private matter, but I believe that group discussion and public readings help one connect to the central message of the work. Also discussing a piece of literature can help one to better understand other layers of the work that one may have over looked otherwise. Some points that Birkerts makes are valid, but I don’t necessarily agree with all of his conclusions and assumptions.