The End of the Book? Some Perspectives on Media Change

Abstract

‘Closing the Book on Books’ - so ran a headline in the Washington Post in December 1995 over a review (by Jonathan Yardley) of Sven Birkerts’ The Gutenberg Elegies. Author and reviewer agree that similar dirges have become increasingly frequent. Birkerts cites Alvin Kernan’s Death of Literature as a case in point. Kernan, in turn, mentions many other relevant titles. In the 1960s, electronic mass media, radio, film, and television were singled out as being chiefly responsible for the book’s demise. At present we are more likely to hear about personal computers, data banks, and cyberspace. But however varied the diagnosis, the gloomy prognosis remains much the same.