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Not the end of books
Over at Contentions John Podhoretz warns that “the end of the physical book may be coming hard upon us faster than anyone ever anticipated.” I don’t think so.
Commonplace book
orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
OED
Reviews
- Auslander, “Hope: A Tragedy”
- Auster, “Invisible”
- Bailey, “The Astrologer”
- Bauer, “Frances and Bernard”
- Beha, “What Happened to Sophie Wilder”
- Bellow, “Letters”
- Bernays, “The Man on the Third Floor”
- Berry, “What Are People For?”
- “The Best American Poetry”
- Brombert, “Musings on Mortality”
- Broyard, “Intoxicated by My Illness”
- Buckley, “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?”
- Cameron, “Coral Glynn”
- Cantalupo, “Emma Wolf’s Short Stories”
- Chabon, “Telegraph Avenue”
- Clayton, “Mitzvah Man”
- Cohen, “Amateur Barbarians”
- Connelly, “The Brass Verdict”
- Eco, “The Prague Cemetery”
- Erdrich, “The Round House”
- Ford, “Independence Day”
- Franzen, “Freedom”
- Gates, “The Signifying Monkey”
- Gorra, “Portrait of a Novel”
- Gurganus, “Local Souls”
- Halkin, “Melisande! What Are Dreams?”
- Hamilton, “Death of a Citizen”
- Harding, “Tinkers”
- Heller, “The Believers”
- Henkin, “The World Without You”
- Hill, “Grand Strategies”
- Hitchcock, “Another Shore”
- Hoeveler, “Watch on the Right’
- Jacobson, “Zoo Time”
- Jeffers, “Norman Podhoretz”
- Jones, ”Adventures of Douglas Bragg”
- Kamenetz, “Burnt Books”
- Kernan, “The Death of Literature”
- Krauss, “Great House”
- Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby”
- Lynn, “The Exiles”
- McCarry, “Shelley’s Heart”
- McCarry, “The Shanghai Factor”
- McMurtry, “Literary Life”
- Marcus, “The Flame Alphabet”
- Martin, “Break the Skin”
- Merullo, “Fidel’s Last Days”
- Messer, “Grand River and Joy”
- Munro, “Dear Life”
- Munson, “November Criminals”
- Oakeshott, “The Voice of Liberal Learning”
- Obreht, “The Tiger’s Wife”
- Ohmann, “Politics of Letters”
- Ozick, “Foreign Bodies”
- Pelikan, “The Idea of the University”
- Pierpont, “Roth Unbound”
- Pipkin, “Woodsburner”
- Powers, “Suitable Accommodations”
- Prose, “Goldengrove”
- Prose, “Touch”
- Robinson, “Absence of Mind”
- Robinson, “When I Was a Child I Read Books”
- Rosenblum, “Herself When She Is Missing”
- Roth, “Indignation”
- Roth, “The Humbling”
- Roth, “Nemesis”
- Russo, “That Old Cape Magic”
- Ruttenberg, “The Passionate Torah”
- Segal, “The Innocents”
- Shamsie, “Burnt Shadows”
- Sloan, “Jerzy Kosinski”
- Spencer, “Men in Black”
- Spiotta, “Stone Arabia”
- Steiner, “Real Presences”
- Stern, “The Frozen Rabbi”
- Teachout, “Beyond the Boom”
- Toutonghi, “Evel Knievel Days”
- Wagenstein, “Isaac’s Torah”
- Winton, “Breath”
- Wolfe, “Back to Blood”
- Yglesias, “A Happy Marriage”
- Youmans, “A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage”
- Zipperstein, “Rosenfeld’s Lives”
Reconsiderations
- Bellow, “Mr Sammler’s Planet”
- Brinig, “Singermann”
- Brudno, “The Fugitive”
- Buechner, “Godric”
- Cahan, “The Rise of David Levinsky”
- Capote, “In Cold Blood”
- Caspary, “Thicker than Water”
- Cather, “My Ántonia”
- Dick, “The Man in the High Castle”
- Fante, “Full of Life”
- Forbes, “A Mirror for Witches”
- Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”
- Fraser, “Flashman”
- Gellhorn, “Point of No Return”
- Gold, “Jews Without Money”
- Grade, “The Yeshiva”
- Graff, “Literature Against Itself”
- Grant, “When I Lived in Modern Times”
- Jabotinsky, “Samson”
- James, “The Lolita Man”
- James, “The American”
- Johnson, “Middle Passage”
- Lewis, “The Wife of Martin Guerre”
- Lewis, “Against a Darkening Sky”
- Lewisohn, “The Island Within”
- Maugham, “Cakes and Ale”
- Miller, “The Raven and the Whale”
- Morrison, “Beloved”
- Nabokov, “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight”
- Nabokov, “Bend Sinister”
- Nabokov, “Pale Fire”
- O’Connor, “Stealing Home”
- Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”
- Ozick, “The Shawl”
- Portis, “Masters of Atlantis”
- Powers, “Morte D’Urban”
- Prose, “A Changed Man”
- Puzo, “The Godfather”
- Roth, “Call It Sleep”
- Roth, “Goodbye, Columbus”
- Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” I
- Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” II
- Roth, “The Ghost Writer”
- Roth, “The Dying Animal”
- Russo, “Empire Falls”
- Shaara, “The Killer Angels”
- Sheed, “The Hack”
- “The Sopranos”
- Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley”
- Strunk and White, “The Elements of Style”
- Tarr, “The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen”
- Tobenkin, “Witte Arrives”
- Trilling, “The Middle of the Journey”
- Villarreal, “Pocho”
- Wallant, “The Pawnbroker”
- Wharton, “The Age of Innocence”
- Willeford, “The Shark-Infested Custard”
- Williams, “Stoner”
- Williams, “The Hair of Harold Roux”
- Winter, “Hoffman’s Hunger”
- Wolf, “Other Things Being Equal”
- Wright, “Native Son”
- Yezierska, “Bread Givers”
Authors
- Jacques Barzun
- Judith Butler
- Hortense Calisher
- Evan S. Connell Jr.
- J. V. Cunningham
- Peter De Vries
- Denis Dutton
- Joseph Epstein
- William Gay
- Günter Grass
- George Hitchcock
- Christopher Hitchens
- James D. Houston
- Howard Jacobson
- Stephen King
- Irving Kristol
- Charles McCarry
- Roland Merullo
- Wright Morris
- Howard Nemerov
- Richard John Neuhaus
- Anthony Powell
- Francine Prose
- Philip Roth
- J. D. Salinger
- Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
- Wilfrid Sheed
- Lionel Trilling
- John Updike
- Mario Vargas Llosa
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Topics
- Academic interpretation
- Acknowledgments in novels
- Adultery
- Advanced Placement English
- Anthologies
- Baseball and fiction
- Blogging, I: why do it
- Blogging, II: to essay
- Blogging, III: the economics
- Blogging, IV: and freedom
- Cancer, I: etiquette
- Cancer, II: diagnosis
- Censorship
- Conservatives and the university
- Criticism, I: diminishing returns
- Criticism, II: and careerism
- Criticism, III: and credentials
- Criticism, IV: the question
- Criticism, V: ten rules
- Criticism, VI: and moral fashion
- Dialogue, I: chitchat
- Dialogue, II: twittle-twattle
- Difficulty
- Elitism
- The existence of fictional characters
- Experimental writing, I
- Experimental writing, II
- Fiction and truth
- The fox’s apology
- Future of the book, I
- Future of the book, II
- Future of the book, III
- Future of the book, IV
- Future of the book, V
- The game of fiction
- Gay marriage
- Genre
- The gentleman
- Highbrow and lowbrow
- Holocaust, I: and Israel
- Holocaust, II: silence
- Holocaust, III: memory
- Ideology
- Identity, I: and freedom
- Identity, II: and argument
- Identity, III: making it large
- Influence
- Intellectuals and politics
- Irony
- The Left, II: and literature
- The Left, I: and academe
- The Left, III: and culture
- The liberal arts
- Literary evaluation
- The literary fallacy
- Literary fiction
- Literary history
- Literary mashups
- Literature, I: the very idea
- Literature, II: with prefixes
- Literature, III: and status
- Literature, IV: working definition
- Literature, V: the institution
- Literature, VI: and politics
- “Lolita,” I: style
- “Lolita,” II: background
- “Lolita,” III: an interpretation
- The novel of belief
- Plot and thought
- Pulp literature
- Reviewing, I: its ethics
- Reviewing, II: “mean”
- Reviewing, III: “positive”
- Reviewing, IV: and verdicts
- Satire
- The scandal of literary prizes
- The scandal of Philip Roth’s prize
- Self-evidence
- Sex and the novel
- The shlimil
- Seriousness
- Solipsism in interpretation
- The spirit of party in criticism
- Suspense
- Technology and writing
- Terrorism by other means
- The text, I: mucked up
- The text, II: unified
- The text, III: crafted
- The text, IV: experienced
- The text, V: ignored
- Timeliness
- Unreliable narrators
Five Books
Book Lists
- Cancer reading
- Complete annotated guide to 9/11 novels
- Conservative novels
- Depressing novels
- Fifty best novels since 1880
- “50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years”
- Football novels
- Forthcoming fiction, 2010
- Historical novels
- Hollywood novels
- The Holocaust: A reader’s guide
- Labor novels
- MLA rankings of American writers
- One-book authors
- Texas novels
- Veterans’ books
- Year in Jewish books (2010)
- Year in Jewish books (2011)
Symposium
D. G. Myers
A critic and literary historian for nearly a quarter of a century at Texas A&M and Ohio State universities, I am the author of The Elephants Teach and ex-fiction critic for Commentary. I have also written for Jewish Ideas Daily, the New York Times Book Review, the Weekly Standard, Philosophy and Literature, the Sewanee Review, First Things, the Daily Beast, the Barnes & Noble Review, the Journal of the History of Ideas, American Literary History, and other journals. Here is the Commonplace Blog’s statement of principles, such as they are.
Pages
- Home
- American Fiction of the Sixties
- American Jewish Fiction, 1892–1972
- The New Historicism in Literary Study
- Learning to Be Human: Oakeshott on Education
- Why College Sports
- Criticism According to Kenner
- Robert Penn Warren and the History of Criticism
- Politicizing Scholarship: The Iannone Affair
- Invitation to an Argument
- On the Teaching of Literary Theory
- The Mind of the Poet-Critic
- Between Stories: A Memoir of Raymond Carver
- Stanley Elkin’s Jewish Question
- Bad Writing
- Michael Chabon’s Imaginary Jews
- Jean Améry: A Biographical Introduction
- Francine Prose and the Great Tradition
Blog archive
-
▼
2011
(55)
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May
(12)
- Memorial Day is not victims’ day
- The books we never abandon
- Black discs and retrieval machines
- Philip Roth and the politics of literary prizes
- Not the end of books
- Defending Philip Roth
- The paradoxical politics of creative writing
- When I Lived in Modern Times
- The rhetoric of triumph
- Like a trampled corpse
- Epitaph on a Tyrant
- Reading the Holocaust
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▼
May
(12)
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2 comments:
I appreciate your points about the 'aura' of printed books. There is no substitute for it in electronic versions. However, electronic books are ideally suited to re-reading, since you can carry your entire library with you wherever you go, and in addition the electronic format lends books an interesting timeless or ever-present quality which makes it especially inviting to return to the classics.
The main problem is a gap in what is available covering much of mid to late C20th literature. Prior to that it is available free from gutenberg, and recent fiction is already in ebook format.
For example, I doubt if there's much Christina Stead in ebook form, but if there was there would be readers for it.
"you can carry your entire library with you wherever you go"
I can't seem to recall the last time I was truly inconvenienced because I didn't have my entire library with me.
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