In the New York Times Book Review this weekend there was a fascinating essay by Leon Wieseltier, 31-year veteran literary editor of the New Republic and, in one estimation, “ the last of the New York intellectuals .” One pull quote reads: there is no more urgent task for American writers than to think critically about the salience, even the tyranny, of technology. We are, as he argues, in the middle of a digital revolution, and it is still unclear what will emerge at the end of it, but there is no doubt that the literary landscape has changed drastically since I myself entered academic life. I started at Ohio State twenty years ago with an email address longer than my left arm and no real sense that the “electronic” was permanent. I kept copies of my dissertation and early articles on floppy drives, but also in paper form, filed in file cabinets. If you were to dig around in those file cabinets even today you might find a folder entitled “email” — in the...
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