Manic Bookstore Cafe

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...

Fatalnie. That’s what my Polish teacher, Pani Paulina, was forced to exclaim when she heard the changes that have come over my family since we came to Poland. After all, she knows what Americans are like – everyone does. Americans drive around in big SUVs and eat at KFC or McDonald’s. Americans watch a lot of television, buy their goods at Walmart or over the internet through Amazon.com. Americans are constantly on-line. Amusing when you compare this capitalist habit to the “lines” of the former Eastern bloc: Poles and Soviets used to be “on line” constantly too, but for entirely different reasons. On line for hours to use sugar ration coupons in the late 1980s in Moscow, or on line for seven or more years at a time to receive an apartment or a car in the 1970s. But “on-line” in the 21 st century means that Americans are toggling between devices: iPods and iPads and MacBooks and Kindle Fires, listening to music through earbuds or noise-reducing headphones;...