Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Technology and the Muse

by Sven Birkerts (Editor)

When the great Russian writer Tolstoy was first offered the use of a brand new invention called the Dictaphone, he refused it, saying that it was sure to be "too dreadfully exciting" and would distract him from his literary endeavors. For this provocative launch of the Graywolf Forum series, Sven Birkerts invited a number of literary writers to tell him how they were reacting to the technological innovatios of our day. Do the "dreadful excitements" promised by a digital future cause us to forfeit our time-honored cultural traditions for dubious gain? Or will the electronic millennium usher in an unprecedented age of interconnectedness and opportunities for wider communication? In the tradition of the Graywolf Annuals, this first Graywolf Forum presents a wide range of responses from contemporary creative writers. Sven Birkerts
Harvey Blume
Daniel Mark Epstein
Jonathan Franzen
Thomas Frick
Alice Fulton
Albert Goldbarth
Carolyn Guyer
Gerald Howard
Wendy Lesser
Ralph Lombreglia
Carole Maso
Askold Melnyczuk
Robert Pinsky
Wulf Rehder
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Tom Sleigh
Mark Slouka
Paul West

Genres: Science

266 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."

Birkerts graduated from Cranbrook School and then from the University of Michigan in 1973. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, Amherst College, and most recently at Mount Holyoke College. Birkerts is the Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and the editor of AGNI, the literary journal. He now lives in the Boston area, specifically Arlington, Massachusetts, with his wife Lynn, daughter Mara, and son Liam.

His father is noted architect Gunnar Birkerts.

Reviews

[Gary Lang · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's interesting to go back and read what humanities and liberal arts people were thinking about technology in 1996. For the writers here, the ones who refused it, and expressed a disqualifying trepidation, have largely disappeared, including the editor.

The others have thrived, incorporating technology into their writing processes, their marketing processes, they're interviewing processes, and so forth.

[Arvind Iyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fascinating to look back at what writers thought of the impending tech revolution in the 90s as it was just picking pace. I kept drawing parallels to the AI boom as of my reading this book of essays and notes from these selected authors.
Also, I feel like the writing of each author bore a lot of personality in the prose itself, which i often find less present in non-fiction nowadays.