SOURCE: "Afterwords," in The New Republic, Vol. 212, No. 21, May 22, 1995, pp. 40-1.

In the following review, Tolson describes the principal themes of The Gutenberg Elegies, explaining the deficiencies of Birkerts's arguments yet admiring his passion for reading.

It's not easy to pick up a book about the impending death of a practice once thought to be at the heart of the well-lived life. I mean the practice of reading, especially the kind of serious reading we were taught was not only the means to an education, but its self-delighting end. And though it may be comforting to hear one's twilight fears echoed and elaborated by someone so steadily persuasive as Sven Birkerts, it's hard to shake the feeling that his book would more profitably sit in the hands of those who are least likely to turn to it: the growing number of "wired" citizens who consider books, and book-reading...