Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

The Private Death of Public Discourse. By Barry Sanders. (Boston: Beacon, 1998. xii, 248 pp. $25.00, isbn 0-8070-0434-0.)

Warning: While I own no shares of Microsoft or America Online and have neither love nor envy for Bill Gates (just an occasional confiscatory-redistributionist daydream), I am writing these words on a Compaq Presario. I must disclose this, because, according to Barry Sanders, the flickering screen is so invasive that simply to write on a word processor is to risk illiteracy and the erosion of inner selfhood. Only "tools that make an indelible impression" are acceptable writing instruments, since an "indelible inner record . . . cannot take hold in words punched into an electronic text composer: pixels of light ultimately disappear from view." If Sanders is right, my Compaq may make me incompetent to review his book or, much worse, an empty husk of a self. . . .

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