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Reviewed by:
  • The Edge of the Precipice: Why Read Literature in the Digital Age? by Paul Socken
  • Sara Humphreys
Paul Socken. The Edge of the Precipice: Why Read Literature in the Digital Age? McGill-Queen’s University Press. viii, 220. $34.95

This eclectic collection of essays debates the efficacy and necessity of reading print literature in the digital age. I must admit that I took issue with a few of the essays, because they defend a form of reading that usually requires the kind of training a humanities degree provides. I also disagreed with the central claim of the book (as evidenced in the introduction and several essays) that we are losing the deliberative, solitary, and slow reading offered via print literature owing to the influx of digital forms of reading and writing. This is a contentious claim to make considering that there are several studies, such as Ted Stripahs’s The Late Age of Print,2 that clearly show that reading – print texts included – has increased since a noted decrease in the early 2000s. That said, a book review is not about the reviewer’s likes and dislikes but the contribution [End Page 132] that the volume makes to the field, culture, and society as a whole. To this end, I debated the premise of the book with colleagues who had read it (including my spouse). We engaged in spirited debates over the apparent decline of close reading skills as well as the diversification of reading that has displaced print as a dominant form. Since the purpose of this book is to encourage discussion and debate, it is clear that the book is a success. While I think a number of essays in the book are mired in nostalgic ideologies of reading that are largely exclusionary of those who cannot afford or do not want a humanities degree, this book includes essays that spark valuable and necessary debates.

By “nostalgic ideologies,” I mean that certain essays in the book tend to mythologize theorists (such as Northrop Frye, whose ideas on reading literature dominate the introduction) and indulge in lamentations over the loss of slow, contemplative reading. This criticism aside, the book does contain excellent essays, particularly those by Mark Kingwell, Drew Nelles, and J. Hillis Miller, each of which offers insight into the philosophical, cultural, professional, and media-related factors that are changing how we read. Kingswell’s “Language Speaks Us: Sophie’s Tree and the Paradox of Self” offers an analysis of our shift from the type of humanism made possible by mass print to a digitally inspired, narcissistic anti-humanism. His arguments are compelling and offer much food for thought. In a more specific analysis, Nelles’s “Solitary Reading in an Age of Compulsory Sharing” argues that our use of the Internet is changing not only our behaviour but also our agency; specifically, our actions on social media platforms, such as Facebook, are increasingly under the control of a small number of largely American companies. The highlight of the book for any student or academic in the humanities is Miller’s “Cold Heaven, Cold Comfort: Should We Read or Teach Literature Now?” Miller’s essay explains the decline of critical reading (a decline many other essays in the book lament) by revealing the connection between the corporatization of the university, the rise in contract academic labour, and the shift to digital formats. He offers solutions as well, but it is best for you to read the book to learn more.

If you are looking for a book that offers analyses informed by current theories and practices regarding how digital communication has materially changed the ways in which we read (and therefore think), then turn to Aimée Morrison or N. Katherine Hayles. However, if you are looking for more ideologically and aesthetically oriented debates and apologias regarding the act of reading print literature, then I highly recommend this book. [End Page 133]

Sara Humphreys
English Department, St. Jerome’s University

Footnotes

2. Stripah, Ted. The Late Age of Print. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.

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