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When Mary Shelley wrote her novel, Frankenstein, she used many other texts within Frankenstein to help explain or elaborate on her ideas. One quote that is a perfect example of this is, “I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such even as Dante could not have conceived.” (Shelley, 61) But what did Dante conceive as hell? Was it different than Victor and the monster’s ideas of hell? Dante helps emphasize that hell is intense psychologically.
In the following section of text, Victor speaks of two characteristics of what hell means to him; remorse and guilt. He also describes what he thinks hell would be like by saying, “hell of intense tortures”. “… I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe.” (Shelley, Chapter 9) Victor believes that in hell there are many acts of pain onto people that are unimaginable. Using the definitions for remorse and guilt, you can conclude that he was feeling deep regret and responsibility for an action, which made him feel like he was in hell.
In the following quote, Victor is speaking of and describing the monster after the monster killed Elizabeth, who is very important to him. “His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiendlike malice.” (Shelley, Chapter 24) Victor is explaining how the monster’s soul and form are full of betrayal and desire to witness others suffer as Satan (inferred using definitions by dictionary.com). This makes me think that maybe the monster’s outside is not representing what is inside. The monster never had a parent to guide him to teach him right from wrong or how to be social, let alone socially correct. The monster knows that killing is bad because he sees the effect it has on Victor. He uses the word hell as a simile for horrible, inferring that hell is horrible.
After the monster murdered, he was suffering and hopeless (using the definitions of anguish and despair) which made him feel as if he was in hell, and these are the words he used to express his feelings, “Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me which nothing could extinguish.” (Shelley, Chapter He felt as if he was suffering and hopeless, and could not get rid of it, which is why the monster thought he was going through hell. When the monster says that his feelings “had penetrated into the core of my heart”, it speaks of very intense emotions. I get the feeling that he was hurting the most that anyone could. He is so hopeless because he needs another monster just like him and feels as if he will never be accepted. A good example of feeling he will never be accepted is when he tried to help a blind girl, and when her family comes along they make sure the monster leaves and never comes back.
Notice how everything in the monster and Victor’s ideas of hell is all feelings. They would feel remorse, guilt, torturous, horrible, and full of suffering and hopelessness if they were in hell. In Dante’s Inferno he talked about how hell was all of these psychological feelings. One example of psychological hell is, “More than a hundred were there when they heard him, / Who in the moat stood still to look at me, / Through wonderment oblivious of their torture.” (Dante, Canto XVII) Notice how hell is psychological in this example because they are mentally blocking out how they are in a pool of blood. Also, notice how they are not being physically exerted or even moving, they are just standing.
I strongly believe that hell is psychological. There are a lot of negative feelings associated with hell, including remorse, guilt, torturous, horrible, and full of anguish and despair. Hell is not physical because the people are used to what they are doing, it is not physically straining, but it continues to be mentally straining.

Comp/Post

·         n fails to demonstrate meaning  of flow.

·         Reader spending time finding where to go, versus reading text.

·         Jackson very broken up.

·         Birkerts doesn’t like technology either, and Jackson proves Birkerts right. Technology isn’t working for Jackson

·         When click on one thing, not even sure where its going to take you. Focus on web of links.

Glog

                Some texts are written in books then electronically. Others just books. Other texts are only published electronically. Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson was written purely on the computer. Unlike other texts, there is no specific way to read it. In books, usually you flip the page. On the internet, you usually scroll or click next. In Patchwork Girl the next section is only sometimes linked. For all the other instances, it is very hard to decide what to read next.

                The pictures are also very interesting regarding this text. When you open up the text on your computer a picture pops up of a girl that has a dotted line through her body.  This is interesting because she is dividing her body, similar to how her text is so divided. I think an even better illustration of her divided text is the picture of the girl’s brain and how Jackson divided it up into many different parts. To me her essay is so divided. When you open up a hyper link, you get a few paragraphs, maybe a page if you printed it out.

I wonder why she decided to write it this way. Why didn’t she print the text into a book so people could understand it? I think it would be more appreciated in a book because people would know where to go next and you could read everything she wrote. When you are reading the text on the computer, you may think you are done and have read everything but then all of a sudden find a whole new list of things you could read more. One more reason she should have made her work into a printed book with a finite beginning and end is so it could have a better storyline to it.

I think that you can compare the structure of Patchwork Girl to the making of the monster in Mary Shelley’s book called Frankenstein. When you first start up Patchwork Girl, you do not know what to click or what to read first or last. The text is in many different pieces and you have to piece them all together to make some sort of story and make sense of it. In Frankenstein, Victor had taken a body and did not know what to do with it. However, he made it come alive, into a big ugly monster. In both, the outcome is something weird. In Patchwork Girl, you don’t know if you read the whole story. While in Frankenstein it is a weird character.

I also wonder how author, Shelley Jackson, came up with the idea of Patchwork Girl. How do you decide to put something on a disk with all of the hyperlinks? How can you be fulfilled that people are getting the full grasp of your text that you spent so long on?

Frankenstein Movie Essay

Mary Shelley wrote the book Frankenstein at a time when society was trying to uncover the meaning to their physical universe. A great many scientists and doctors were using corpses, a lot of them illegally obtained, to conduct experiments to see how the body worked. With the advent of electricity, many scientists thought that it could provide the “spark” to bring inanimate flesh back to life. Shelley wrote about what was popular in her time. Various movies over the years have change the “science” to keep with current scientific thinking, and interpreted Shelley’s work differently in each movie. One movie is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein directed by Kenneth Branagh. A very important element in the book and the movie is how the creature comes into the world. In the book, the creature comes into the world with the help of science. In the movie he is created by a process similar to birth.

At the time Shelley wrote Frankenstein, science and using science to find out how things worked was a popular subject. Electricity was a new subject for many people, and some scientists tried to use electricity to bring newly dead bodies back to life. This is probably where Shelley came up with the idea to use electrical machines to bring the monster back to life. In the book, the creature is created with test tubes, formulas, and science in a laid back environment. “He then took me into his laboratory ? promising me the use of his own when I should have advanced far enough in the science not to derange the mechanisms.” (Pg. 54, Shelley) Victor advanced into the science enough to use Waldman’s laboratory, and this is where he made the discovery of the creature in the book. He made many experiments and experimented with worms to make sure his method worked. Victor never did see the monster come alive. The first time he saw the monster was when he woke up and the monster was standing over his bed and it scared him.

At the time the movie was made, electricity was a common place service used by everyone to run their everyday life. What seemed the stuff of fiction at the time of Shelley in modern times is common and in the making of a movie, would not draw audiences and keep them interested in the movie. In the movie, the creature is created by taking a corpse and cutting it open. After making many stitches, the corpse is put into a sarcophagus filled with fluid. Frankenstein lit a fire underneath the sarcophagus, stuck needles into the body, and let electric eels into the tank. He then turns on electricity which runs through the needles into the body in order to make the body come alive. In the movie, it is much more dramatic involving fast movements, fire, and needles. The way the monster is being created can be compared to birth. The fluid in the sarcophagus can be compared to amniotic fluid in the female’s womb. In all instances the creature is naked, just like a birth of any creature. The eels can be compared to sperm because they are all rushing in to the creature’s body in the sarcophagus and provide the spark of life in the monster like the process when sperm and egg unite.

In the book Victor’s lab is very scientific. It has tubes and hoses, vials and jars. It has new experiments and old ones, failed experiments and successful ones. In the movie the place where the monster is created is a room with many apparatuses to give life to the body and to move the body. In the book, the body is laid on a table with parts from the hospital stitched together on a table, and then the body is electrocuted to give it life again. In the movie, the body is put into a replica of a large womb, needles put into the body, eels come down, and then the body is electrocuted. The movie stayed true to the original idea of using electricity to give the monster the spark of life. It moved away from the victorian ideas, and moved towards the idea of using science to enhance a natural “birth” process to bring inanimate matter back to life. As you can see the process of creating the monster in the movie is much more complicated than the process in the book.

The monster is created in both instances, but the concept of creation is very different in each. In the Victorian era, science and scientific processes used to find out how the universe worked were very popular with society. They were trying to uncover how things worked, and through science, control the world about them, even life and death. The scientists laboratory with its tubes and vials were a novelty that people were unaccustomed to in their life, and as a result, Shelley could use the popular interest and lack of knowledge to create a mysterious process that could give man the power over life and death. The move had to depart from the original, because science has become part of our everyday life. People were no longer enthralled by electricity. We had harnessed it and it lights our homes and provides the power for our work and play. One area that was becoming a topic of interest at the time of the move was cloning. The movie blended the aspect of taking a natural process of bringing new life to this earth, and like cloning, took that aspect out of the womb to a tank. While still using the original concept of using electricity for the spark of life, the movie blended new technology and trends to try to make the same statement as Shelley, in her time, about the properness of man meddling in things that should best be left alone.

V

I hear:

 

·         Victor completes his creation, brings it to life, but it is very ugly.

·         Victor tries to sleep, but thinks about Elizabeth and his mother’s corpse and cannot sleep.

·         Opens eyes to find the creation smiling over him.

·         Paces courtyard all night then walks to the town of Ingolstadt to avoid returning to his haunted apartment. Meets Henry Clerval and Henry reminds Victor of his family, then returns to his apartment, where there is no sign of the monster.

·         Victor has worked for months and is shocked at the creature he created, and gets a fever. Henry nurses him back to health, and then gives him a letter from Elizabeth that got there while Victor was ill.

·         The letter is about Elizabeth’s concern for Victor being sick, tells him to write to his family in Geneva, and that Justine Moritz (girl who used to live with the Frankenstein family) has returned after Elizabeth’s mother died.

·         Victor recovers then introduces Henry to the professors at the university.

·         The sight of any chemical instrument worsens Victor’s symptoms including talking to his professors.

·         Victor decides to go back to Geneva, but has to wait for a letter from his father telling Victor the date of his departure.

·         Victor and Henry take a walk through the country.

·         Victor gets a letter from his father that says his youngest brother (William) has been murdered. Victor leaves immediately for Geneva.

·         When Victor gets to Geneva, the gates in have been closed, so he walks around the woods and to where his brothers body was found. When he gets closer he sees the monster and is convinced it was his creation’s fault.

·         Victor learns that Justine has been accused of the murder because she had a picture that had been seen with William last.

·         Victor tells everyone that she is innocent, but won’t say why because he doesn’t want people to think he is crazy. So, Justine confesses believing that she will gain salvation. Tells Elizabeth and Victor she is innocent and miserable. Justine gets executed. Victor feels guilty because his creation was responsible for two deaths of his family.

·         Victor starts to consider suicide, but doesn’t because Elizabeth and his father (Alphonse). Alphonse takes Victor to his family home in Belrive. Victor wanders toward Chamounix. Scenery cheers him up for a little while.

·         Victor travels to Montanvert hoping to revive his spirits. Reaches a glacier and spots the creature he made running toward him. Threatens to attack monster, but monster had speed and strength.  Victor tells him to go away. But monster convinces Victor to follow him inside a cave and tells Victor his life story. Monster tells Victor his confusion, flight from Victor’s apartment to the wilderness, gradual acclimation to the world through his discoveries of light, dark, hunger, thirst, cold, and so on. He discovers fire and how it is good for warmth and making food taste better.

·         The monster finds a hut with an old man inside, the old man runs away. Monster went to a village where people run away from him. Monster therefore decides to stay away from all humans.

·         Stays one night near a cottage, where he sees two men and a woman.

·         Monster notices they’re unhappy and finds out it is  because they are in poverty. Monster has been stealing their food. Monster feels bad, so gathers wood and puts it by their door at night.

·         Monster vows to learn their language. Sees self in water and notices how ugly.

·         Safie goes to cottage and Felix is excited to see her. She moved in, mood of cottage brightens.

·         Monster starts to learn to read and learn world history. Monster reflects and notices how he is all alone, has no obligations, no relations, and is isolated.

·         Monster starts to pick up the history of the villagers. Safie wants to marry a European man. Felix, Agatha, and De Lacey were exiled from France where they were rich.

·         Monster finds some clothes and books. (Books were Sorrows of Werter by Johann Wolfgang con Goethe, Plutarch’s Lives, and Paradise Lost by John Milton.) Reads all as if were factual history.

·         Gets Victor’s old journal and reads how Victor is discusted with the monster. Then monster wants to get to know the villagers so he knows someone. De Lacey is blind, so he wants to get to know him first. Once the monster starts to talk to De Lacey, the other three walk back in, and tell the monster to leave.

·         Then monster wants to revenge himself against everyone, especially Victor. Journeys toward Geneva. Monster rescues an almost drowning girl. Man shoots him because thinks monster attacked girl.

·         Monster runs across William in the woods. William mentions who his father is, and monster gets mad. Takes William’s picture and puts it in Justine’s dress while she is sleeping.

·         Monster tries to convince Victor to make another monster to be with him and so he can mate, and tells Victor that it is his right and responsibility. Monster tells Victor all his actions are because he is lonely. Monster promised victor to take mate to South America and hide in a jungle and will not kill.

·         Victor agrees to create a female monster.  Monster says he is going to monitor Victor.

·         Victor puts off creating a female monster and begins to have doubts. Victor’s father notices Victor is down most of the time because guilt over deaths of William and Justine. (Father doesn’t know about guilt).

·         Victor says he is unable to marry until he has completed his obligation to the monster. Victor decides to travel to London, England  and Scotland with Henry.

·         Victor leaves Henry with  a friend in Scotland, and travels to an isolated island, where he can work on creating a new creature. He has trouble because he knows how ugly, unsatisfying, and grotesque the finished creature is going to be.

·         Victor starts to imagine what might happen. Maybe the new creature will not want to be isolated. Maybe the monsters will have children and will all be “devils… on earth”. However, when Victor looks up, the monster is smiling. Victor destroys all work because how ugly the monster is. Monster gets mad vowing revenge, then leaves.

·         Victor throws remains in water while in boat, then naps. Wakes up and finds he is stuck, but eventually gets back to shore and finds an angry mob of people telling him he is being accused of murder the previous night.

·         Townspeople take Victor to Mr. Kirwin, the town magistrate. Victor hears all the witnesses testify against him saying they found a body along the beach and saw Victor’s boat.

·         Mr. Kirwin makes Victor look at the body thinking he will have some reaction. The victim is Henry, with the marks of the monster around his neck. Victor falls into convulsions and gets an illness for 2 monthes.

·         Recovers, and is in prison. Kirwin becomes compassionate and sympathetic and visits Victor. Victor’s father has also come to visit him. Victor is very happy to see his father, who stays with him until court.

·         Kirwin finds Victor innocent because no hard evidence.

·         Victor gets released and travels back to Geneva with his father.

 

 

I Notice and I Hear:

                I notice how the creature is called a monster. I would like to know what people think of him. Since he is so weird and ugly, why wouldn’t people just kill him when they saw them? If there was a monster in Chestertown, I think that someone would kill him because they would be so scared of him and not know what he would do in the future. I think, especially if murders were happening, someone would kill the monster.

                I would like to know why the monster came out to Victor and told him that he had murdered his family. Did the monster tell Victor this and not understand how he would feel? If Victor knew the monster murdered people, why didn’t he either isolate the monster, or kill him?

                I would like to know how the monster knew what to eat. When you are in a forest there are a lot of things that are poisonous. So did he eat them and get sick? Is he immune to them? We know he feels hunger because that is what the book says.

                I think it would be cool to know what the monster thought of the books also.

                Did the monster stalk Victor? It seems like when Victor went into the cottage to create a female monster, the male monster knew where he was. But then in the beginning, he said he went in the middle of the forest to hide. So how did he find Victor the first time? Coincidence?

                Why does Victor only get sick after something tragic happens? Is it a coincidence or is he forcing himself to feel bad or faking the illnesses? Is that how he gets over tragedy?

                Should Victor have stayed with the monster that he created? The monster didn’t have a choice of whether or not to be created and was therefore left with no one to teach him language, right versus wrong, what to eat, or anything else he would need to know in life to get by. With the isolation of the monster, is that how Victor felt? Did Victor let the monster go because he felt isolated and felt as if the monster would isolate him more?

                Why does the monster have to be a man? Why does the monster have to want a female mate? Why doesn’t the monster just want a friend? How does the monster find out about mating if he had no one to teach him about all that?

                Why does the monster have to be ugly? If the monster was pretty but different, would everyone have the same reaction? Is the monster ugly because he is unlike everyone else? Is the monster taller or shorter than humans? Fatter or skinnier? Would it be different if the answer to those questions were different? How would these questions affect the monster’s life?

                Would the monster enjoy company or would he not like it? He is asking for it now, but once he gets company, what if the new monster is annoying, they don’t get along, the new monster doesn’t want to obey the rules the old monster has promised Victor? What if they do mate? Will the monsters start to murder random people to get revenge when they get mad? How long does the monster live? Will the action or mistake last a long time or short while? How much damage will two monsters do together? What if they team up and do a lot of killing?

Reading / Writing Expieriances

Professor Meehan,

This is a rough draft. I do not like to read and write and do not do it that often, so this is what I can think of.

 

Reading Expieriances

• Gowan’s class acting out plays
• Mat’s class making movies
• reading “Monster” in religion class
• every night when I was little, my mom used to read to me
• I remember my library in elementary school and cirle time.

Writing Expieriances

• Nolan’s class writing the final research paper
• passing notes
• 8th grade poetry book

Glog 2: Writing Machines

I Hear:

 

Intro

·         Begins with author in Shrine Theatre to see Siggraph 2001 (technology showing)

·         Shrek- characters non-relating to people. Matrix- same moves as in Shrek with real people.

·         Then goes on and on about how to make the characters in Shrek, and how long of a process it is.

·         Hyperrealism- realm which no distinction made between reality and simulation because all simulation already. (no real person like the Princess in Shrek.)

·         Not racing toward final draft in Shrek.

·         “The book is an experiment in forging a vocabulary and set of practices responsive to the full spectrum of signifying components in print and electronic texts.” (Hayles, 6)

·         3 Kinds of Literature:

o   Electronic works.

o   Artist’s book.

o   Print novel.

·         Electronic literature- opportunity to think more about interactions between content and digital environments. Insights can be reflected back to print to see it more clearly

Chapter 1 – Media and Materiality

·         Never find out why one professor got tenure and one got fired because it is not laid out in a handbook. Same with creative works. Ie. No one person can make a big difference, but networks of people can.

·         “struggling to see what electronic literature means.”(Hayles, 10) – she thinks it is important.

·         Forced to write autobiographically. Names herself “Kaye”, so no one confuses her with the author.

·         Kaye-

o   Raised in small town in Missouri and allowed to roam free because everyone knows everyone.

o   Loved outdoors, books, reading, science, calculus, and geometry.

o   Read everywhere including the tub!

o   Majors considered: science and literature.

o   College: Rochester Institute of Technology where she learned to write well.

o   Graduate school: Caltech with the “brightest and best students”.

o   Yearned to ask the big questions that science couldn’t answer, therefore she returned to literature.

o   Met two professors in English that taught her to love literature again.

o   Returned to science from another direction.

o   “When used for electronic literature, it gave her the same keen pleasure as the print novels she loved.” (Hayles, 15)

I Notice:

                The first thing I notice while reading Katherine Hayles book is that she likes technology. She goes to a conference (Siggraph) all about technology and how to make animations in movies. They start to go on to talk about Shrek versus the Matrix and how the same moves are created. I think its interesting how the author explains every little detail of how the Princess is made in Shrek. I think she is trying to relate it to the writing process. When you were in elementary school, the teachers used to teach you about a hamburger writing process and how you would have to brainstorm, draft, edit, draft, edit, and then write the final copy. To me, she is making the point that you should take time in writing.

                I would also like to compare Birkets and Hayles. Birkets does not like electronic texts. He would rather them print and he would like to read them alone and personally. Birket’s book is about his likings, from his point of view, and in his own character. On the other hand in Hayles book, she expresses a liking for electronic literature. She expresses a liking for the interactions of the content of digital environments. In Hayles book, it expresses that when you read text on the computer; you can see it more clearly. At the end of chapter one, she expresses how books and electronic texts are the same words, just on two different things (computer screen compared to paper in a book). Hayles book is from a character’s (Kaye) point of view. Therefore, Birkets and Hayles are exact opposites.

                I would also like to bring up Kaye. The author creates Kaye to represent herself; she says it is so no one confuses the thoughts and ideas expressed in the book with the author. The author sets up her childhood, schooling, favorite classes, and life. It is just like the author’s life. So I would like to know, why would you create this character?

                I think it is because she would like to express ideas that maybe are controversial. Earlier in the book, she explains how she is being forced to write an autobiography. I think that with the controversial ideas, she is afraid that someone will pass judgment on her, and she does not like that.

                I think another reason Kaye is created is so she can say anything and everything she wants to, and it does not matter how she says it. If the author was saying some of the things she might say further in the book, and owned up to the in the book, she could be afraid that people would attack her about her ideas. Going back to Birkets for a moment, he might choose to pick a fight with Hayles, but because it is a character in the book, it is more difficult to pick the fight and to attack Hayles.

                Another reason she could have created Kaye is to make readers more sympathetic. Since it is a character, you can just think that it is just an imaginary character’s point of view, and not the author’s. Readers tend to be more sympathetic to Hayle’s book and the way she presents her material compared to Birkets book, and the way he presents his material.

 

I Wonder:

Why Kaye? Why create a character to represent yourself, and tell the reader exactly what you are doing?

At the end of chapter one, she says “She was hooked.” Hooked on what? Reading? Literature? Science? Electronic reading?

Does she think electronic texts are better?

What parts are better? What parts are worse?

Would she change her mind about liking electronic literature given the choice?

Does she really think that reading electronic texts is easier?

Would she publish her own novel on the internet?

Why do some of the words in the book look like they are coming off a television or computer screen?

Why all the barcode looking lines on the sides of the pages?

Why does the side of the book say “Writing” when you bend it one way and “Machines” when you bend it the other?

 

 

 

Glog on Gutenberg 1

From this book, I understand that Sven Birkerts, the author, is having an issue pertaining to whether or not technology has ruined books. Some instances he believes that the new is better than the old. On page twenty six for instance, he says, “I am in the position of the adult who is asked if he would return once and for all to his childhood. The answer is yes and no.”(Birkerts, 26) This quote explains how he is a grown man now and someone asks him if he would like to be in the age of his childhood again. He answers yes and no, meaning he likes some parts of his present and some parts of his past. He goes on with this fight inside of his head on page twenty seven, by listing the advantages and disadvantages of electronics being a part of life.

One good thing about today’s technology is that books can be posted on technology so more people have access to them. For instance, if there was a classic that you wanted to read, it is most likely posted on the internet somewhere. Also, in today’s technological age, there is still the possibility that classics can be written. The stories written today might be better for the present because more students can relate to them. What if the story about to be discussed was just too outdated for the class and it was not that the children could not understand books because of the technology?

I think, on page seventeen and eighteen, it proves Birkerts point of technology destroying literary culture. In the past, when he was in school and such, students liked to read Henry James’s “Brooksmith”. When he taught the class, there were one or two students that liked the book. The rest of the students did not like it, because as the one student uttered, “the whole thing just bugged me-I couldn’t get into it.” I think that when students today are taught to read, we are taught to imagine the story and relate to it. Today, students like books that they can relate to more than the ones they cannot.

I wonder about Birkerts’ daughter. On page thirty, he says, “I let the rivers of popular culture (the less polluted ones) flow freely around my daughter. But at the same time I do everything I can to introduce her to books and stories.” (Birkerts, 30) In this outtake, it seems like he is a very controlling parent. He would have to make sure only certain things were introduced to his daughter. It seems as if he would like to control the books and stories that she reads. As by his sarcasm in the next outtake, he does not like the story Beauty and the Beast, but yet would like her to read. If she is reading Beauty and the Beast at least she is reading. It is better than nothing. Right Birkerts? “The child needs to know the range of pleasures. There is room for Beauty and the Beast, a la Disney, but only when the field includes the best that has been imagined and written through the ages.” (Birkerts, 31) It sounds like Birkerts would like her to read only the classics, but what child wants to grow up on Shakespeare and all the old complicated stories, that Birkerts’ college class he taught could not even understand.

            In the end of this first chapter, it makes me think. I want to know what the author would think of his story today. Presently, in the world today, there are more people that know how to read than in Birkerts time. If you put this story in the scheme of the whole world, and not just America, there are still a lot of people without technology.

            I also think that the people, who really enjoy reading, will still understand and like all of the classics. I think it is the people who do not read more, and maybe do use technology more, that cannot understand the classics as well as Birkerts would like us to.

So I really do wonder, would Birkerts be proud of his book?

Did he really keep his daughter out of the mainstream of technology throughout her life? If so, what happened when she wanted to get a facebook or MySpace? Or was given an email account by her college to keep up on?

I wonder what he would think of MySpace, facebook, and email being so common these days.

When his daughter was a teenager, did he let her read the current books, or just the classics?

Is it so bad that his daughter really likes Beauty and the Beast? Would it be that bad if she liked technology more than books?

Was he married? Did he control what books his wife read? Did he let her buy technology if she wanted it? Did they divorce because of the control Birkerts seems to want?

What is just so bad about reading a book on the computer?

What is so bad about Disney? Every little girl loves Disney, whether 1 or 100, which would include his generation and before.

How far back does he think technology has corrupted literary culture?

Does he think that being lazy has anything to do with it?

Did the college students he taught, partly, not understand or like the book because of the way he wrote the book?

Lastly, I really wonder what would make him happy. What would our culture have to do to be “okay” to Birkerts?

At the end of the first chapter, I think you could start a discussion board about these topics. There is so much that contradicts itself, yet so much that has support on the side that technology has ruined literary culture. So, in reality, has it really ruined our literary culture? The answer to that very question, will never be known, but would have a very interesting answer.