{"id":10500,"date":"2017-08-15T05:44:51","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T09:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=10500"},"modified":"2017-12-23T12:10:19","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T16:10:19","slug":"episode-231-sven-birkerts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-231-sven-birkerts","title":{"rendered":"Episode 231 – Sven Birkerts"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Virtual Memories Show 231:
\nSven Birkerts<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Episode_231_-_Sven_Birkerts.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“There are thresholds or shelves where we go from having incremental change to systemic moments of transformation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>In the ’90s, Sven Birkerts<\/a> cautioned us about the impact of technology on reading with The Gutenberg Elegies<\/a>\"\". In 2017, we mute our iPhones to talk about his new book, Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age<\/a>\"\" (Graywolf Press). We dive into the impact of digital technology on perception and identity, but also get into the way life becomes a thematic puzzle in middle age, why he stepped down from his role directing the low-residency MFA program at Bennington<\/a>, the joy of bringing his favorite writers in as instructors (and the ones he regrets not getting), the challenge of interviewing fiction writers, his big literary 0-fer and what I’m missing about Virginia Woolf, how he’s adapting to a year-long sabbatical and how he understands his writing life, what he’s learned editing the literary magazine AGNI<\/a>, and why the prerequisite for anything he’s reading is that it has to be more interesting to him than whatever it is he’s vaguely brooding about. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go buy his new essay collection, Changing the Subject<\/a>\"\"!<\/p>\n

“When I was your age, I discovered the doubling over of one’s own experience. . . . Themes, recurrences and motifs in my life began to manifest. Then as if on command, the whole sunken continent of memory began to detach from the sea-floor.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n