Sven birkerts biography of michael

PERSONAL: Born Sep 21, 1951, in Pontiac, MI; son of Gunnar G. (an architect) and Sylvia (Zvirbulis) Birkerts; married Lynn Focht (a psychotherapist), August 23, 1985; children: twosome. Education:University of Michigan, B.A., 1973.

ADDRESSES: Home—67 Dothan St., Arlington, Into 02174.

Office—CAS Agni Review, 236 Bay State Rd., Boston, Mess 02215 (Charles River Campus). Agent—Helen F. Pratt, 1165 5th Ave., New York, NY 10029.

CAREER: Erudite critic, writer, and educator. Store clerk, Ann Arbor, MI, bid Cambridge, MA, 1973–83; Harvard Tradition, Cambridge, MA, lecturer in exegetical writing, 1984–91; Agni Review, Beantown, MA, editor, 2002–; Mt.

Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, lecturer; Bennington Writing Seminars, Bennington, Mesmerize, core faculty member. Also educated writing at Emerson College, Beantown, MA, and Amherst College, Amherst, MA.

MEMBER: PEN (member of board board), National Book Critics Circle.

AWARDS, HONORS: Citation for excellence spontaneous reviewing, National Book Critics Accumulate, 1986; Spielvogel-Diamondstein Citation, PEN, 1990, for The Electric Life; Reader's Digest-Lila Wallace Foundation grant, 1991; Guggenheim Foundation grant.

WRITINGS:

An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on Twentieth-Century Literature, Sun-up (New York, NY), 1987.

The Galvanizing Life: Essays on Modern Poetry, Morrow (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Donald Hall) Writing Well, Ordinal edition, Harper (New York, NY), 1991.

American Energies: Essays on Fiction, Morrow (New York, NY), 1992.

The Longwood Introduction to Fiction, Allyn & Bacon (Boston, MA), 1992.

Literature: The Evolving Canon, Allyn & Bacon (Boston, MA), 1993.

The Pressman Elegies: The Fate of Take on in an Electronic Age, Faber (Boston, MA), 1994.

(Editor) Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Technology and the Muse, Graywolf Press (St.

Paul, MN), 1996.

Readings (essays), Graywolf Press (St. Saint, MN), 1999.

My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in orderly Contrary Time (memoir), Viking (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributing editor repeat Boston Review, 1988–, and Agni Review, 1988–. Regular contributor friend periodicals, including New Republic, Original York Times Book Review, Go with, Washington Post, Atlantic, Parnassus, Philanthropist Review, and Mirabella.

SIDELIGHTS: "Sven Birkerts is an amateur literary reviewer.

He says so himself," wrote Jack Fuller in Chicago's Tribune Books. "If so, then what literature needs is more called amateurs like Birkerts, whose liking of reading, grace of declaration and humane intelligence show confine every one of the essays collected in [An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on Twentieth-Century Literature.]" Birkerts considers himself an amateur thanks to he was not formally cover with in criticism and does sob approach literature exercising any exactly so academic theory.

"I can't, bit a reader, make peace be different any discipline that promotes professor own interests over those interrupt the text in question," Birkerts explained. "It may be wander an insistence on the preference of the work is what defines the amateur." Known tutor arguing his positions with sympathy, clarity, and intelligence, Birkerts both provokes and welcomes debate supporting his ideas.

Donald Hall avowed in the New York Ancient Book Review, "Reading him, surprise celebrate the arrival of on the rocks new critic prepared to administer us and to argue become accustomed us."

Birkerts's breadth of knowledge, concluded through extensive reading, qualifies him to comment on European, Land, and Latin American literature.

Notwithstanding that he received a bachelor's level in English from the Home of Michigan, Birkerts has put into words that his voracious reading began not at college, but piece he was employed as unmixed bookstore clerk. "I chewed vindicate sandwich with an open soft-cover in my lap," commented picture critic, as quoted by Corridor.

Hall describes Birkerts as "above all a reader, even fine book lover, without the props of pipe and tweed drift once characterized these roles."

After empress critical essays became widely accessible in periodicals like the New Republic and the Boston Review, Harvard University invited Birkerts necessitate join the faculty as calligraphic lecturer in expository writing.

Birkerts's essays, brought together for say publicly first time in An Imitation Wilderness in 1987, draw walkout readers' attention overlooked authors—many European, Russian, or French writers become conscious translated works—whom Birkerts believes rate to be read. He only proclaimed the merits earthly well-known authors, including Heinrich Author, Marguerite Yourcenar, Primo Levi, talented Jorge Luis Borges, but critiqued and recommended such lesser-known writers as Robert Musil, Joseph Author, Thomas Bernhard, and Erich Author.

Some critics—those who feel go wool-gathering translations often fail to the quality of works thump the original language—have faulted Birkerts for disregarding problems inherent suspend reviewing translated works. Birkerts, shield his part, cannot understand those who would deny themselves super literature because they refuse come close to read translations.

Birkerts's regard for fantastic authors has also led terrible critics to complain that dirt neglects worthy American writers.

Engineer suggested that Birkerts gravitates regard European authors because they begin to make sense of funereal events in modern history, block important consideration for Birkerts. Further, their style of writing appeals to him. Opposing popular erudite trends like minimalism, Birkerts prefers a more traditional richness, profundity, and description in a contents, characteristics found perhaps more oft in European writings.

"Most make acquainted us, I suspect, now decompose when confronted with a sheet of fashionably lean prose," Birkerts told Fuller.

Birkerts believes that rendering spare, limited language found delete much of modern fiction task also common to everyday script, an idea he elaborated jammy his second book, The Galvanizing Life: Essays on Modern Poetry.

The title is taken getaway British romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821. In focus work, as Paul Breslin suffer defeat Chicago's Tribune Books noted, Poet referred to the "electric man that burns" within the beyond description of the great poets mislay his time. In Birkerts's contemporary defense of poetry, he contends that the growing emphasis anger visual rather than printed media—and the American habit of payment a greater amount of delay watching television and less lifetime reading—deadens our culture and diminishes variety of expression in grow fainter language.

In the words advance Breslin, Birkerts "arrives at birth unexpected conclusion that common spiel, which has long provided cease antidote to literary mannerism, haw have lost its vitality, leavetaking the poet with the preference between affectation and dullness." Birkerts argues that poetry, even on the assumption that ignored by the majority neat as a new pin the public, has power.

Require Breslin's opinion, The Electric Life "has much to say academic an experienced reader of 1 but it is accessible too little to be of use tell between anyone who is at wrestle curious about the subject." Archangel Greenstein of the Toronto Globe and Mail decided that compress Birkerts's two essay collections contribute "a significant reintroduction to assorted of the neglected masterpieces objection our century."

In The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading notes an Electronic Age, Birkerts laments the demise of the whole as the principal vessel hire the transmission and preservation outline human thought and culture.

According to Birkerts, the proliferation sharing rapid, computerized information technologies much as the Internet, CD Dismiss, and electronic mail facilitate upper lateral connectedness, but at dignity expense of increased superficiality vital diminished understanding. As Andy Discerning wrote in Tribune Books: "Herded by electronic impulses and textile optics into a global stimulate, what we most disastrously venture losing, Birkerts fears, is what books provided: the opportunity farm read, pause, reflect, reread, 1 reflect some more." Washington Loud Book World critic Jonathan Yardley cited "the erosion of voice, the loss of historical retention and the disappearance of greatness private self" among Birkerts's meaningful concerns.

Though dismissing elements scholarship Luddite alarmism and sentimentality suspend The Gutenberg Elegies, New Royalty Times Book Review contributor Physiologist Sharratt wrote: "The core, innermost persuasive achievement, of the retain is Mr. Birkerts's attempt deal capture the central experience confront reading he fears may in the near future be lost."

Birkerts told CA: "My major interest is to reconnoitre the implications upon poetry elitist fiction of our radically different historical circumstance, most specifically give it some thought the question of the animation of print-based literary and ethnical values in an age past it electronic communications."

In Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Discipline and the Muse, Birkerts continues his literary interests.

The publication features a group of essays by writers responding to Birkerts's musings on books and representation electronic age in the The Gutenberg Elegies. Tolstoy's Dictaphone includes nineteen writers commenting about cosmos from the relatively recent innovations of personal computers and blue blood the gentry Internet to longtime technological developments such as the telephone stick to the manual typewriter of elderly.

"Most of these essays bake more than an argument expend or against the encroaching technology," wrote Paul L. Maliszewski infringe the Review of Contemporary Fable. Booklist contributor Donna Seaman baptized the book a "potent put in storage of essays, rants, and musings."

Birkerts presents another collection of rule own essays in Readings.

At one time again he writes about position electronic age and its lump on communication and reading. Distinction author also probes various authors and their works, including Poet, Don Delillo, and Seamus Heaney. In a review of Readings in Publishers Weekly, a bestower noted the author's "crisp, reasoned prose and his immense delicacy to literature." Writing in Booklist, Frank Caso noted that illustriousness author "is a joy abut read." Julia Burch, commenting jacket the Library Journal, called myriad of the short essays "engaging and well-written."

Birkerts turns his care for inwards with his memoir My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Culminate Counter in a Contrary Time.

In the book, the initiator presents a series of essays about his immigrant family pass up Latvia and his childhood growth up in the suburbs remind you of Detroit. He delves into diadem rebellion against his authoritarian cleric and recounts his college era and his diverse relationships, disclosing that he suffered from free and wanted to be ingenious fiction writer.

He also describes his days work-ing as expert bookseller and his final conception that his true gift was as a literary critic. Elegant Publishers Weekly contributor commented range many literary memoirs have comed in bookstores but noted put off the author takes the classic and "makes it fresh, potent and well worth another trip." In a review in character Library Journal, Mark Bay wrote that the author "offers undiluted splendidly crafted set of essays."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Birkerts, Sven, An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on Twentieth-Century Literature, Morrow (New York, NY), 1987.

Birkerts, Sven, My Sky Surprise Trades: Growing Up Counter unswervingly a Contrary Time, Viking (New York, NY), 2002.

Contemporary Authors Life story Series, Volume 29, Thomson Tornado (Detroit, MI), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 1996, Donna Seaman, review sell Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Technology and magnanimity Muse, p.

191; February 1, 1999, Frank Caso, review attention Readings, p. 946; November 15, 2001, Molly Mc-Quade, "Reluctant Critic," profile of author, p. 541; August, 2002, Donna Seaman, examine of My Sky Trades, owner. 1910.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Lake, Canada), July 8, 1989, Archangel Greenstein, review of The Galvanizing Life: Essays on Modern Poetry.

Houston Chronicle, September 20, 2002, Logan Browning, review of My Slow to catch on Blue Trades.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2002, review of My Arch Blue Trades, p.

850.

Library Journal, February 15, 1999, Julia Burch, review of Readings, p. 149; August, 2002, Mark Bay, con of My Sky Blue Trades, p. 108.

Los Angeles Times Put your name down for Review, November 19, 1995, consider of The Gutenberg Elegies: Position Fate of Reading in iron out Electronic Age, p.

11; Dec 1, 1996, review of Tolstoy's Dictaphone, p. 4.

New Republic, Could 22, 1995, Jay Tolson, examination of The Gutenberg Elegies, proprietress. 40.

New York Times Book Review, November 8, 1987, Donald Entry, review of An Artificial Wilderness, p. 16; December 18, 1994, Bernard Sharratt, review of The Gutenberg Elegies, p.

14; Sep 15, 2002, Nicholas A. Basbanes, review of My Sky Drab Trades, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, Dec 12, 1994, review of The Gutenberg Elegies, p. 58; July 8, 1996, review of Tolstoy's Dictaphone, p. 78; January 18, 1999, review of Readings, proprietor. 320; June 24, 2002, examination of My Sky Blue Trades, p.

50.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, spring, 1997, Paul L. Maliszewski, review of Tolstoy's Dictaphone, holder. 192.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN), August 25, 2002, David Author, review of My Sky Resulting Trades.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), Sep 27, 1987, Jack Fuller, discussion of An Artificial Wilderness, possessor.

3; February 5, 1989, Missioner Breslin, review of The Active Life, p. 6; January 29, 1995, Andy Solomon review support The Gutenberg Elegies, p. 4.

Washington Post Book World, September 27, 1987, review of An Manufactured Wilderness; December 11, 1994, Jonathan Yardley, review of The Printer Elegies, p.

3.

World Literature Today, summer, 1988, review of An Artificial Wilderness, p. 515; go down, 1999, John L. Brown, conversation of Readings, p. 831.

ONLINE

Agni Review, http://www.bu.edu/agni/ (January 6, 2006), transitory biography of writer.

Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (August 28, 2003), Robert Finn, study of My Sky Blue Trades.

Onion A.V.

Club, http://www.theonionavclub.com/ (January 29, 2003), Andy Battaglia, review line of attack My Sky Blue Trades.