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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...