The Browser’s Ecstasy is a hand-me-down. I don’t think I’d have purchased it otherwise, and I am of two minds regarding this book. First though, a description: part poetry, part exposition. O’Brien subtitled the book A Meditation on Reading
. I think that word is apt. The book starts off with a fictional narrator describing a reading group, then he meanders off into a dream where he is present in a warehouse of books. All the books in the world, I gather. At other points, the narrator has read all the books in the world and is despondent.
Frankly, it was damn hard to follow. For the more poetically inclined reader, this will be a wonderful book. For me though, I just didn’t get most of it. There were bits and pieces of each that seemed important, but they were embedded in prose that was just too dream-like for me to appreciate the style.
On the other hand, there is one thing that comes through loud and clear. It’s the Mac truck of the book and it smacked me silly. This writer loves reading.
The following passage is a mostly typical paragraph from the book.
To read like the child would be to approach the book again with fear. A new chapter is dangerous. There is no protection from the shock of the character’s speech, the bare outrageousness of their curses, their sorrow. The sentence is larger than life, almost as big as the mind of the person reading it. The least pronouncement resounds universally.
That’s one of the more understandable paragraphs. I don’t get it, but the action of reading is integral to it nevertheless. I confess here, I didn’t finish the book. I read as far as I did (120 pages out of 153) because I loved feeling the love of reading that permeates every paragraph and sentence. But ultimately, it was just too foreign for my tastes.
Title: The browser’s ecstasy: a meditation on reading
Author: Geoffrey O’Brien
Imprint / publisher: Counterpoint / Perseus
Format: Hardcover
Length: 153 p.
Publication date: 2000
ISBN-10: 1-58243-056-X
Subject: Books and reading — Psychological aspects
Subject: Literature — psychology
LC classification: Z1003.O16 2000
