Where Words Go To Die

Abstract

Perhaps the book was doomed to die – its inevitability preceded by Roland PBarthes’s eulogy for authors when he declared the “Death of the Author.” Sherman Young writes about books in an age of near saturation, where everyone writes and no one really reads, where the honorary distinctions between writer and author are obfuscated, and books are confused for objects. Young categorizes the types of books published into functional books that one consults for information, anti-books that are devoid of content and are circulated by their sheer brand worth or impulse buying, and ‘real’ books, the “ideas machine” (30), which preponderates towards ideas, critical and intellectual engagement, empowerment, conversation, and reflexivity. Young’s allegiance is obvious.