Thursday, June 12, 2008

Nothing wrong with being wrong

A lovely quote from "literary sleuth" Donald Foster:

"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar."

That entire Observer piece is worth reading, BTW, as we all ponder the Nicholas Carr essay in The Atlantic that everyone's talking about. I have some things to say about that, but that's a fairly personal essay and I want to get it right before I post it. But you'll read it here and nowhere else under my byline, which may tell you a bit about where my thoughts are going...

1 comment:

Jeff Trexler said...

For a moment, I was really hoping Carr would say that the typewriter gave Nietzsche syphilis. Alas.

As for the broader argument about electronic technology destroying literate rationality, I thought it was really interesting when McLuhan made it forty years ago. But McLuhan also had the sense to make his analysis more than a jeremiad, which is probably why his work continues to be relevant.