Volume 48, Number 2 · February 8, 2001
Cri de Coeur
By John Leonard
Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future
by Jason Epstein
Norton, 188 pp., $21.95
When I am feeling optimistic about the prospects for literary culture, I imagine a book like the one everybody ran around trying to steal in Neal Stephenson's 1995 sci-fi novel The Diamond Age. Called a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, this 'propaedeutic enchiridion' came with its own power pack, a voice-recognition interface, 'smart paper' computer pages, 'nanoreceptors' to measure the reader's pulse, and a database that amounted to 'a catalogue of the collective unconscious.' Until you could read it on your own, it told you stories in a lovely contralto, even while you slept, about what you dreamed. Designed to grow up alongside feisty four-year-old girls, it encouraged heroic behavior and subversive thinking.
Review, 5429 words
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