Browser's Ecstasy [Paperback]

Geoffrey O'Brien (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2003

From one of the most original writers now at work, an expansive, learned, and utterly charming reverie on what it means to be lost in a book. . Louis Menand, writing in The New Yorker , called Geoffrey O'Brien's The Phantom Empire "a prose poem about the pleasures and distractions of movie-watching," "an ambitiously literary attempt to write about the [mystery of the] medium as though it were a dream the author had just awakened from." Now, in The Browser's Ecstasy , O'Brien has written a prose poem about reading, a playful, epigrammatic nocturne upon the dream-state one falls into when "lost in a book," upon the uncanny, trancelike pleasure of making silent marks on paper utter sounds inside one's head. We call The Browser's Ecstasy a "Meditation on Reading," but like any truly original book-and especially the short book that goes both far and deep-it resists easy summary and classification. As Luc Sante once wrote, "The density of O'Brien's work makes word count irrelevant as an index of substance; he is seemingly capable of compressing entire encyclopedias into his parenthetical asides. I defy you to name any precedent for what he does. He's a school unto himself."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"In that cobwebbed kingdom the rows of books were like rows of cupboards with rusty handles, each to be tried in turn: What's in this one, or that one?" Brainy and often convoluted, O'Brien's "meditation on reading" ranges through memory, autobiography, allegory and literary theory to try to describe the value he finds in books. Some smart readers will think it a lark and a half, while others will deem it so much navel gazing. A noted essayist, editor and poet, O'Brien has organized his topics and metaphors into 32 small units: their ideas and images hang together through the barest threads of suggestion and similarity. Children's encyclopedias, Chinese classical poetry, Virgil's Aeneid, the invention of the alphabet, a half-remembered metaphysical novel about "Doctor Tobacco" and much else give rise to gleams of language and flashes of insight, and then disappear. Originally published, in part, in magazines like Word, this slim volume can recall O'Brien's previous book-length essaysAThe Phantom Empire (on movies) and The Times Square Story; it also suggests the polymathically playful critical prose of Elaine Scarry, though without her moments of philosophical rigor. Readers familiar with academic theorists will recognize some of O'Brien's key ideas: "To move through a book from beginning to end is to advance triumphantly toward the death that waits after the last word of the last sentence." It is by no means a new point (nor does O'Brien make stringent records of his sources), but novelty of argument isn't the point. The point is the beauty and aptness of the analogy, the speed with which one context slips into the next and the momentary rightness of O'Brien's observations. Readers who care for this brand of highly associative, highbrow prose will appreciate this latest sample. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

An unusual, inventive, highly creative contemplation on reading, this small book takes one to the dreamlike state of being "lost in a book." Poet, editor, cultural historian, and author of nonfiction works that include, most recently, The Times Square Story, O'Brien muses about such subjects as when and why people started writing things down, the power of titles, the much-beloved volumes of The Book of Knowledge, and the possibility of computers replacing books. In one passage, he recollects the experience of reading as a child, when anticipating the next chapter is exciting and dangerous and all the characters are extensions of one's family. A truly original writer, O'Brien takes a mystical approach as he leads readers deeply into all aspects of the reading process. This book will appeal to those who love books and want to be challenged by the unusual. Recommended for larger public libraries.DNancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (April 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582432457
• ISBN-13: 978-1582432458
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 4.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,468,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delightful Bookish Reverie to Banish Stalled Thinking, June 29, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation on Reading (Hardcover)

Books are a potential delight to all of our senses and many dimensions of our minds. It is entirely too simple and limiting to think of books as their physical embodiment of paper, ink and binding. Yet, if you are like me, you haven't exactly thought about them as potential magic carpets, strolling minstrels, and companions against the night. That's where you have stalled thinking. Mr. O'Brien's wonderful perception is about to take you outside the box (and the book) to consider what your real relationship is to these wonderful repositories of humanity.

This is one of the most imaginative and fun books that I have ever read! Mr. O'Brien takes books and turns them into metaphorical extensions of ourselves and our lives, and then connects it all back together in a beautiful stream of stories. You'll feel like you've suddenly become part of some modern Divine Comedy as you move through this fascinating book.

If we were in ancient Green times, we would think of this book as a philosophical treatment of what a book is and what bookness is, as well. Fortunately, we are in modern times, because the author can use vivid language and visions to entrance us . . . not unlike a series of tales out of the Arabian nights!

I especially enjoyed the continuing theme of whether the books are with us or not, and our connection to them.

You will never think about a book in the same way again after you read this work, and you'll be the better for your self-transformation.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essays about being absorbed by the written word, July 25, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Browser's Ecstasy (Paperback)

The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation On Reading by Geoffrey O'Brien is a simply fascinating selection of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays about being absorbed by the written word, as well as the wonder and the pleasure of being transported by and through books to times, places, and thoughts heretofore unknowable to the solitary reader. An inspirational and welcome reflection on the pastime that marked the dawn of recorded human history down to the present day and into the forseeable future, The Browser's Ecstasy is enthusiastically recommended reading for anyone who has ever had a book transport them through journeys of the mind into lives, places, people, and events far from their own native habitat.

8 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars pretentious, silly, and sometimes offensive, January 16, 2001

By 

Hils (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Browser's Ecstasy: A Meditation on Reading (Hardcover)

I really can't imagine what might have encouraged those reviews above. I found it exhausting to get through this--not particularly because the anecdotes O'Brien tells are boring but instead because O'Brien's tone itself is so off-putting, so agonizingly pretentious, that it actually ends up ruining what I think could be a very fascinating read. I can't recommend this book. Sorry.