Marriott thinks the 'digital bombardment' from smartphones is 'the major culprit' in producing 'a post-literate future that resembles the pre-literate past: mystical, tribal and autocratic.' He might, however, be insufficiently pessimistic.
Marriott’s slender volume is well timed to restoke the fires of this debate just as it threatens to burn out. From the start, though, The New Dark Ages is too ominously titled. The need for a grabby name may be partly responsible for the growing exasperation of the literacy wars ... Marriott ably diagnoses our reading woes, but his prognosis is less persuasive ... Yet the broad thrust of Marriott’s argument—there is a decline in reading that is antithetical to the progress of the Enlightenment—strikes me as persuasive and deeply troubling.
The point is modest – scroll less, read more – but the tone is grandiose ... The readerly bicep Marriott likes flashing is rarely as firm as it looks ... His advocacy for books relies on browbeating hyperbole ... The sense grows that lofty proclamations and punchy quips aren’t enough to keep the book afloat in deep waters ... A thesis whose apocalyptic urgency fizzles out in equivocating caveats.
This is gloomy stuff, but Marriott is in good company ... Introducing a healthy dose of perspective, Marriott points out that the decline of reading predates the internet ... His brisk polemic aims to poke and provoke, and does so with his customary wit and acuity, although the peppy agnosticism that animates his newspaper columns feels a little strained at book length ... Having doom-mongered at length, Marriott concludes on a jarringly upbeat note ... The complexity of our cultural moment is right there on the page, in the contortions of a writer caught between opposed sensibilities, trying to face both ways at once.
At first blush it is a sweeping thesis, but Marriott sustains his paean to print with panache ... Margins supply some of Marriott’s most compelling evidence for the interactive nature of texts. Old volumes bristle with the traces of engagement: underlinings, agreements and objections ... Marriott happily advances the heretical proposition that some habits are better than others, and that difficult high culture may actually be good for us. But he is coy about his elitism, and one wishes he were a touch more unabashed.
Lively but heartbreaking ... What's a concerned bibliophile to do? Marriott's answer, winningly if ironically, was to write a book. It's a good one ... One could have a vigorous debate over whether smartphones are inherently more corrosive than, say, the equally ubiquitous penny dreadfuls of the 19th century. That this book raises the question in the first place, however, is to its credit. Like-minded souls won't be cheered by this exceptional work, but it's always nice to know one isn't alone.
The inevitable end point of the genre: heavy on lofty moral lectures but stripped almost entirely of scientific literacy or curiosity ... On the positive side, The New Dark Ages has probably the best prose of its genre. The writing is earnest and engaging ... A banal remake of complaints old people have been making for 2,500 years ... Like others in its genre, The New Dark Ages provides a trite but emotionally appealing narrative that flattens a complicated set of data into a sweeping moral story.
The book is best when mining reading’s historical import ... Marriott also explores how reading is associated with autonomy, such as in stories of enslaved people learning to read, and he forges rich connections between the contemporary 'post-literate future' and the 'pre-literate past' ... However, the book loses steam when Marriott shifts to well-worn critiques about the internet’s 'nihilistic tornado of content.' Still, it’s a passionate argument for reading’s power.
Densely packed, extensively researched ... Marriott brings an expansive historical framework to his persuasive argument, yet his prose remains brisk and engaging—ideal, perhaps, for the attention-challenged readers most in need of this provocative volume ... A timely, incisive argument for reading as a vital defense against the screen-driven erosion of modern civilization.
