The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing - by Sven Birkerts (Paperback)

About the Book

One of America's most honored essayists, Sven Birkerts returns with a riveting collection. In The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing, Birkerts reflects on questions every writer grapples with: What does it mean to write today?

Book Synopsis

One of America's most honored and respected essayists, Sven Birkerts, returns with a riveting new collection. In The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing, Birkerts reflects on fundamental questions every writer grapples with at one time or another: "Ah, the old questions, the good questions, the questions that seem so very basic on the surface, but then you get caught in the implications and realize that they go on and on and that you'll only go crazy trying to answer them." What does it mean to be a writer today, when so many other media compete for audiences? With the humanities seemingly everywhere in retreat, Birkerts probes the singular possibilities offered by a fixed text in a world dominated by social media. Meditating on everything from smart phones to photography, Borges to Dylan, Birkerts proves that "the right words in the right order" continue to offer readers a pathway through the labyrinth.

Review Quotes

"In a time of literary and cultural earthquakes, Sven Birkerts is an alert and humane first responder. Immersing yourself in these marvelously readable essays is like overhearing your smartest, most lucid friend's inmost thoughts about the life of writing, in which creative inwardness continues to engage our increasingly shifty world."

-David Gates

author of A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

"More open and liberating than a manifesto; unlike a rigid rule-book, relaxed and improvisatory, jazz-like. Genuinely exploratory and honest, this is a truly inspiring exercise in and about writing. Not only the book as a whole, each paragraph, from sentence to sentence!"

-Amitava Kumar

author of My Beloved Life: A Novel

"I love Sven Birkerts' essays-reading them feels like taking a walk with a friend, if that friend lets me tell him exactly what I wanted to hear about (structure, personas, author photos, Bob Dylan) and asks for nothing in return but my presence and my pleasure. This is an enveloping, insightful book about writing, thinking, all that 'inward sifting and shaping of experience, ' and what it means to be a self."

-Elisa Gabbert

author of Any Person Is the Only Self

"Birkerts' rich essays are at once exhilarating and revelatory, illuminating literature, language, photography and the world as we know it, and in ways entirely new. He raises urgent questions about our intellectual and aesthetic future."

-Claire Messud

author of This Strange Eventful History

Sven Birkerts, proponent and practitioner of the contemporary personal essay, has a new collection, The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing. Birkerts reflects on the fundamental joys and frustrations of putting words on the page, especially now, in a world distracted by media, social media, influencers, AI, and everything-it seems at times-except the wisdom of books and authors.

Dinty Moore, Brevity Blog