That Radical New Invention - The Printed Book

Traditionalists despised Gutenberg's technology. Check out Robert Pinsky's consideration of Andrew Pettegree's The Book in the Renaissance (Yale, 421 pages, $40). New York Times Book Review: "The 'fluid, transitional nature of communication' during printing’s first heyday naturally attracted detractors. 'This is what the printing presses do: they corrupt susceptible hearts' wrote the 'dyspeptic Benedictine' Filippo de Strata. Clumsy and unreliable editions led to 'the charge that print had debased the book.' By making book ownership more common, print also 'diminished the lustre of the Renaissance library,' causing many collections to dwindle or dissolve altogether as 'the library as a cultural institution struggled to adapt to the new age.'" Sound familiar?