On Browsing (trade paper)

Description

A defense of the dying art of losing an afternoonand gaining new appreciationamidst the bins and shelves of brick-and-mortar shops.Written during the pandemic, when the world was marooned at home and consigned to scrolling screens,On Browsings essays chronicle what weve lost through online shopping, streaming, and the relentless digitization of culture. The latest in the Field Notes series,On Browsingis an elegy for physical media, a polemic in defense of perusing the world in person, and a love letter to the dying practice of scanning bookshelves, combing CD bins, and losing yourself in the stacks.Praise forOn BrowsingA mall parking lot, a defunct record store, the lingering crease on a book coveracross the all-flattening boundary of the digital age, Guriel recalls what it meant to access the universal one particular, physical piece at a time.Tom Scocca, author ofBeijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the FuturePraise forForgotten WorkA futuristic dystopian rock novel in rhymed couplets, this rollicking book is as unlikely, audacious and ingenious as the premise suggests.New York TimesA wondrous novel.Ron Charles,Washington PostWhat do you get when you throw John Shade, Nick Drake, Don Juan, Sarah Records, and Philip K. Dick into a rhymed couplet machine? Equal parts memory and forgetting, detritus and elegy, imagination and fancy,Forgotten Workcould be the most singular novel-in-verse since Vikram SethsThe Golden Gate. Thanks to Jason Guriels dexterity in metaphor-making, I found myself stopping and rereading every five lines or so, to affirm my surprise and delight.Stephen MetcalfThis book has no business being as good as it is. Heroic couplets in the twenty-first century? Its not a promising idea, butForgotten Workis intelligent, fluent, funny, and wholly original. I cant believe it exists.Christian Wiman