Storytelling in the Digital Age

Through a professional story-teller's sometimes humorous commentary on culture and literature from The Odyssey on , the book suggests that literature is not an artifact to be studied but a living process. Often irreverent, crossing literary and scholarly lines, Penn aims to discover what literature does for an imaginatively engaged reader.

'Original in its observations, its tone, and its attractively quirky manner, Storytelling in the Digital Age is a project of great significance Penn's style is informal, sometimes chatty - although admirably very far from chummy a very strong piece of work.' - Arnold Krupat, Professor Emeritus, Sarah Lawrence College, USA "W.S. Penn has written a gripping, uncompromising, epigrammatic set of arguments for the illuminating and even salvific power of Literature in a tech-crazy age where texting has eviscerated thought, feeling, and individuality. Penn skillfully interweaves provocative commentary about our narcissistic culture's triviality binge, with textured and arresting readings of authors you thought you knew - and authors you'll wish you knew better. This is an essential book for teachers, writers, and culture mavens. Riveting!" - Lev Raphael, author of Book Lust! (Essays for Book Lovers) "This book is a delight to sample as well as to read straight through. Not so much an argument as a series of positions taken - and wide-ranging, well-considered ones - Storytelling in a Digital Age offers the distillate of a lifetime of reading and writing and teaching. Wholly, W. S. Penn's text earns its final sentence: 'Literature is a little work for a lot of joy.'" - Nicholas Delbanco, Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English, University of Michigan, USA and author of The Art of Youth

W. S. Penn is Distinguished Faculty in the Deptartment of English at Michigan State University, USA.