Summary of Sven Birkerts- The Owl Has Flown-

In his essay, Birkerts explains how vitally important reading and thinking is. He points out that reading is somewhat invisible to us these days, how we lack the interest of learning everything that a writer may be addressing or telling in his essay/article. Birkerts then begins to tell his readers how by going way back into the earlier days, he notices that people had but a few books -all written by hand- would go over and over that same book, page by page again and again until he understood everything that was being told in the story, but that it all changed when they began to print newspapers, magazines,brochures, advertisements and labels. He explains how people today read more but don't get everything that is being taught or said in what they're reading. " The reader tends to move across surfaces, skimming, hastening from one site to the next without allowing the words to resonate inwardly ". We read fast through essay's, articles, quotes, stories and books, but only get" bits of pieces " Birkerts implies. With that said, he explains how we are shifting from vertical to horizontal reading, vertical reading is one who reads about a topic thoroughly and gains a lot of information about it, therefore becoming somewhat an expert about it, where as horizontal reading is one whom only gets those " bits of pieces " of what they're reading and doesn't gain a real knowledge . It's this transition Birkert implies we are going, from vertical to horizontal reading. Wisdom, what do we think wisdom is ? Wisdom, says Birkerts, is one who reads vertical, the person that understands and reads carefully, therefore gaining that " wisdom, the knowing not of facts but of truths. In Birkerts ending paragraph he expresses the importance of vertical reading, and the way we ourselves could indeed become good readers. " True reading is hard ", but can be obtained if we have the desire.