The Flickering Page: The Reading Experience in Digital Times

by M. Allen Cunningham, M. Allen Cunningham

A provocative casebook for our digital times, this book is designed to jumpstart an in-depth dialogue about the historical, cultural, civic, and scientific implications of a mass shift in reading methods. Each chapter is broken down in a visual way through bullet points, bolding, and illustrations combined with descriptive paragraphs that both engage and inform the reader. This small volume weaves together some of the most cogent thought of the past 50 years, urging readers to consider anew the many questions about our "technological revolution" that remain far from settled. The chapters “The Technology of Individualism,” “Technology & Ideology,” and “Neuroplasticity.”

116 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2014

About the author

M. Allen Cunningham published his debut novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow at age 26. Set in nineteenth-century Northern California, The Green Age served as the inaugural title for independent publisher Unbridled Books, was widely acclaimed, was selected by the American Booksellers Association as a #1 Indie Next Pick, was a Finalist for the Indie Next Book of the Year Award in a shortlist with Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, and Joyce Carol Oates' The Falls, was named a “Best Book of the West” in the Salt Lake Tribune, was a USA Today Novel to Watch, and was dubbed a "Regional Classic" by the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association. Foreword Reviews praised The Green Age as "a feat reminiscent of William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness," and later called Cunningham "one of America's most promising voices." Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler called the novel "a startling accomplishment," and Booklist said it "displays a mastery that is surprising in a novelistic debut." The Green Age was published in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland by Atrium Verlag. Audible released an audio edition in 2014.

Three years after his debut, Cunningham released Lost Son (Unbridled Books), an experimental biographical novel about Rainer Maria Rilke which was the culmination of more than 10 years of reading, writing, research, and travel. Ihab Hassan, one of the 20th century's most distinguished critics, said "the magic of Rilke reach[es] out from every page," and called Lost Son "a subtle and signal imaginative achievement, putting readers on notice: an extraordinary talent has come upon the scene." Lost Son was added to the official Rilke bibliography by a consortium of European scholars. Cunningham was interviewed at length alongside Russell Banks, Michael Cunningham, Anita Diamant, Ron Hansen, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jay Parini for the book Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists (Bloomsbury, 2014, ed. Michael Lackey). Lost Son receives in-depth consideration in scholar Zivile Gimbutas' study of 20th-century artist novels entitled Artistic Individuality, where it is featured beside the work of authors Willa Cather, James Joyce, John Updike, and Virginia Woolf. Lost Son was listed as a Top 10 Book of 2007 in The Oregonian, and reviewer Vernon Peterson said "Cunningham's writing is beautiful and fluid. I found myself torn, lingering over passages and yet eager to rush on...But I'm not sure it's right to see Lost Son simply as a fictional biography of Rilke. It is also Cunningham's spiritual autobiography, his own fierce identification with the poet's commitment to art...mesmerizing."

Cunningham has subsequently published six other books, including the novel Perpetua's Kin (2018), a multi-generational story about American restlessness and the residual effects of war that spans most of North America over more than a century. "With Perpetua's Kin," says Pulitzer Prize Finalist Eowyn Ivey, "M. Allen Cunningham once again demonstrates he is one of the bravest and most talented novelists writing today. With each page we gain the greatest gift of fiction: an insight into our own trembling humanity."

Cunningham's shorter work has appeared widely in distinguished literary journals and magazines, and his new book Q&A will appear from Regal House Publishing in January 2021.

He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University, an instructor for Clackamas Community College, teaches advanced creative writing for UC Berkeley's ATDP, and has served as a guest lecturer and thesis advisor in the Pan-European MFA Program.

Cunningham hosts the weekly creativity podcast In the Atelier and the atmospheric Thoreau's Leaves