experience. It is fitting that they should be the first to record 
the break-up of this typographically created unity under the 
impact of non-verbal media. In the electronic age Simone de 
Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre declaim in tragic mode in What is  
Literature?  the dilemma of “For whom does one write?”

     An editorial comment on Simone de Beauvoir in Encounter  
(August, 1955) helps very much to relate the new clamorous 
voices of the Gutenberg era with the phenomenon of 
nationalism. The editor is considering the nature of fame and 
enduring reputation:

     . . . and to obtain this it is almost necessary, in our age, 
     to be a member of a national community that has, along 
     with whatever moral and aesthetic excellences, the quite 
     vulgar quality of being in some degree powerful—of being