“It was a matter of immediate response on the part of writers that their task as writers would be from now on the etiolation, the evolving of self-portrait, an image. There was no such impulse or response in the Middle Ages, when they had the scribe-and-manuscript culture, or in the ancient world. It was with the coming of the printed book that people suddenly felt the need to reflect, to bounce their image off this public as a form of self-expression, self-portraiture.”