"In the heart of every notary lies the moldy remains of a poet"
Gustave Flaubert "Madame Bovary"
This is a diary that was specifically inspired by a brief dialogue I had with Limelite after I responded to the diary Do you 'Lendle' which was the introduction of what is perhaps the next logical step to the digitization of books and stories, and the ability to read them on an e-book. Since literature is seemingly reduced to 'files' and these files, as most of us are aware, can easily morph between devices and users, it seems inevitable that they will be shared, copied, edited, posted, and beaten into whatever shape the end user chooses. It will be fun, maybe to contemplate what the authors think about all this
One of the questions I occasionally ask myself is 'How much of a Luddite am I anyway? Do I really want to Smash the new knitting machines and believe in the mythical King Ludd? And how does this tie into how a middle aged person sees himself, as young enough to be contemptuous of the sclerotic thinking of the older generation, and yet old enough to look at the tastes and choices of the younger generation with a mixture of bemusement and derision? Periodically something comes along that for me puts this issue into focus - unlike writing on my Mac Powerbook, which is what I am doing - and I submit that this device is the e-reader.
I must admit that when this device was first marketed, my first thought was derision. Why on earth would anyone buy this, and who would want to transpose what I thought of as the magical act of reading to a screen? Sure the immediate advantages were obvious, in terms of access to books: ever try carrying ten hardcovers with you when you travel? Moreover the economics seemed clear then as well, once you made the initial cash outlay:I certainly never thought anyone would pay more than a small fraction for an electronic copy of something that a good hardcover fetched. Nevertheless, I remembered the Cybok Gen1, a sort of 'Lisa' of the e-reader as compared to today's 'Powerbook' Kindle - and how badly it flopped. People really wanted to replicate the experience of reading words off a printed page, including holding something in your hands that felt like a book, and it was years before the technology caught up with this fact. I think this was why Steve Jobs, who certainly was all about designing technology that fit in with the way people were and how they wanted to use it, never made a serious effort to develop e-books. Either that, or he had too many memories of wandering the beaches of Oregon and California with a paperback in his back pocket.
Yet now we have the kindle and other devices similar. They seem to be a success at last, if the chatter and speculation about how many of the doggone things Amazon actually sells are anything to go by. And even if people move on to other e-readers, or Apple's multipurpose devices which seem to win in the end (again, I am reminded on what I am crafting this on) It seems that reading electronically, virtual pages are quite likely here to stay.
Which brings us to this 'lendle' site that was so well covered by the referenced diary. I see a similarity between this and another site which suddenly came up 12 years ago: Napster. The similarities are in my view too striking to ignore: A new site exploiting a disruptive technology for the use of its members well before any copyright issues are fully worked out; the conflicting needs of consumers and artists who after all deserve to get something in terms of compensation or royalties or simple acknowledgement, and the profound difference between lending out a single copy of a book and sharing a file which can be duplicated an infinity of times. Plus I have the suspicion that the meme of 'information wants to be free' is or soon will be behind this idea. And even if not; even if the motives behind the site are purely ones for spreading art and literature to as many as can be bothered to look, I still fear a bit for the consequences. The Luddite in me, you see; I get nervous about 'disruptive' technologies. In the case of Napster, the technology disrupted popular music all right - disrupted it right into the ground. And now it sucks, by and large. Disagree with me? Well, then observe the Sales of recorded music - both physical and digital. Or perhaps you would care to see what the readers of Rolling Stone (not the critics) have chosen as theBest live acts of all time Notice that the most recent band is pearl jam, who started back when I was a student (As an occasional devotee of progressive rock and heavy metal I would add Rush, Iron Maiden, Yes, and Metallica to the list; also bands that started more than 30 years ago)
One writer I can think of who has spoken and written much on this theme is Harlan Ellison. For those who are unfamiliar with his work or are not slavering fanboys and fangirls, given the high quality and mindblowing nature of his stories, Mr Ellison is a writer who had to sue AOL for copyright violations. Furthermore, as the following video shows, I think his attitude to free access to the writers work is pretty clear (warning, as befits Harlan's style, there is liberal use of the 'F' word)
And, if that weren't enough, I have had the privilege of conversing with this gifted and super-articulate writer and this subject came up. As one would think, he likes the actual book, something to lean up against himself as he falls asleep. More poignantly, he sent my wife and I a signed copy of Slippagewhen he heard she was ill. It sits up on my bookshelf, in my library, alongside signed copies of books by William Gibson, Sam Delany, and even my autographed first edition of Stryer's 'Biochemistry' (just to tell you from what generation I come from). These are tangible things I value, hard to replicate electronically. And I completely agree with him about the writer or the film director or the musician deserving to get paid for their work, even as I write for free because I'm not good enough to actually charge for mine.
I'll quote Harlan one more time, because it goes to the other point I would make about the e-reader and the way it dramatizes the price of progress. We all love progress. We're progressives, after all. I mentioned how much I dislike aged, sclerotic thinking which retards progress. And yet I am conscious of how much is given up sometimes, in the race to get whatever is newer, faster, more convenient. This is illustrated so well In Harlan Ellison's heartbreaking short story "Jeffty is Five":
"Things are better in a lot of ways. People don't die from some of the old diseases anymore. Cars go faster and get you there more quickly on better roads. Shirts are softer and silkier. We have paperback books, even thought they cost as much as a good hardcover used to. When I'm running short in the bank, I can live off credit cards until things even out. But I still think we've lost a lot of good stuff. Did you know you can't buy linoleum anymore, only vinyl floor covering? There's no such thing as oilcloth anymore; you'll never again smell that special sweet smell from your grandmother's kitchen. Furniture isn't made to last thirty years or longer because they took a survey and found that young homemakers like to throw their furniture out and bring in all new color-coded borax every seven years. Records don't feel right. . .Restaurants don't serve cream in pitchers any more; just that artificial glop in little plastic tubs, and one is never enough to get coffee the right color. You can make a dent in a car fender with a sneaker"
May I now state what is obvious: that my favorite room in my house is my home office/library? I have lined the walls with bookshelves that hold most of the books I have read as a child and an adult; I hate to get rid of them, even the mediocre ones. Where I can go and leisurely browse through 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Dhalgren' and 'Gravity's Rainbow' and the works of Shakespeare. I can unwind, surrounded by my books, some of which traveled with me through some of the less fun periods of my life, like the summer camp I was forced to go to, or my combat casualty care course in South Texas during summer, or indeed during my seven month deployment to Iraq in 2004. Or alternatively I can take down the copy I have of David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" and still see the sea salt stains on the pages and think of my vacation in Jamaica and what a roaring good time I had with my wife when we were there.
And yet there is another side, a but. . .my inner millennial says. What about authors perhaps more obscure than Tolkien or Shakespeare that still bear reading? Shouldn't anything that leads to literacy be valued? After all I am old enough (I tell my inner millennial) to remember when books you wanted were out of print and there was no eBay or Amazon to get them from when you felt like reading them. And after all, even my library can handle only so many volumes. Maybe there is more worth reading than what I can buy. Recently in fact the New Yorker had an article on 18th century author Wilkie Collins by Jonathan Rosen and commented quite favorably on two of his novels (which I haven't yet read) "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone". My aforesaid Library has "A Tale of Two Cities" and "David Copperfield" and "A Christmas Carol" in a prominent place, but I doubt I'll ever find room for "The Moonstone", even if I ever do get around to reading it. And I think the author of the piece expressed a similar sentiment even after reading the work.
One other question occurs to me: how does this new method of getting words in front of eyeballs figure into the effort to preserve works of literature? Not just in the immediate future, but for the distant future, as if in one thousand years, assuming that there is anyone around who cares, will our works of today stay preserve or simply be lost? The only reason we still have some of the works from the Greek and Roman era (including the bible, I can't resist saying) is because they were laboriously copied from generation to generation. Indeed, in Steven Greenblatt's 'the Swerve', the story is detailed how the Roman poet Lucretius "De Rarum Naturah heavily influenced the enlightenment and strongly shaped the modern world - was saved from permanent oblivion because a bibliophile former apostolic secretary had a thing for going into obscure monasteries and copying manuscripts that might have been copies from antiquity. Had he not, this work, like many others, would have been lost to time and
bookworms
And this, really is the core of my worry about the new e-readers: that more and more, the authors themselves will become convinced that the sweat and heart and craft of making a monumental or original work of literature or non-fiction will become simply not worth the effort. That they will be silenced by the realities of remaining uncompensated for their work, or simply the notion of its impermanence. I am not a professional writer, but i know enough to perceive that the craft of writing, like the craft of music, or poetry, or making love is learned through repetition, through (at times painful) trial and error, and learned through time. That hearing the muse is not enough if starvation threatens, and if there is not some reward at the end of the tunnel, and if something else beckons, as it did for me. We Luddites are OK with the past; the past will take care of itself. It is merely for the future that we worry, from time to time.
DAY |
TIME (EST/EDT) |
Series Name |
Editor(s) |
SUN |
3:00 PM (intermittent) |
The Magic Theater |
ArkDem14 |
SUN |
6:00 PM |
Young Reader's Pavilion |
The Book Bear |
SUN |
9:30 PM |
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club |
quarkstomper |
TUE |
8:00 PM |
Readers & Book Lovers Newsletter |
Limelite |
WED |
7:30 AM |
WAYR? |
plf515 |
WED |
8:00 PM |
Bookflurries: Bookchat |
cfk |
THU |
2:00 PM (bi-weekly) |
eReaders & Book Lovers Club |
Limelite |
THU |
8:00 PM |
Write On! |
SensibleShoes |
FRI |
9:00 AM |
Books That Changed My Life |
etbnc, aravir |
FRI |
10:00 PM (first of month) |
Monthly Bookposts |
AdmiralNaismith |
SAT |
9:00 PM |
Books So Bad They're Good |
Ellid |