Late last year as I walked my son to elementary school, I said,
"So, I'm thinking of getting dad a Kindle for his birthday. What do you think?"
"Isn't that something to do with starting fires?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
"Hmm, yes. But a Kindle--uppercase K--is also a thing you can read books on. Paper-free."
"Cool!"
As I psyched myself up to order an e-reader, I had mixed emotions.
I am an old school book person. I revere books; I have done so all my life. My father's library in Iran was my favorite childhood spot, where I sat on the floor nose-deep in Encyclopedia Britannica. As I later grew up in England, I swept through the classics by author, book by book. Now that I am living in America with my own family, books continue to be my bible.
But in our modest family home, the bookshelves are at full capacity, the book-baskets overflow, and a towering stack of hard and soft covers rises ominously in my bedroom threatening to topple at any moment.
Before I visited the Amazon website, I talked to a fellow mom who had an e-reader.
"I love it," she effused. "We went sailing this summer and I didn't have to lug any books. You can even read the newspaper on it."
Ka-ching. At the checkout I upgraded the Kindle to a model with global wireless. I threw in a black cover.
At first the clicking sound of pages 'turning' bugged me, but I got used to it. I also got used to my husband tapping out word definitions for me, as I lay in bed with a 1-pound weight on my chest. (I will not divulge how many pounds my Oxford dictionaries weigh--think ballast.) Whenever I finished a book late at night, I got the shakes. When he did, he hit download.
Early this year at the bookstore I walked smack into a Nook stand--and I am not talking about a nook of books. This Barnes & Noble e-reader joins the likes of Kindle and Sony Reader. And today Apple will reveal the much anticipated and undoubtedly slicker iPad.
We are on the cusp of a future already rewriting itself.
To me, Kindle is like the first Black and White TV that showed up in living rooms, the kind that streaked like a zebra in motion and crackled like a kid's walkie-talkie, the kind that required antennae-fiddling to get a clear picture and decent sound, the kind that families increasingly bought and sat around.
Radio as a source of entertainment faded fast. Of course, it is still around and has diehard fans, but the Flat Screen digital behemoth in my basement reigns supreme.
When it comes to books, I have come to terms with the fact that it is the written word that counts, not the medium upon which it is delivered. Is this excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass any less beautiful for being read on a screen?
"...It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd..."
I will read and love Walt Whitman's poetry type-faced in an antique book, scratched on an old wooden school desk, scribbled on a scrap of toilet paper. One day I too will read and love Leaves of Grass on a hand-held device.
In our ever-changing world, what we need to be concerned about as a global community of readers, writers and thinkers (that covers all of us, I believe) is content.
We need to preserve and protect standards of writing. In an online article in the New York Times today, a source familiar with the iTablet said of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple,
"He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press."
Frankly, Steve Jobs could not have said it better. Let us treasure the written word by ensuring the survival of professional writers and the industries that support them.
Recently my son wrote a school paper about our attic, which happens to be his favorite place. He wrote,
"It smells like old books."
Will books, as we know them, be the norm in say fifty years? No. Does that mean we burn the books? Never. Should we conserve the well-written word along with the branches of trees? Absolutely.
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We all read differently and people who have grown up reading print between covers will read differently than those who have grown up walking around with only slabs of screen filled with pixels, bells and whistles. Do we know what this means for reading? For comprehension? For the patience quotient needed when confronted by a densely packed screen of pixilated letters? Will skim and surf get screen readers through _Moby Dick_? Will attention spans that require 140 character twitters suddenly expand to take in the ruminations of Faulkner's "Benjy"? Will video game joy stick skills cross over into the realm understanding and appreciation of poetry's subtleties?
As do I and I would guess most readers who grew up with books and have continued to make books important parts of their lives. This, however, is not the experience nor the path most young screen readers will be taking if the titans of tech have their way And the roll over publishing world, to their own detriment, will enable this devolution. Screens may look like paper and, who knows, press a button and whiff of ink on paper may waft into the booth at a Starbucks virtual library. But kids brought up playing on machines, gurgling to each other constantly on machines, will not read on machines with attention and intensity.
The moment calls for dramatic hyperbole: Civilization is turning a corner and is happily proceeding down a junk strewn alley.
I don't mind having, reading or storing books. Moving them is what kills me.
Now if you assume that people only buy new books and throw them in the garbage once they have read them, then maybe the Kindle has a smaller footprint. But that's not always the case. Many people use libraries or shop in used book stores. Many people share books. If a book becomes so decrepit that it is no longer useful it can be popped in the recycling bin. People HATE to throw books away but will they have a problem tossing a Kindle in the landfill should they decide to switch brands?
Let's also consider the population of the world 50 years from now- If the world population stays flat at 6 Billion and the adult literacy rate is 50% and half of the population is an adult and half of them read, that's 1.5 Billion ereaders in circulation. Plus all the ereaders that have been tossed, lost, damaged or rendered obsolete by an upgrade. In the long run, I have to question the sustainability and environmental impact of e readers vs. traditional books.
I love trees too but let's recognize that there is more to nature than the trees and there is more to an object's footprint than its production.
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/north-pacific-gyre-million-tons-garbage-growing/14477
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plastic-Plastic-Everywhere-Algalita.htm
But I can't help my devotion to the oft repeated, oft mourned sanctity of the book. I think that in a culture of increasing digitization (sigh, "information age" being so overused) and comfy convenience (we want everything fast!) we forget the value of some simple bodily experiences, such as sweeping, licking an envelope to send a letter, examining a print photograph - and of the book itself. Not that I'm a pseudo-luddite; I appreciate the global contact, democratization of information & media/art, and the dialogues the internet provides - after all, I'm posting on the HP and digging it!
But there's something like sorcery, uninsulated and involving rather than electronically remote, in the highly tactile experience of walking into a library, passing strangers and inhaling dust, finding call numbers and running hands over spines... until there it is, that title, that tattered corner - and then the simple physicality of the moment of opening and touching the title page.
Not everything need be instantaneous and convenient, and while I'm not against the Kindle, I hopefully believe that some others feel this way too.
But, while I wince at the hosts of asinine remarks online, I believe the democratic nature of internet texts to be good; everybody and their brother, sister, and cat really can be a writer. This is important in an increasingly profit-oriented publishing world, and particularly given that marginalized voices in minorities, other nations, and "lower" classes have a new opportunity for a expression, because while the history of the book is enthralling, it also chronicles a dominant class (canonical "rich white dudes") ruling the discourse.
Moreover, e-readers could hypothetically (with decreased prices and wider distribution, which is probably not going to happen) provide otherwise inaccessible literary works to those not lucky enough to trot to the library or B&N, like me and most affluent Americans. Perhaps literacy could be fostered, as well, though I doubt that's the Kindle's focus at this point.
As for environmental footprints, I've wondered about the Kindle as eco-friendly, which makes sense in some ways - but Jessiaia's comment (above) makes me think, too....
If there's a danger, I think, it's that the wonder of literature and words themselves is often abandoned in a flurry of easy, deletable or infinitely preservable, careless typing. We don't remember how marvelous it is.
Although, and color me nostalgic if you must, I still love paper books...the smell, the weight, the entire content of the story in my hands page by page, letter after letter. There's something singularly satisfying, if not magical, about a novel; relatively unchanged in overt construction for hundreds of years and still just as valid a form of literature today as it was when created entirely by hand, thousands of years ago.
There's something entirely delightful about holding the complete 'Lord of the Rings' epic in my hands...not just a page at a time but each and every letter and punctuation mark Tolkien put down in print. Yes, photocopied of course, but still, the essence is still there as close as it can be from the original pen and ink.
Amazon decides it doesn't like the version of Moby Dick you have on your Kindle and without so much as an "excuse me" pops on your "paper-less book" and removes the files and then refunds your money making everything fine, yes?
Ironically, the books in question that Amazon removed from Kindle? Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm".
I'll lug my books and my 'literary' integrity all on my own, thanks.