WITH A TITLE LIKE that you’re probably expecting some sort of Luddite screed from a hopeless romantic who somehow managed to mislay his ticket for the high-tech express. But this will be nothing of the sort. Like many, perhaps most contributors to this site, I basically live online. Without computers and the Internet I would not be able to earn a living and inform myself. Nor am I against electronic reading devices per se. In fact, I would be very interested in a device that would facilitate my reading of blogs, online newspaper and magazine articles, Wikipedia, reference works, data banks etc. In other words: I would use it to manage the ephemeral substance of which the Internet is made.
And yet I draw the line at works of literature, and here’s why: Back when I was a child (and today too, in fact) there was a series called the “I Can Read It All By Myself Beginner Books.” Even then, I thought this name was brilliant. I grew up in a house full of books, and as a toddler I longed for the day when I would be able to read The Cat in the Hat and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish all by myself and then display my prowess to my parents and elder siblings. This sense of accomplishment from reading an entire book all by myself persisted when I tackled far more ambitious projects, such as Tintin and Snowy in King Ottokar’s Sceptre or the beautifully illustrated The Adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table that I still display on my bookshelf here in Berlin. And once I finished a book, I wanted to display it as a sort of trophy, as if to say: Yes, I really read this. All. By. My. Self. That’s why I always had a hard time returning books to the library as a child: I wanted to keep every book because, by golly, I had earned it!
In fact, this feeling of pride has lasted to the present day, whether it’s a matter of a work of heavy literature or else a book of history or philosophy. My shelves and shelves of books on American and European history, on the Soviet Union and communism, the Third Reich and East Germany, Swedish cultural history, the artistic vision of William Morris, and on my favorite field – alternative movements and the history of travel in Germany between the two world wars – all chronicle years of research and teaching both inside and outside the university. My life has changed a great deal since then. Without the books, I might easily forget what I once accomplished - and what I still could accomplish if I set my mind to it.
Well, it's a job just like any other. Good work with lots of variety. Monday, we burn Miller; Tuesday, Tolstoy; Wednesday, Walt Whitman; Friday, Faulkner; and Saturday and Sunday, Schopenhauer and Sartre. We burn them to ashes and then burn the ashes. That's our official motto.
And then there are all the foreign-language books, both fiction and non-fiction. What an accomplishment they record! In her novel The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova writes:
Since that moment, I have known many times what I first experienced then… Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light…
This achievement calls for celebration – or at least for some sort of commemoration. For example, as a student, I spent months reading through Zola’s novels in the original, and today my paperback collection of Les Rougon-Maquart takes up about six proud inches of shelf-space. The stacks of Balzac, Voltaire, Maupassant, Michel Tournier etc. recall years of hard work and profound satisfaction. Two books by Alberto Moravia and a scattering of other Italian novels recall the period when I dedicated myself to that language.
Ah, now this one must be very profound.
The Ethics of Aristotle. Now anybody that read that
must believe he's a cut above anybody that hadn't. You
see, it's no good, Montag. We've all got to be alike.
The beautifully bound novels of Selma Lagerlöf and August Strindberg, most of them over a century old, which I picked up in used bookshops in Gothenburg and Stockholm, chronicle my years of involvement with Swedish language and culture. Right now I’m reading the crime novels of Stieg Larsson, with Män som hatar kvinnor (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) down and two more to go – a slow process (I read about half as fast as in English) but a rewarding one. When I’m done, the three of them will take up about five inches of shelf space, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to trade that visible sign of accomplishment for a few invisible megabytes on an e-reader.
Everyone knows that the books on a shelf instantly say something about their owner – although not necessarily things the owner wish others to learn. Paul Fussell had fun with this in his book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System:
As readers, proles are honest, never trying to fake effects or simulate interest in higher things. It’s among the middle class that tastes in reading get really interesting, because it’s only here that pretense, fraud, and misrepresentation enter. The uppers don’t care what you think about their reading, and neither do the proles. The poor anxious middle class is the one that wants you to believe it reads “the best literature,” and condemnatory expressions like trash or rubbish are often on its lips. It is the natural audience for the unreadable second-rate pretentious, books by James Gould Cozzens, John Steinbeck, Pearl Buck, Lawrence Durrell…, the mass merchandise of Herman Wouk, John Hersey, and Irwin Shaw, and the Durants’ history of philosophy. … It’s in the middle-class dwelling that you’re likely to spot the fifty-four volume set of the Great Books… because the middles, the great audience for how-to books, believe in authorities. Thus it serves as the classic market for encyclopedias.
These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be.
I have other reasons too, of course, most of which deal with esthetics and my hesitation to entrust my personal reading tastes and habits to an opportunistic corporation such as Amazon or Apple. I also feel a vain desire to separate work from leisure. Just as I don’t wish to read a novel on a screen, I refuse to watch a movie on my PC. There’s a time and place for everything, and there’s a very real danger that I’ll start reading e-mails in the middle of The Ghostwriter. And just how long will my "e-books" remain technically compatible? I've got books on my shelf dating from the nineteenth century and I can still read them just fine using my bare eyes. At the same time, I've still got floppy disks kicking around whose pre-Windows contents can and will never be read again. If this is Luddism, let me make the most of it.
Call it a book fetish if you like. I realize that it’s all posturing and anti-social behavior. “You see, it’s no good, Montag,” the fire captain says in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. “We've all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal. So we must burn the books!” And I’m not sure the man doesn’t have a point somewhere. I often think I would be happier committing my own unwieldy library to the flames and dedicating the new space my sacrifice would open up to – well, to light and air, not to bulky, moldering paper and heavy ideas that lead to dusty death.
Come on, Montag. All this philosophy,
let's get rid of it. It's even worse
than the novels.
But where I really reject the e-book craze is when it comes to my own books. My sixth novel is coming out in two weeks, and the previous five – all nicely bound with stunningly beautiful covers, IMHO – enjoy a place of honor on my shelf, as do my non-fiction books and my protracted, frequently troublesome translations of other works. This most modest of collections represents more than a decade of hard work and poverty and dedication. And for what? At least I’ve got a shelf-full of printed books to show for my efforts. And now I’m supposed to trade that in for a scattering of electrons? As Charlie Cowell says to Marian the Librarian in The Music Man: “Not on your tintype!”
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Comments
Exactly! The books in a person's home say volumes (hah!) about who they are, and like you, I feel like if I've read it, having it on display for ever after is a badge of accomplishment. I was saddened that you don't like the Durants' though; I read their 11 volume history of the world by the time I was twelve or so, and it still takes up nearly a meter of space on my shelves. I can't even imagine trying to read something like that (or anything else really) on a Kindle.
Thanks. I have no objection whatsoever to the Durants but was merely quoting from Fussell's curmudgeonly but illuminating book!
I'm all for technical competence, but it sounds like those toddlers are being raised to be apps!
I remember a friend who told me that the women she knew at home in leafy Surrey came to her home for tea one day and looked at all of her books. They told her she should put them away or somehow be rid of them. They were not aesthetically pleasing. She looked so sad. Why did she listen for a minute? This was about 20 years ago.
"These are not your friends if they don't understand why you have books in bookcases in your lounge/living room. Your books are your friends. They speak to you. They speak of you. If they will not look, how will they know you?"
Yes.
Somehow e'books just don't cut it for me. For one thing, looking at a computer screen tends to make me sleepy! I prefer a paper book, that I can close up on a bookmark, and come back to when I feel like it. I also like to see all those books at a glance, so if I choose to read one again it's right there. I'd hate to have to page through an index!
I also like you, don't trust technology. Like you, I have too many old floppy disks that are unusable. I also recently found out that the CD's I burned with music, and videos won't last more than five or so years! As far as hard disks, all it would take would be a sudden outburst from Old Sol, to render them all useless! No, I'll stick to paper like you!
Congratulations on your sixth novel coming out in two weeks! I hope that becomes a best seller and will keep on the lookout for it here!
An interesting perspective! Thanks!
Thanks, I'm counting the days... But if my book were just going to be digital - like a blog entry - why would I bother?
@Kenny
Yes, I do get curious about all those ancient files - student papers and the like, nothing earth-shaking, but I wish I could access them somehow. Alas, they've probably self-destructed by now.
But I'm a big fan of the Kindle, if for no other reason than because it makes it so easy to purchase new books (delivered virtually instantly to my device) and it makes it so convenient to carry dozens, even hundreds, even up to over a thousand, e-books all on one handy portable device.
I wasn't a believer until my wife gave me a Kindle as a gift, and now I take it with me everywhere.
Yes, power outages are a definite consideration (not to mention dead batteries, let alone pickpockets!).
@Tomreedtoon
Yes, these things have been bothering me too. Thanks for summing them all up!
My take is a little different. I am a voracious reader, and my house is full of books. I also use the library regularly. Some books I want to read, not own. But if I find myself checking out the same book two or three times, I realize it's time to own it. So I'll buy those. Some favorite authors I buy. Others I just want to sample, and those come from the library.
When I become a rich and eccentric heiress, I'm going to fund libraries everywhere. Like Carnegie did. But my take is a little different. My funds (administered by my army of fund administrators) are for hours. They're for keeping the doors open, seven days a week, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. For the early-birds and the late-night teenagers to be welcomed into their little neighborhood branch library. I have been a victim of library hours cuts all my life, and I will fix it. Just gotta inherit those billions from somewhere...
All
I'm very suspect of people who don't have books in their homes. And people who rip out beautifully built bookshelves.
Rated, because you beautifully expressed exactly how I feel.
I feel your pain. Built-in book shelves are a glorious thing. Much better than the sagging Ikea variety, which is what most of us are stuck with!
In respect for truth in my explanations, I must also add that I live in an area where my internet access is from an aircard and I have serious concerns about my downloading ability to an e-reader.
But that is just how I think and feel.
Beautifully stated. Somehow I can't imagine having become a lover of books and learning without all those shelves of books in my Dad's study when I was little. I would particularly miss cover art! (Or is there an "app" for that?)
While print books certainly won't disappear, the masses are starting to recognize the great value of electronic books.
You may well be right about the benefits of the e-reader, but for one thing I'd live in daily fear of forgetting the damn thing (and its thousand-book library) on the bus! Not really a concern with a used book purchased for 25 cents at the corner shop...
Yep, it would suck to leave it on a bus, but you would't lose your content -- it's all saved in the digital library associated with your account.
We also have an extensive book collection. I collect first editions of things like how-to books and books on food. And yes, I DID manage to score an unread first of Kitchen Confidential, so there. I also collect children's books - and I try for firsts, but I don't always succeed there. It's getting to be an expensive habit.
I have been reading since I was three years old, and books have always been among my most treasured possessions. Letting go of them has always been hard, but from time to time I have to purge the shelves. A house is only so big, after all.
But I use my Kindle all the time. We travel a LOT and hauling books around is too much for me, especially when you consider that we never check luggage. I was buying books in paperback (spending a small fortune) and leaving them behind in airports and hotels. That sounds all freecycle and benign and PC, but it was a pain in the you-know-whatie and it had to stop.
Most of my old favorites are free because they're old enough that the copyright has been extinguished. The Boy downloads magazines and newspapers on to his IPad. Cost is definitely a factor for both of us. I can spend ten or eleven bucks to leave a virtually new paperback behind, or I can spend five or six and carry it with me.
It seems everywhere I go I have to wait. The Kindle works for me. When I'm far away from home and homesick, all I have to do is pick up the tiny box, and I can be in my happy place, no matter where I am.
By then they'll feel like books again, at least, in the imagination-hallucination-holograms provided by our nano-assisted neurons.
Then again I'm a sci-fi author...and paid to lie.
r
Music enthusiasts said the same thing about records and CDs...almost all have embraced the iPod. Will books become the same as Mp3s?
I can see how such devices might become an aesthetic alternative to vast bookcases, especially in smaller domiciles. Books may go the way of cathode ray television sets, the record player, crates of LPs, the tuner, the tape player, the VCR and large, boxy speakers, in that they allow us more space. When I look at my bookcases, I think about how much room they take up, and how little space is required for a similar amount of information when it is archived on a hard drive.
Thanks, these are intriguing insights. I suppose it depends on HOW MANY books we're talking about in the first place. If you're the sort of person who reads three novels a week, a Kindle might make sense. If you're a moderate "user" like me, the marketing department still has its work cut out for it.
For the benefit of those coming late to this discussion, let me repeat that I am in no way opposed to digital texts, but that I like to make distinction between work and leisure. When I kick back to read a good novel, I simply don't want a computer screen (with or without "e-ink") staring back at me again. And then there's the matter of those "trophies"...
"It's a convenience, not a revolution..."
Agree with you wholeheartedly.
1) Trees, trees, trees. Those precious species. Books are just killing them. Textbooks, money, etc...
I would like to know that by the time you get old (and in no ways offensive but I'm a generation younger than you), I won't have to pay twice the money needed for a book because there is a shortage of trees in the world. Please, for your sake of showing off and caring about how others view you, please consider the younger generation and how they will survive with skyrocketing book price, something that has already happened.
2) For you, you read and can afford those novels. For students like me we buy $200 text books, yes that is about the price 20 books you read. What do ebooks provide? A price that is half of that. While you are fuming about ereaders, I'm praising the fact that I save my parents precious money, money that can be spend for their retirement. Ebooks save hundreds of dollars: in printing, in energy needed to power those printing presses, in energy needed to transport the paper and cut down the trees. Furthermore a ereader which costs about $150 pays itself back in simply after 2 textbooks for me and about 10 books (considering that most best sellers can cost $20+ and ebooks only cost $10)
3) Weight. YES! You probably sit at home and read and carry around a book that's about 4oz. That's what college students call wimpy (please don't take it offensively but you see the point). College students carry about 5-10 pound of textbook. I use my textbook as weights to lift when I'm waiting (no lies, it's not that effective) but still it is heavy. Ereader? Oh yeah they're 10-12 ounce, that's like heaven. To walk across campus with that much weight is hard on your shoulders. Why are there so many health articles and TV news channels talking about the dangers of overweight backpacks? Because this generation has to bear the weight of large textbooks. While your generation didn't have 1000 page textbooks, we have 5+ of those per plus semester (Think of all the papers, the trees, the lower back damage of kids, man it's devastating).
4) Oh yeah paper, again. I don't know about when you went to college, but right now humanities students read online articles and many short narratives/books/literary works none stop. Now if you insists on printing them out or buying every copy just to stack up on your house, good luck. Because #1 printing ink, printers, and paper costs a lot. #2 I highly doubt you will want to read your college required reading again, especially because most people don't (what a waste of paper, to be only used once. Actually a lot of books are the same. The cost of a book is not worth the cost of reading it, ebooks are more economically friendly if you buy many books only to read it once or twice). Oh and most of the books people read today are classics, yeah not paying $15 plus shipping or taxes just to get a book so that the publisher can profit off a book that doesn't have a copyright. That's actually pretty much scamming, making people pay for things that are free. I can get those copies for free in a ebook (that's also how ebooks cam pay itself in like 10 books).
5) Search. Yes this is heaven to those heavy readers who don't read novels where people kiss or slay dragons. These are for people like college students who have to peer through hundreds of academic journals and articles for their class or research. How and why in the world would we print them. To do what? Stack them up in our house and say to guest "hey look it's my stack of articles I read, by the way, I paid hundreds for the ink, paper and printer; I also cut down a lot of trees." Oh yeah, books on a shelf, I love talking about my biology book when my friends come around, not. Why talk about books when you have to spend precious time with friends? Why not talk about their life, how you can do something together. As a member of the younger generation, our lives are many times more busy than our parents (and that is a proven fact), why waste those time sitting around talking about books. Go out and take a trip or ride a bike with your friends, do something worthwhile that you can look back on and wish you can do again but really can't because there isn't that opportunity. I rarly get to see some of my old neighborhood friends, so what do I do? I go out and bike/play tennis, grab a snake and play with their younger siblings. Why? Because I can talk and perform an action at the same time. Not just sit and talk. Heck if I really wanted to, I can talk about books while playing with their little siblings. Kill two birds with one stone, not one bird.
6) Conversation starters don't always halve to be "oh you read this too?" You can ask them what they are reading now, or what they like to read. I know I sometimes like to read the news. That is ABCnews.com, oh wait, I can't get that in print, but wait, I can get that on my kindle, does that make me seem subordinate to you because I don't have stacks of printed out articles to make you see what I read? I also like to read stories that other people wrote but are not publish, wait I can't get that in printed books, does that mean I'm not interesting? Not everyone has to have a printed out version to flabbergast others no. Some people are private about what they read. While you might want to brag about your large collection of books, I'd rather keep to my self what I read. Also some people find reading books that fall outside the norm interesting. For example, I'm a guy and I have read all the books in twilight series. Yes, I know the entire series, but do I like to put the books out so everyone can see? No. I have read many chick flicks, do I want everyone to see? No. So you might want to brag, but I don't.
7) EReaders ARE NOT COMPUTERS!!!!!! How many times do those companies have to tell you. They were NEVER made to be computers. To say that the reason why you don't want to read from a ereader is because reading from a computer screen make your eyes hurt shows your ignorance about ereaders (again I hope I don't sound like I'm making a personal attack), but ereaders are not LCD screens. Have you ever spend a significant time reading through an ereader (significant as in reading a whole novel)? Because let me tell you it's not like looking at a computer screen. Ereaders do not have that bright light aiming toward your face, ereaders uses natural light. The screen uses a technology that suspends metal particles to the screen, that's like pencil and paper. Oh wait it pretty much is. There is no backlight, thus no stinging to your eyes
8) Halving a shelf full of books is expensive and somewhat selfish. Books are expensive, but also you have to buy a house with lots of room and bookshelf space. Bookshelfs are not cheap. Last time I checked we are in a recession. I don't know about Germany but American's are bracing for money. I'd rather go to the library than spend money on books. I also think donating books is nice. I'd rather donate a shelf of books so other's can use than to have one in my house to brag to others how "intelligent" I am. Also I would like to allow some of the publishers to donate some of their unsold books to places that need them.
9) Ereaders are smarter than you think. From your article I feel like you really haven't spent that much time with ereaders. Compatibility is completely not a issue. Last time I checked PDFs are still widely used today and how long have they been around? Also your statement has a flaw. If you have an ereader, why worry about compatibility when you can simply still use that ereader? It's not like your sending your book to various ereaders because you have to get rid of it. Ereaders also have apps for other devices like the iphone app for Kindle and Nook. There are programs that can convert books from one format to another.
Overall, I feel that from reading your article that a major reason you don't like ereaders is because you can't show off or brag about your reading. You care too much about what other's think of you. Not everyone who reads does. I find it annoying when people disturb my train of thoughts while I'm reading to ask "what book are you reading." You can feel gratified to know that one ebook saves a lot of resources (like trees) that can be used for other purposes, a lot of money for me, and the opportunity for somebody who is less fortunate to use the book.
I like Victorian triple-decker novels. I've read all the classics and I'm reading obscure authors like Mrs. Craik and Rosa Nouchette Carey. Their books aren't in the library; interlibrary loan costs $10 here; the books are out of print and rare. But I can get them for free from Project Gutenberg (well, actually I go to Manybooks, where I can get them in more formats).
I went from reading them to making them. I'm a volunteer at Distributed Proofreaders, where we scan and OCR public domain books and then correct the OCR. We've done about 18,000 books so far. Probably more than you have in your library :)
Thanks for the remarkably detailed and passionate response. I'll just address two points. First, although you clearly love e-books, I'd have to say that you're not a very good reader. Not only do I agree about the textbooks, I already made that perfectly clear in my first paragraph: "I would be very interested in a device that would facilitate my reading of blogs, online newspaper and magazine articles, Wikipedia, reference works, data banks etc. In other words: I would use it to manage the ephemeral substance of which the Internet is made." My explicit standpoint is that while I see the value of e-readers for the electronic texts I work with every day, I prefer a printed book for leisure reading. That being my starting point, your critique is groundless.
Regarding this: "I feel that from reading your article that a major reason you don't like ereaders is because you can't show off or brag about your reading." Guilty as charged - in fact, I thought that was the whole idea of my article!
As a resident of Japan where we live in smaller houses than Americans, and don't have the luxury of perpetually holding onto crap that we aren't actively using, I am awaiting the arrival at 5:30 this afternoon of the friendly Book-Off recycled book shop employee, who will cart away about 300 books, paying me perhaps 10 percent of their retail price, for clean up (they grind the edges of the paper to get rid of soiling) and resale, at about 50 percent of their retail price. Good riddance. Book collecting is a fetish, and you're better off getting on with your life.
Now for the CDs, DVDs, and videotapes. And vinyl records. That will be another Book-Off or Yahoo Auction transaction. It's taken several cullings, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
By the way, getting rid of stuff in Japan is much more difficult than in the U.S. We don't just dump everything in the trash or haul it to the dump. I need to separate my trash into about two dozen categories for recycling: plastic, garbage, bottles and cans, batteries, milk cartons, meat trays, cardboard food boxes, clothing, PET bottles, and so on and so forth. For larger items I need to buy a ticket and call the city for a special pickup. For computers I need to call the manufacturer. The combination of lack of space and difficulty of discarding stuff really cures you of the tendency to collect, not to mention, excess consumerism: When I buy a new kitchen appliance, for space reasons I have to decide which of my old ones to discard, and then arrange with the city to discard it.
Thanks for your input! I imagine recycling would be a challenge in such a densely populated and thoroughly organized country as Japan.
Regarding "Book collecting is a fetish, and you're better off getting on with your life."
*Sigh*, I can't argue with that...
Anyway, gushing aside, in my house, we are conflicted about the e-book issue. My husband and I both use them almost exclusively; for everything from classics novels to newspapers, and when we aren't reading e- books, we're listening to audio recordings of books yeah I know, (you probably wouldn't go for audio either, but that's another conversation).
However, because we also enjoy the aesthetic of a book shelf, we often buy our books twice. That way we can waste money and trees.
This solution is expensive and impractical, but it's what we do. We love to look at books, but when it comes to our actual consumption, we want convenience all day long.
Thanks for this. Belated rated.
Thanks for your input. I certainly see the point about instant availability. Here's my viewpoint on that: while I certainly demand instant availability when it comes to articles and information online, I'm not sure I really want instant access to all the world's literature, for the simple fact that it would be overwhelming and I might never get to do anything else. For example, just this morning I read a reference to Nabakov's "Pale Fire," and if I could just call it up online I'd probably still be reading it right now, and into the wee hours of the morning if I decide I like it. Okay, perhaps I could get a handle on that, but I'm not sure it would seriously improve the quality of my life at an acceptable price (which is what I'm writing about here). Overall, I'm concerned about mixing business and pleasure even more than I already do. Now here's a cool idea: if we could upload the old books on our shelves onto portable devices for easy reading and travel, e.g. using some sort of copying machine. Now THAT would be handy!
@Bluestocking Babe
Shucks, you're making me blush! It's interesting that you buy the books twice - it's an interesting thought. I can certainly see the value in owning a book as both a hardcover and an easily transportable paperback - in fact, I have a few books like that, particularly Shakespeare and some other classics. Re audio books: I have no objection to them and actually own a few myself. I find them difficult to manage, though. Non-fiction and many first-person narratives are fine, but I quickly lose the thread in complex, multi-POV books, particularly crime novels, where I soon have no idea who is talking, about what, and why. But that's the subject of another post...