#11 - The Book (a love story)

The Book (a love story)

11/18/03

I recently read an article that reiterated the occasionally bandied assertion that the future of literature is the ebook.

For those who are unfamiliar, the ebook is essentially an electronic book, a glorified, novel-length version of an MS Word document. You pay to download the text, then read it on your computer screen at your leisure. (Or on some bulky "ebook reader" that looks like a faux-futuristic prop from Woody Allen's Sleeper.)

I agree that there are advantages to this format, among them:

• Satisfaction of the ever-present American instant gratification urge: 2 AM and craving Johnathan Franzen's The Corrections? No waiting for the store to open, no playing prisoner to the UPS driver---you and your credit card can be reading it by 2:15 AM.
• The phrase "out of print" will be obsolete in the literary world: Every important thought, every witty description, the collective knowledge of humanity that has been captured in books will always be available.
• The forests of the world will breath a sigh of relief that warehouses everywhere will not be filled with a kajillion of the latest Stephen King novels, buildings serving as literary Pez dispensers in hopes that the latest candy will be a hit.
• It allows first-time writers to get their work to the public without pursuing a hard-to-land publishing deal, and without the expense of printing their books on a temp-worker's salary.

All valid selling points, and I am glad to see the format develop as a supplement to paper-bound volumes, but can anyone seriously think that the bluish-white glow of a computer screen could replace the tactile, physical experience of a book?

Case in point: I fell in love with "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame" written by Charles Bukowski, recommended to me by the fabulous woman who would become my wife. Admittedly, some of the poetry between its covers is dross, but much of the verse massaged my soul with both laughter and sadness. To this day I bet I could identify my copy of that book blindfolded--the textured cover stock of Black Sparrow Press, the particular geometry of the turned-up corners, the gentle tension of the cover and front pages trying to spring open, caused by my own regular reading but seeming to be trying to open itself, as if it were never intended to be closed in the first place. My relationship with that book (and many others) is about the ideas within, the flow of the words, but it would be incomplete to simply read it on a computer screen flanked by ads for match-making services and high-speed dial-ups. To have no actual book would be like having an online love affair---the contact can be exciting, even exhilarating---but it can never match a relationship where you can simply sit, hand in hand, and contemplate the silence. The printed book offers that: a poem read, the cover closed, and fingers exploring the texture of the paper as the words sink into the soil of the psyche.

I love books, much more than I love reading. I love every aspect of the book shopping experience: The rich, almost-musty scent of used books; the clean, cool smell of freshly pressed vellum and ink; the prism of colors seen in row upon row of bindings; the lure of a title that seems to appear alone in a sea of otherwise scrambled alphabets; the reading of a first page, like meeting a person and trying to determine in a few exchanged lines if they perceive the world with the same skewed perspective that you do. This experience will never be replaced by the phrase "Type your keyword here, then press 'Find'".

And what of books as furniture? Our bookcase at home is cluttered mess, my new (unread) volumes laid atop our old (somewhat read) books, but each new cover adds a new color to the literary collage. (Literally and metaphorically.) These are not displayed for the benefit of our egos ("Welcome to our home, please note our broad-minded intellectualism")(in fact, a closer look would reveal the need for a statement more like, "Welcome to our home, you can tell by all of the short stories that I have the attention span of a 3 year old."). They are there because they feel like friends, like family, like centuries of wisdom are there for us whenever we need them. (This also explains my approaching-fetish-level devotion to reference books, a subsection that came to require its own shelving unit.) My bookcase would look naked if it contained, instead of this motley collection of titles, a single laptop computer. And I would feel equally exposed.

Bibliophilia is not a condition to be cured. Bill Gates and his ilk can say what they want, I will always seek the reassuring permanence of the printed page.

Of course, I'm still struggling with the irony that you're reading this on a computer.

©2003 wpreagan