I’ll start this by prefacing that I come from a literary family; my maternal grandparents founded STORY Magazine, and helped champion some of this century’s most influential American writers (the recently deceased J.D. Salinger being among them). So when my father surprised me with the three hundred dollar Amazon Kindle (I cite the price only because I find it absurd) for Christmas several months ago, I was conflicted.
On a recent vacation, while sitting poolside, I pulled the sleek little device out from my bag, and a friend immediately asked my thoughts on this, the future of the publishing industry. If the Kindle, the Nook, or the iPad (a feminine hygiene product?) are, as prophesied, the future of the publishing industry, it’s going to be a sad, sad future. And then I proceeded to go on a bit of a rant, which may or may not have been fueled by several bloody marys.
I read every night before I go to sleep; if I don’t, I don’t sleep. It’s as simple as that. And I don’t read from the Kindle. There’s a stack of books by my bed, and I just go with whatever I feel like at the moment. Lately, I’ve fallen for the Library of Congress collections; 1,500 pages of thin, acid-free pages, that won’t yellow with age, and have little cloth bookmarks embedded in their spines. They’re authoritative editions for the most significant American authors of the last two centuries, and they’re great. Now back to the point.
There is something inherently satisfying about a paperback or a hardcover novel that the Kindle can’t replicate. There are the little things; the crease in the binding of that book you re-read every few years, chiseled so deeply down lining that when you flip through the pages your favorite passage magically appears. There are the scribbles in the margins, the bunny-eared corners, the coffee-ringed covers, and the browning sheets in your ten-year-old copy of The Fountainhead (which you never really got at the time, but told everyone you did anyway). And then there are the more important things; the feel of the book in your hand, the matte cover, the precision of the binding, the smell of paper. Books are for collecting, for sharing, for embracing. You lend your favorite book to a friend, you read a passage during a gathering (if you’re that kind of gal or girl), and then you pass them down to your children. They might even be worth something someday. Books surrounded me, and continue to surround me. They lined shelves in my childhood, and now they line shelves in my apartment.
Now take the Kindle. Admittedly, like everything these days, it is fast, and it is for the lazy, and the jetsetter. You no longer need to browse a book store because in thirty seconds your book is beamed, via Whispernet, to your Kindle. For something along the lines of half the price of the hard-copy (which again, just strikes me as absurd), you are guaranteed instant gratification, American hyper-capitalism style. But you can’t share this PDF you just downloaded for $ 9.99, and you can’t feel it (save for the cool metal and the plastic). I guess if you’re an environmentalist you can make the argument the Kindle and its ilk save a lot of trees. But any sense of experience and shared history is gone. And so a good portion of the joy leaves as well.
When you pick up a book you’re holding on to something that traces its lineage all the way back to Ancient Egypt and beyond. To monks illuminating Bibles candle-side during the Dark Ages. To a soldier in the trenches with his one of copy of whatever you want it to be. I told my friend the Kindle is very good for vacations, and it is. It’s light, it’s easy, and to be honest, no one would really want to borrow the Stephen King book I was reading anyway. But my point is this; books are important, and if you are lucky, they helped raise you. The way we shape them, and in turn, the way they shape us, is part of our history and our collective consciousness. To condense a library into a PDA or a Kindle, or a Nook, or whatever really cool, over-publicized device comes next is fine; just don’t do away with books.
I want to hand my children my beaten old copy of Goodnight Moon, grayed, and torn, and full of life, and see the look in their eyes when they drool, with equal ferocity, on the same pages my which my brother and I drooled. I want them to trace Harold’s purple line with their little fingers all the way across one piece of paper, hit a bump at the neatly stitched trench of the binding, and keep on going. I don’t want to hand them a piece of tempered steel with a chip and Whispernet access, which thanks them, ever so politely, for their $ 9.99.
Plus tax of course.
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