Book Burning for Fun and Profit (Prophet?)

You know how when you’re working a lot, not sleeping enough, and 50 things are swirling around your head as if somebody just flushed your brain? That’s how I’m feeling right now because I have to finish—really finish (not just pretend finish, which is what I’ve been doing)—the projects I’ve been working on all summer.

And it’s probably because I’m slightly delirious with work that I started wondering in the middle of the night whether Amazon would find a way to connect with Terry Jones—the pastor in Florida who’s encouraging people to burn the Koran on September 11th—to see whether he might encourage his followers to burn their Kindles instead.

(I take nothing lightly when it comes to September 11th, 2001. I am from New York and even though I’ve lived in Connecticut for 23 years, I will always be from New York. On that day, my husband and I had most of our family in the city; we spent the morning unable to catch our breath until we heard from his kid, my dad, everybody in my brother’s family, and all our friends. The last friend we heard from was John Bussey,  somebody I’d known since my first day at Dartmouth, and who stayed in the Dow Jones building, reporting for CNBC, as the Towers collapsed. It was my good friend’s voice I heard describing the indescribable as it was happening. Bussey won a Pulitzer for his story.)

But last night, fighting the urge that maybe I should just get the hell up and write the damned pieces I need to finish already just so I can rest easy, I started thinking about whether books will even exist in 20 years. After all, right before bed I read The Chronicle Review piece about how we’ll be teaching the Humanities in caves or in Starbucks since we won’t be getting funding from Pfitzer (maybe I should re-read the article? I even got off the screen and read the print version, although it clearly did not have  the anticipated and much-tooted soothing effect—you can read it here).

Anyhow, that’s why I’m lying there at 3:42 in the morning seriously wondering whether Amazon would prefer if the flock of the Dove World Outreach Center (number: about 50 families) in Gainesville, Fla.  burned Amazon’s own electronic readers or a rival product—for example, a Nook.

“Kindle or Nook? Kindle or Nook?” That’s what’s keeping me up.

Hey, it’s easier than thinking about universities are going the way of technical schools (not that there’s anything wrong with that, etc., etc.) which somehow will, I suspect, lead to more book burning (or at least more effective book burning, since those chemistry types really know how to make a fire), or the awful blue-sky morning in 2001, or the miserable teeth-grinding religious hatred being fanned, like so many chemical flames, around the country by people and places that dress themselves up in the signs of peace and love the way hunters wear camo.

 Not that I’m bitter. Which, by the way, is available on Kindle.

 And for burning. After all, you can always get another copy.