We’ve been talking about Kindles and other eReaders, as well as old-fashioned hardbounds and cheap paperbacks. Here and elsewhere, those who proclaim themselves advocates of the book and push more and more book reading on the young are cast as more or less quaint and nostalgic (or deluded) traditionalists (or pedants) fighting the inevitable tide of history.
They’re right. The future is a digital one, reading included. In spite of their remarkable technological merits, most books will go the way of the phonograph. There is only one area in which cloth and paper volumes will continue. One hundred years hence, the only books to be bought in paper form will be those whose material reality adds something desirable to the text. If the physical thing doesn’t provide something independent of the words it contains, no book will be necessary. An e-version will do. In those cases in which only the text is important — which is, in fact, the majority of books — reading them in digital format through the same screen through which you read a thousand other things is sufficient.
But there are instances in which most people won’t want to read the text through the same window through which they read other things. They want the words they read to be tied to a unique physical object. What books are those? Well, they could be books with interesting, beautiful, or novel physical properties. I got one in the mail awhile back that might qualify. It’s a joint effort by a science writer and a biologist, and it’s entitled Death and Sex. Or rather, it’s not really a joint effort, but two books in one. The cloth binding is deep black, the surface engraved with leaves and flowers. Set it down on one side and scarlet lettering says,
Sex
Dorion Sagan
Turn it over and bold silver lettering says,
DEATH
Tyler Volk
That’s the novelty. Read DEATH and when you finish you’re only half way through the volume. On the next page the print appears upside and you’re in the index of Sex. Turn it over and go to the beginning and Sagan’s half starts. (Read more about the authors here.)
Another kind of book that will survive will do so not because of its physical properties, however, but entirely because of its subject matter. I read it recently. It’s by David Horowitz, and it’s called A Cracking of the Heart. Here is the opening:
“On a dark Thursday in March the telephone rang and I picked up the receiver to hear my youngest child say ‘Something terrible has happened,’ and I knew that a family member was gone.
“When death takes someone you love, there is no looking back. And there is only looking back. You can’t complain there’s been a mistake or argue there was no time for good-byes. You can’t protest the life was too short, and you can’t negotiate a deal for a final conversation. When death takes someone you love, she has slipped off the edge of the world and there is no bringing her back.
“So it was with my daughter Sarah . . .”
What follows is 177 pages of reminiscence of and reflection on the young woman’s life by a father thrown by grief. Here is Horowitz’s conclusion:
“I can take a small satisfaction in the fact that death’s victory over my daughter remains incomplete. For though she is gone, she has left me this gift: When I see a homeless person destitute on the street, I think of Sarah, and my heart opens. If there is a criminal shut behind bars, I force myself to remember her compassion, and a sadness shades my anger. If there is a child languishing in need, I think of my daughter in a mud floor hut ministering to the children of the Abayudaya tribe, and my heart goes out to them. These images and their influence are an incarnation of her life after life, her rolling of the soul, her gilgul hanefesh. Whenever I think of Sarah, tears well in my eyes, and my chest fills to the brim; and then I am overwhelmed by the terrible sorrow of our human lot and how finally, in this, we are one.”
Would this reflection on a deceased daughter work in digital format? Sure it would, to a degree. But as a memorial to a loved one, the material object has a value all its own. It marks a deep experience that deserves more than a download. (See more here.) People who are touched by the condition will want the record to have its own unique existence and occupy meaningful space nearby as a presence to be looked at, held, and saved.
5 Responses to Books in 2110
goxewu - December 20, 2009 at 11:36 am
As one of the chief naysayers about the long-range, even mid-range, viability of books on paper, I’m almost obligated to comment:1. The “Sex”/”Death” gimmick has been done lots and lots of times, especially with magazines and books in a right-to-left language translated into English (or another left-to-right language). In itself, it’s no longer novel, exciting, or even amusing.2. Prof. Bauerlein cleverly offers the Horowitz memoir as an example of a book that “deserves more than a download,” so that to argue against heartwarming/uplifting memoirs requiring a hardcopy existence in order to move readers is to argue against Horowitz’s love for his daughter, his against-the-grain politics, his daughter’s courage, etc., etc. But roughly similar memoirs (overcoming the death of a loved one, overcoming an abusive childhood, overcoming drugs and alcohol, overcoming a harrowing emigration to America, etc., etc.) are one of the remaining cash cows of the publishing industry. As pieces of writing, most of them are awful and don’t deserve a download, let alone the trees felled in order to print them or space on bookstore shelves. Anyway, I store any number of documents (letters, e-mails, articles) of sentimental interest to me on my computer. Had I a Kindle, I see no reason why storing a whole book of sentimental interest to me on it would be less satisfying than having it on my bookshelf.3. Coffee-table books on art, architecture, travel, nature, etc. probably cannot be effectively reproduced on an e-reader. But they’re only readable–and barely that–in short spells with the reader on a couch, or bent over a coffee-table. Ever try to take a $125, 12″ x 15″ x 3″ book with you on a trip, to read on a plane or train?4. (3), above, leads inevitably to the overriding issue of physical convenience. Printed books came into existence and have thrived for 700 years or so because of–to put the matter in business terms–the possibilities of a publishing economy of scale, distribution potential, and customer convenience. (I’m sure that somebody in the transitional years of scroll-to-book complained that books, unlike scrolls, couldn’t be entirely unrolled on the floor to give readers an immediate sense of the whole thing.) “Customer convenience” may sound trivial put that way, but it’s important. Print books confine the reader to its content and no other; print books (especially fiction) have no search capabilities (e.g., if you want to check when a character made her first appearance, you’ve no choice but to skim previous pages); print books take up an awful lot of space and one’s “library” weighs tons, making moving difficult if not dangerous, reorganization (of one’s library shelves) a days-long affair; print books get damaged with use; print books come in such a variety of formats that it’s difficult sometimes to reconcile a physical organization of one’s library (i.e., big books here, medium-sized books there, small books over there) with a topical organization; printed textbooks make students’ backpacks too heavy for back health; and so on and so on and so on.5. Printed books are not going to go away overnight, nor are they ever going to disappear completely. But we are in a period of rapid transition away from them. And their eventual fate in the Western world will be like those of the family sitting in the living room together listening to dramas on radio, a recreational Sunday drive in the family V-8, decent SATs and a 12-hour-a-week job waiting tables being enough to put a student through college without mustering out with massive debt.But I’m still curious as to what Prof. Bauerlein does, or would do, when some students in a literature class show up with the novel under discussion on an e-reader. Does he allow printed copies of the novel, all Hi-Lighted and tabbed with Post-Its, into the classroom and forbid those on e-readers? (The newest ones permit, by the way, “handwritten” marginalia via a stylus.) Does he say, “OK, you can bring your Kindles, but I really wish you’d bring a printed copy instead”? Or does he just live and let live?
markbauerlein - December 21, 2009 at 8:25 am
As I’ver said before, if kids read books on Kindles, that’s just fine.And Horowitz’ book, as passages make clear, is not “heartwarming/uplifting.”
goxewu - December 21, 2009 at 9:19 am
I re-read the passages. If they’re not “uplifting,” what is? Even if Horowitz’s book isn’t “heart-warming” or “uplifting,” and is instead some other adjective I missed, my argument still stands: Memoirs of overcoming death/grief/abuse/drugs/poverty/emigration/divorce/abandonment/scandal/whatever are more than common; storing digital versions on an e-reader isn’t sacrilege, and it probably won’t deprive the reader of that satisfying lump-in-the-throat such a book gives, either.BTW, I’m a lot older than Prof. Bauerlein, am techno-mediocre, and my home is festooned with books, many of which are affectionately tattered old friends with whom I reacquaint myself from time to time. But I can read the handwriting–more like ten-foot-high graffiti letters in fluorescent colors, with shadowboxing–on the wall.
11159995 - December 31, 2009 at 12:37 am
Most people professionally involved in publishing, as Dr. Bauerlein is not (except as an author), believe that digital editions and print editions will co-exist for many years to come, and perhaps forever. In the near term, there is a very good economic reason why this is so: sales of e-editions, though growing rapidly, still constitute a very small percentage of overall publishing revenues. Except for people like Jeff Bezos who have a vested interest in persuading people to believe otherwise, the predominant view is that sales of e-editions will not reach a point of exceeding sales of print editions anytime soon. Meanwhile, POD editions, facilitated by such proliferating devices as the Espresso Book Machine, will offer customers a relatively inexpensive way to have books they want in paperback form, and if the Google Settlement finally goes through, one can expect POD sales for backlist and out-of-print titles to add substantially to print revenues on the “long tail” model. E-books will probably remain very popular in some niche areas, but seem unlikely to displace print across the board.—Sandy Thatcher, Penn State University Press
megginson - January 4, 2010 at 8:07 pm
This has been an interesting discussion. I do agree that at some point in the future, the vast majority of books will be sold (or rented, or whatever) in some sort of digital form, but it struck me that the very last two books I have read would probably not work in such a format.One is Claire Nouvian’s “The Deep”, a wonderful large-format “coffee table” book in which the amazingly beautiful pictures and the substantial scientific content complement each other well. Certainly, a large-format high-color e-reader could be devised that would be able to handle such a book, but who would buy one just to be able to handle the few books that absolutely require that format? (And “The Deep” does; take a look at it in a library to see why.) More likely, in a totally e-reader world such a book would just not be attempted, or even conceived.The other book is Robert Kanigel’s “Faux Real”, in which part of the charm of the book is a challenge, actually issued on the dustcover and relevant to the content of the book, to figure out what the hard cover is made out of. And with that the e-reader would meet its match.The latter is certainly a gimmick, but the bookmaker’s art has led to many interesting, innovative, and even gimmicky ways to present information over the years, and this is one reason that I worry about digital presentation of information and e-readers, even if inevitable: There is going to be a great deal of standardization of format as a result, and something valuable is going to be lost along the way.