The following aired in February 2009 on NPR-member station WIUM/WIUW Tri States Public Radio (with the sound clip linked here).
Storage and speed are just two of the features of the new e-reader being released today by Amazon.com. But commentator Alison McGaughey says she would rather live life among the stacks.
How are you doing on those resolutions?
So far, more than two months into the New Year now, I have been staying strong.
Sure, I still have plenty of pounds to shed.
But I have been sticking to the rule I set for myself on New Year’s Day, the day I embarked on a de-cluttering project:
I placed a moratorium on myself against buying books.
You see, I realized that I have been burying myself under the weight of good intentions.
In other words, picking up pieces of classic literature at a yard sale or thrift store, telling myself with each one, “I’ll save this for someday when I have more time.”
But—at the risk of being too dark here—I have started to fear that “someday” may never come.
Or, more accurately, I have started to resent the fact that tomorrow does come. Every day. But the “more time” part never does.
For example, it’s been at least three years since I hit up that one fantastic library sale.
But Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi has floated nowhere nearer to the top of my ever-flowing “to read” list.
That hefty Hemmingway novel is now dustier in my house than it was when I found it in a church-basement rummage sale.
Like an addict, I had been in denial about the fact that my habit was causing me harm.
But when friends came over, no one said “Wow, I’m impressed with your literary tastes.”
Instead, I was hearing things like,
“So where do you sit, again?”
In addition to all the ones I want to read for fun, there is a syllabus of books I need to get through for a class.
So I had to face the fact that I’ll never get to get to any of these books I’ve been buying, any time in the near future.
Or it will be until I finally figure out how to master simultaneous-speed-reading, dish-doing and laundry-folding.
Finally I forced myself to compile a stack for the Salvation Army.
But each step felt like a stab to the heart.
As I was in the process of purging and packing items to donate, I found an un-opened Time magazine.
When I finally got around to reading it, I saw a list titled “Best Gadgets of 2008.”
Among them? The Kindle. A hand-held digital-reading device.
I was already aware that something like this existed.
But I guess I had hoped that if I ignored it—like my clutter problem—it would go away.
Instead, the Kindle is so popular, apparently, that the Version 2 is now on sale on Amazon.com—for a mere $359.
Time magazine says:
“It definitely takes some getting used to […] but it’s simply a terrific tool for people who love to read books.”
But if they “love to read books,” why would they trade them in for something that looks and feels like a big, flat cell phone?
Perhaps a better description would be:
“For people who want their Faulker in the same format as a forwarded e-mail?”
But it seems a sure bet that, as a reading public, we’re going paper-less.
The Christian Science Monitor last year went all-online.
And I know how predictable, and how conservative, it seems—a literature lover lamenting the loss of the printed page.
If I advocate for the big, clunky book—rather than a sleek Sony Reader—I might as well call for bringing back the Betamax.
I know that if I can now get Mark Twain’s entire works on an Apple iTouch—but still believe in books—I might as well argue that dads should still carry camcorders on their shoulders—and toaster-sized battery backs on their hips.
But how is a progressive person who reveres the classics supposed to feel about a Kindle?
I mean, why didn’t they just name it the Terminator?
The Incinerator?
Better yet, the Fahrenheiter—as in 451?
Now, I have to make a confession: I bought a book the other day.
I couldn’t resist.
I found it in a cozy little used bookstore—the kind that will also surely die someday.
And in this book, the Southern writer Eudora Welty recalls feeling shocked and dismayed as a child—when she realized books were not “natural wonders” but created by people.
She says:
“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them—with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms […]“
And she grew up to win a Pulitzer Prize.
What would have happened if she were a child in the day of the digital-reader?
I don’t think she would have fallen for story in the same way.
(Not if its tangible vessel felt no different in her hands than a Nintendo DS.)
Tags: Rural People Read Too
One free cure: The Library!