The case of books v. ... well, books

In reading this Slate.come article lamenting the Kindle, I found myself wondering whether the author was being sarcastic. For example:

Remember when you could tell a lot about a guy by what cassette tapes—Journey or the Smiths?—littered the floor of his used station wagon? No more, because now the music of our lives is stored on MP3 players and iPhones.

Our important papers live on hard drives or in the computing cloud, and DVDs are becoming obsolete, as we stream movies on demand. One by one, the meaningful artifacts that we used to scatter about our apartments and cars, disclosing our habits to any visitor, are vanishing from sight.

Nowhere is this problem more apparent, and more serious, than in the imperilment of the Public Book—the book that people identify us by because they can glimpse it on our bookshelves, or on a coffee table, or in our hands. As the Kindle and Nook march on, people's reading choices will increasingly be hidden from view. We'll go into people's houses or squeeze next to them on the subway, and we'll no longer be able to know them, or judge them, or love them, or reject them, based on the books they carry.

Oh, the horrors! People will no longer be able to be faux-intellectuals by keeping books they don't read, or have only read parts of and won't finish, out in public view for all the world to admire. Never mind the fact that reading Anna Karenina, War & Peace, Atlas Shrugged or whatever tome is currently the counterculture favorite means nothing. It doesn't make you interesting, or less of a prude or a jerk. I know plenty of people who are well read; or would consider themselves well read, at any rate. A good portion of them aren't worth having discussions with; some would be, if they weren't so pretentious. Someone Reading The Cabin isn't any more - or less - of Christian than I am.

The author - Mark Oppenheimer - is at least self-aware enough to realize what he's saying:

This is a delicate matter. I can already hear some readers turning the page (perhaps a Kindle "page"), muttering that only an elitist jerk picks friends or lovers based on what they can be seen reading. Well, maybe. This essay is for the rest of you, the ones who freely admit to having been seduced by a serendipitous volume of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John glimpsed on a potential girlfriend's living-room shelf or by a spine-broken copy of Robert Lowell sitting atop that boy's nightstand. Maybe that was your first time in the apartment, you had been reluctant to go, and now you wanted to linger a while …

Also, if you find yourself miserable because you ended up with your spouse because you saw him reading Catcher in the Rye, keep reading! Um, yeah. This isn't even a novel argument by Oppenheimer. I'm old enough to remember when people still romanticised over vinyl records. Some people still love the scratchy, flawed, poor audio quality of vinyl. Articles just like Oppenheimer's have been written about vinyl. To those people, I say - go eat raw meat and drink unpurified water and unpasturized milk if flaws are so important to you and every improvement is such a terrible thing. As for a direct response to the passage above, well, I'm pretty sure that if you and that girl or boy with a book on display are meant to be, you'll discuss books at some point. Its a difference in kind, not substance.

Oppenheimer goes on to say that he dated this brunette who - when asked - told him she agreed to date him because she liked his books. She liked his books. Surely, if this was the standard she was using she probably could have happened upon another reason to date him. These books were college reading Oppenheimer concedes "I had never gotten to [reading]." So she dated him on false pretenses. Nice. His whole point boils down not to the fact that he got anything from these books, or even that he could discuss them with her - its simply that they made a nice crutch and allowed him to meet this girl. Books as a means to an end, and not even an organic end.

To wit:

So what will you do, Kindle generation, when you cannot tell which of the quiet boys holding the e-reader on the subway is engrossed by the latest, predictable legal thriller, and which one by a cheery, long-forgotten Laurie Colwin novel?

Its sad that the Kindle means we will no longer be able to tell the good guy and girl from the bad through the simple and convenient advertisment of what book they keep, unread but noticed, out on their coffee table or carry with them on the subway. /sarcasm.

I'm guessing the actual answer is that Kindle generation will go on just fine, living life and meeting people of the opposite (or same!) sex, falling in love and reproducing. Oppenheimer concedes as much. His article is more the rant of a grumpy old man lamenting the passing of time and scolding kids to keep their shiny electric Kindles away from his pulped books.

I'm sure he probably purchased his books from the type of quaint, indepedent book stores that aren't around anymore and that he had to walk uphill both to reach it and return home. Often times only to find that, because the selection was small, the book he wanted wasn't in stock. And he probably reads only by candle light, none of the harsh, fake light for him. After all, using electric lights would deprive him of the experience and joys of going to bed at 6 p.m. during the winter.

As Oppenheimer says, the Kindle will likely only make printed books more valuable as it makes them more rare. No one laments that limited-print first editions are ... well, limited and hard to find.

This kind of "from the heart" romanticism irks me. Its the philosophy of those who hate what big, box store book sellers did to indepedent book stores, but enjoy all the benefits that built those stores. Then, when a device comes along that promises to return us to an era of cheaper production and thus more indepedent and increasingly niche publishing, lament that very device. All the while these people usually rail against the horrible destruction of consumerism (but not of consumption of books or the mass printing of them, obviously). Their romanticism threatens to prevent us from finding a way to promote smaller publication runs of the niche books they love so much all while saving the environment that is, otherwise, a top priority of theirs.

So many great short story collections that are classics would never get published in today's world. Electronic formats promise to allow cheap self publishing and quicker returns on investment that encourage publishers to take more risks. I love printed books, just as I love printed newspapers. But I'll be damned if I'm going to favor them over something better just because "they" happened to be the status quo while I was in my formative years.

So, this is your god

You hear all the time about how Church goers tend to live longer, healthier lives. What you never hear is this tid bit from a Slate.com story (emphasis mine):

Christians, of course, don't limit their prayers to the deceased—they also pray for the sick, and several recent studies have tested whether this practice contributes to recovery. The answer appears to be no.

As part of a study published in the American Heart Journal in 2006, researchers asked Christian congregations to pray for two groups of cardiac patients—the first group knew the Christians were praying on their behalf, and the second thought they might be. As a control, researchers told a third group that Christians might pray for them, but the Christians did not do so.

Mortality rates were comparable across the three groups, but the unprayed-for group experienced the fewest complications.

I'm not convinced it mattered one way or the other. The fewer complications were probably an anomoly or some other issue with the study. But if you are going on faith alone that a omnipotent, benevolent god exists, intervenes, and listens in any way to prayer, this can't be good.

Of course, maybe God knew it was a study, had fun with it, and is sitting up their laughing at us as some kind of practical joke. Since we can't know the plan the man in the sky and his super-marketer have for us, he pretty much has carte blanche to do whatever, doesn't he?

Great story!

The first couple lines of this story ring very, very true. I haven't read the entire article yet but its about an author whose first book took 10 years (there are others!) from conception to publication (it can happen, even today!). Nicely written and reassuring.

There is surely a word—in German, most likely—that means the state of active non-accomplishment. Not just the failure to reach a specific goal, but ongoing, daily failure with no end in sight. Stunted ambition. Disappointed potential. Frustrated and sad and lonely and hopeless and sick to death of one's self.

Whatever it's called, this is what leads people to abandon their goals—people do it every day. And I understand that decision, because I lived in this state of active non-accomplishment for many years.

I wrote the earliest bit of what would become my first novel, Stiltsville, in January of 2000, when I was in my first year of a graduate writing program. In May of 2009, I old Stiltsville to HarperCollins—the hardcover is due out next month.

This means that the time from my novel's conception to its appearance on store shelves adds up to a staggering 10 years. An entire decade. Between, I graduated and spent a year on fellowship (during which I wrote a lot but only half of it was any good); then there were the teaching years (during which I wrote very little, hardly any of it good); then there were the Internet company years (during which I barely wrote at all).

Stiltsville is in good company, which is reassuring. There are oodles of novels that took a decade or longer to write—including some famous examples, like Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Diaz spoke in interviews about his own decade of active non-accomplishment. He said that five years into the process, he decided to give up on the novel and start a graduate degree (in what, he didn't say). He said his life improved: no more torture, no more fights with his fiance. Oh, Junot, I thought when I read this, I understand! Still, something pulled him back, and another five years passed, and then he was finally done.

[UPDATE]: I liked this column so much, that I plan to write a response column either this weekend or early next week. It probably won't be a straight response. More likely it will be a breakdown of my own struggles and a response to certain parts of the column that struck a cord with me.

Stupid stories

I thought maybe this story on digital drugs was the worst thing I had seen in a while, having managed to make a mountain out of a mole hill all while also being late to the party; however, then I came across this little jem about a city fining a lady for picking up an air conditioner off the street (with permission).

Slate: Greetings From Fat-Land

Clap, clap, clap

A story that deconstructs another story looking at obesity. It pretty handily takes apart what amounts to a common media representation of the obesity situation in the country

Different day, over zealous in a whole new way

I had occasion to meet up with a former high school classmate of mine recently. We talked for, oh, about 15 or 20 minutes, maybe 25 at most.

It was a business transaction of sorts, and a planned meeting. Still, I was anxious going in. I'm anxious about 100 things all the time. And this is especially true of things that involve meeting new people or new situations.

But the meeting went well. We had a nice talk. Not awkward at all, as I feared it could be.

And it got me thinking about my high school self, as compared to current self. And I realized that I took some stuff entirely too seriously in high school. I suppose that is an occupational hazard of being in high school.

But then I realized I probably take some stuff too seriously now, as well. It's in a less aggressive form, and much, much more personalized and private. I rarely feel that the world revolves around the proper solution to issue X. Though I suppose I still believe that it does in that making the proper choice is what is good for the betterment of society and mankind.

For someone who doesn't believe that they have a soul to save, I'm preeminitely worried, not about saving my sould per se, but about making sure I'm the person I can be.

Two things about this post: Despite its somewhat public nature, it's not for public discussion outside this board. For various reasons. Secondly, this is the second time in a week that I've stream of concious'd something, and ran flat into a dark void of which I couldn't seem to write my way out.