Kindling Kindle

I'm late to the party, but I apparently was the only one put off by unoriginality of Oppenheimer's Kindle lament. In which an author at the Atlantic makes an argument similar to my own. And there are apparently three guests to this party, as another Atlantic reader takes Oppenheimer to task for even suggesting that romance might die at the hand of the Kindle!

Still, even Eleanor Barkhorn falls into the old trap:

Of course, we've lost something as we've transitioned from old-media flirting to new. Like so much on the web, broadcasting our likes and dislikes can turn into an exercise in self-promotion, and we can be calculating about how we reveal what what's on our bedside tables and in our playlists.

Well, no; not exactly. Even back in the days of dusty paper tomes, people chose to display books as "an exercise in self-promotion." Oppenheimer himself pretty much concedes as much in his column. I'm not sure why the Barkhorn thinks people weren't "calculating" about what was on their bedside tables or playlists prior to the invention of electronic media.

I can post a tweet about how much I'm getting out of reading the Washington Post's Top Secret America series—when really I'm poring over Us Weekly's latest spread about Jessica Simpson's weight loss.

Well, yes; sure. But the same was always true. There always was, and always will be the stranger that we never let people see (or try hard to prevent them from seeing). I suppose no one has ever left an unread copy of Crime and Punishment on the coffee table for guests to see while stashing a copy of People magazine away in the bedside table?

She goes on to say how her planned posts to Gchat, or GoodReads or Twitter designed to solicite responses are ...

... far less pure than glancing at the stranger across from us on the subway and realizing he's reading our favorite novel.

Really? Far less pure? In the case of a stranger who is legitimately reading a book, yes, perhaps. In the case of someone who leaves a book out as a promo piece, or carries with him as a Red Badge of Courage, its a difference in type, not in kind. And hardly less pure. Someone who posts comments hoping to bait certain responses from certain people is likely to be the same kind who puts out unread books. Both are unpure.

And I don't even know what to say about this bit of self-important hoity toitty pretentiosness ...

When I made the man I was dating during sophomore year of college read All The King's Men before I would consider calling him my boyfriend ...

Honestly? Where do these people come from?

Getting back to the original purpose, Oppenheimer has responded. To the Atlantic columns, not my criticism. And in a not very convincing way. He sorta just rehashes his argument that the Kindle doesn't provide what books do. Never mind that someone reading a Kindle is almost certainly reading a book, and that its just as easy to ask a Kindle reader "whatch reading" as it is to ask a book reader what he/she thinks of The Cabin. Nevermind that for all the lamenting about how we will no longer see people reading Rand on the subway and be able to strike up a convo, you would rarely run up against someone who was both someone you would want to talk to and who was reading a book you would want to discuss.