There have been a lot of literary elitists complaining publicly about Kindle. They're not mad that it's expensive. They're not mad that its screen is hard to read. They're mad nobody can tell what they're reading by looking.
From the New York Times:
The practice of judging people by the covers of their books is old
and time-honored. And the Kindle, which looks kind of like a giant
white calculator, is the technology equivalent of a plain brown
wrapper. If people jettison their book collections or stop buying new
volumes, it will grow increasingly hard to form snap opinions about
them by wandering casually into their living rooms.
From Vanity Fair:
Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony
Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our
identities. At the rate technology is progressing, however, we may
eventually be traipsing around culturally nude in an urban rain forest,
androids seamlessly integrated with our devices.
To be fair, both writers go on to say some important things about identity and possessions and the values we attach therein, but this is Campaign to Link Print Publishing, so you'll have to go read the rest for yourselves.
I love to display books. We have two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in our living room and six in our library. My daughter has two bookshelves taking up half of one of her walls, and she only has picture books. I totally get the pride one takes in displaying a collection built over years. The intermingling of my Ray Bradbury with my husband's Dick Schaap is a visual symbol of our ongoing union that I take very seriously.
But I've read my books. They're not just for show. My display, if you will, is not every book I've ever read, but rather all the books I saw fit to keep. My favorites. I've been reading voraciously since I could read -- if I kept them all, I'd end up on Dr. Phil as one of those pack-rat women in danger of death by stacks.
Even if I got a Kindle (which I am so totally saving up to do), I'd use it for the to-read queue and keep my favorites on my shelves. If I liked a new book, I'd buy it in hard copy and add it to the collection. I see the Kindle as a sampling tool, allowing you to worship a writer's entire catalog and purchase in bound form only those you see fit to display and lug around to impress New York writers on the subway.
Buying a book on the Kindle is so easy I believe it will make it easier for new writers to get in front of readers, and it will definitely make it easier for readers like me who, once they discover a writer whose work they love, will read every published word that author ever wrote. (And you won't have to make the mistake of buying, say, everything Joseph Heller ever wrote, only to find his genius was entirely poured into Catch-22.)
Kindle will allow us a deeper relationship with our favorite writers. It will make them more accessible. It will render the concept of going out of print meaningless. It will allow books to truly live on forever, as the expense of keeping them on the shelves will disappear.
I love books, don't get me wrong. But what I really love is writing. I want the words, whatever form they come in. Whether or not someone can physically see that I've read Lady Chatterley's Lover, I still caught the obscure literary reference on Six Feet Under. (And I loved that show's writers even more.) The books live on in your head long after you've read them. The right book will forever change the way you see the world. I've been haunted by stories for years, especially when I see them starting to come true in our age of reality television. Nobody can take your books away from you once they meld with your subconscious, forever shaping your worldview and interfering with your ability to see Survivor as harmless fun.
As far as peering across the subway to judge a person by what they're reading -- I'm more likely to breathe a sigh of relief if they're reading ANYTHING. I'm not pretending I'm not a literary snob, because I so totally am. I don't need to see the cover, though. I'm not going to bemoan the Kindle and iPod because they interfere with our ability to judge a person by their book's cover. Instead, I breathe a sigh of relief I, as a writer, live in an era when it's becoming easier and easier to share my words.
Kindles and iPods are making it easier for the little guys, inviting the democratization of publishing. Will that result in more crappy writing making it into the marketplace? Yes! But it will also result in more previously unheard and less-connected voices finding readers.
And then we'll buy their books and place them on our bookshelves. Which will be richer and more diverse than they ever could've been if we relied only on bookstores to discover authors.
