Kindle series No. 4: Close-minded "Book Lovers"

Readers associate the physical object they hold in their hands with the pleasure
they derive from its contents ...

November 17, 2010  

  By Hugh Gilmore

            In the past few weeks I've tried to tell "book lovers" about my test-driving a borrowed Kindle. I've met a lot of resistance from defenders of The Book whose minds are closed, absolutely closed, to the idea of electronic books. They didn't even show curiosity about how the device works or why millions of readers have bought Kindles in the past two years.

            Just last week the New York Times announced that it will begin listing e-book Best Sellers early in 2011.  Nevermind. The book defenders I met chanted the same mantra, "Me, I love books. I love the feel of them. I just love opening up a book and immersing myself in a good story. No Kindle for me." 

            I'm here to tell you, gentle reader, of how I, a lifelong lover of books and reading, a person with a large, beloved collection of books, a person who makes his living buying and selling old books, a person committed to saving old, neglected books from the dump heap, a person who gives away thousands of books every year, a person who was a founding member of the Chestnut Hill Book Festival, and a person who has written almost weekly in this column about the pleasures of books (and "The Enemies of Reading"), I, dear reader, have actually tried a Kindle. And lived to tell the tale.

            But first: on the issue of "book love." Readers associate the physical object they hold in their hands with the pleasure they derive from its contents. They say they "love" their books as a result. Probably true, but this has nothing to do with the nature of paper, cardboard and ink. A blank book does not provoke love. The reader's love is derived from habit and association. People love both the message and the medium that brought it to them. In time, they would love any medium. Kindle people now say they "love" their Kindle, for example, even though its plastic case is hard and neither fragrant nor yielding, like a book.

  

Some perspective:  In the 1850's, the French writer Gustave Flaubert dipped a quill into his inkwell more than a hundred thousand times and scratched out over 170,000 words on hundreds of sheets of paper. Afterwards, he took "Madame Bovary," to a printer who created pieces of metal type to correspond with the letters of Flaubert's words. Each resulting tray of type corresponded to a page. Coated with liquid ink, the type was pressed onto sheets of paper that were bound into a magazine, Revue de Paris. This journal was sold in monthly installments during the year 1856. People liked it.

            The following year those same words were recast in a different format -- still ink pressed on paper pages, but different-sized pages, bound together inside cloth-covered cardboard covers -- what we English speakers call a "book." 

             Books have persisted for more than two thousand years as the best devices for relaying a writer's words to other people. The personal reading book, especially for stories, has been made smaller, lighter, and cheaper, making it more available and easier to use. No other energy than light is needed to use one. Nothing needs to be plugged in.

            One can hold the device and see the inked words -- usually black type against a white piece of paper  -- and decode the various marks ("letters"/"words") in a process called "reading." A person who knows how to read (i.e. decode arbitrarily symbolic marks) can know what another person had to "say," even when the speaker is not present.             

            A great invention. Very convenient, but not without its flaws.

            What if a device appeared that was extremely easy to hold, weighed less than a paperback, didn't require you to use force to keep it open, had an easily read surface (on which you could change font size at will) and needed only a small thumb-press to "turn" the pages? Would you turn it down without trying it?

            And suppose you just finished a book by John Steinbeck, or Ann Tyler, or Stephanie Meyer, and hungered to read another one by that author? Or wanted to read a biography of Babe Ruth or Amelia Earhart, but didn't have one in your home library? Would you rather wait for the weekend so you could drive to a bookstore, or push a few buttons on a device that allowed you to start reading that book in about ninety seconds? No wires, either.  

            And what if you learned that, on average, authors are paid higher royalties for the "e-versions" of their books? And trees aren't pulped to make paper to print symbols on?

            If electronic books are "fads," they're fads in the sense that automobiles were fads back in 1910.

            Next week's column will describe in detail what I liked and disliked about the actual process of reading a book on a Kindle.

             

Kindle Series No. 3: A Family Fable, wrought from a week spent reading from a borrowed Kindle

Once in a while, though, you'll sigh and say aloud that you miss
the feel of handling three-dimensional vegetables and meat ...

November 10, 2010  

By Hugh Gilmore

             I imagine that some night in the future a hungry person will be able to sit down at the dinner table before an empty plate. He'll pick up an electronic FSD (Food Summoning Device), press a few buttons, and, voilà!: a delicious, steaming hot, perfectly spiced, Chilean sea bass with fragrant rice and baby asparagus will appear. Warm rolls, too, butter if needed, and a nice warm slice of apple pie. Yummy.

             On other nights, perhaps, roast beef, chicken, soyburgers, hotdogs, whatever your little heart desires. Just have the purveyor of your choice beam it to you. There'll be menus, choices of ethnicity, formal vs. informal dining, and snack foods too. You'll be billed each time you download, or monthly, via a charge against your account.

            The food will taste good after the initial kinks have been eliminated from the system. After a while, it will taste as good as anything you ever remember eating. And it will be filling. And nutritious. You can even order extra, so there's some for lunch tomorrow.

            Once in a while, though, you'll sigh and say aloud that you miss the feel of handling three-dimensional vegetables and meats. The children will roll their eyes to say, "Not again," and keep eating, hoping the subject of homework does not come up. (There will always be homework; the dinner table will always be the play-at-home version of the Inquisition.)

            "No," you'll say, "you don't understand." And once again you'll speak wistfully of those days of your childhood and young adulthood when people had kitchens. (The space in modern homes will have been given over to what is called the "Wii family fun room." Like home treadmills and hot tubs, they'll typically be abandoned after the second week of use.)

            "Why back then, there was a neat "crunch" as you sliced carrots or potatoes. And peas snapping: what a nifty sound!" The kids will say nothing. Silence gives consent, so you'll go on. "You'd crush a clove of garlic and the pungent smell would rush up into your nostrils. Oh boy, you kids would've loved the smell of garlic cooking. You'd walk into the kitchen, and what a rush ... your appetite would rise out of nowhere. You couldn't wait to eat. But you'd have to. It took time, maybe a half hour or hour, or even more. And all that time, the house would fill up with the delicious aroma of the meal you'd be eating."

            "Sounds gross," little Emma will say.

            "Believe me, it was great," you'll counter. "Sometimes the heat from the stove and oven would fill up the kitchen. The windows would steam. The smell of baking bread was unforgettable. You never get over it."

            Little Willie, who shows an aptitude for kelketronic symbionization, and may even major in it some day, will say, "What's wrong with the food we're eating? I read on my Daily Retina Feed that a person could not tell in several blind taste tests the difference between a TPM (Traditionally Prepared Meal) and a Beam-transmitted meal."

            "I know. I know," you'll say, "I saw the same retina feeds."

            Emma will add, "Well why are you two always going on about TPMs" ?

            "I don't know, my little plutonium, it's just that fembreeder and I ... we feel there's something missing."

            "Well it all sounds very vague," she'll say.

            "And inefficient," chimes in Willie.

            "Yeah, well ..." you'll say, and let it rest. You'll keep chewing and enjoying one of the best-tasting meals you've had lately, sorry you didn't start ordering sooner from this purveyor your friends told you to dial up. Still, you'll need to suppress another sigh. The food's good, you'll think, but emotionally there's something missing.

            Later that night, you'll lie in your Sleep Enhancing Platform, staring up at the Night Sky Simulation wondering why this is such an issue lately. You'll turn to your Child Rearing Partner and say, "Hey hon?"

            "Yes?" Good, still awake.

            "How do you feel about making a TPM for the kids one night this week?"

            "Are you kidding? Where would we get the ingredients?"

            "From Farms 'R' Us or something ... we could drive there ... go on a Sunday and take the kids. They'd get a kick out of seeing vegetables being pulled from the earth."

            "It's too far. And they've seen umpteen-million school documentaries about this. And had all those vegetable-growing-simulations ... in three-D."

            "Let's try it anyway. Okay? I'd like them to see what it was like when we were kids."

            "Where would we find the time? Every night we have Interactive TV meetings, clubs, discussions. My personal trainer is hard enough to schedule without getting backed up. Maybe sometime in the future. On vacation. We could visit one of those Traditional Food Making villages and see how they used to do it."

            Too late in the evening to insist. With a sigh you uncover the Sleep Inducer. You set the Alpha Rhythm to High for a change, and press. Quality sleep, the best sleep you've had in weeks follows.

           

Kindle Series No. 2: First impressions after borrowing one.

I let the Kindle sit, fairly glowing, on the mantle ...

November 2, 2010

Hugh Gilmore

Kindling Bovary

            I finished reading "Freedom" on Friday night, spurred to read a lengthy final section by the desire to try the Kindle loaned me by a fellow member of the Chestnut Hill Book Festival.

            As I mentioned last week, Franzen's tale of a dull-but-kindly husband and his yearning, adulterous wife, reminded me of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." I wanted to reread that story and also wanted to see what it was like to read a book on a Kindle electronic reader.

            Downloading "Madame Bovary" took about 90 seconds and cost 99 cents. Pretty impressive. I learned how to read from the Kindle in about another minute and that aspect of its simplicity impressed me too. After that, I closed the cover, and let the Kindle sit, fairly glowing, on the mantle while I buried my nose in "Freedom" and finished it around 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning.

            On Saturday night, I got in bed, propped myself in reading position, and pushed in sequence three little Kindle buttons that opened the world of "Madame Bovary" to me once again.

            My reactions next week.

Kindle Series No. 1: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your Kindle (?)

What I need to know is, can the Kindle deliver a book like "Madame Bovary"
into the hands of the next generations?

October 27, 2010 

By Hugh Gilmore

            Is anyone willing to trust me with his or her Kindle for a few days so I can test-drive it? I'm serious. And I'd be willing to mention you in a future column (in a positive way, too!) as the "kind person who trusted me to borrow his/her Kindle" so I can see what it's like to read an entire book on an electronic device. I'll also mention anything else you'd like said about yourself ("great smile," for example, or even "avid reader").

            I don't want to buy one just yet because they're still rather pricey and I'd hate to find out that I don't like reading that way. I am open-minded on the subject, however, and want to give it a try. It would be fabulous if you've got a downloaded copy of "Madame Bovary" also, because I developed a yen this week to reread that book, probably last read by me almost 20 years ago. But I'd pay for a Bovary download if necessary. 

            The notion that I should read a serious and time-tested literary masterpiece on a Kindle came about in this way: I've accepted that a high-adrenalin book, a thriller or mystery, would be easy to get through on a Kindle because of their "and then" type of plots. But, what about a quiet, contemplative, deeply serious book? Would that be readable when squooshed into the confines of a small electronic screen?            

            How about a sentence like this, from "Madame Bovary: "... no one can ever express the exact measure of his needs, or conceptions, or sorrows. The human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out a tune for a dancing bear, when we would wish with our music to move the stars." I'd like to know if I could comfortably read a passage like that on a Kindle and feel as though I'd just fallen through into outer space, as I did the first time I read those words. 

            I'm not, believe me, trying to set this up so that Kindle will fail my expectations. If the medium is capable of carrying any message, as books are, I'll be delighted. I'll feel I've added a tool to my reading kit.

            Now, as to why this subject has come up at this time. Like all great, international, historic issues, this question arises from a small domestic scene. Which is: nearly every time I pass my son's room (Andrew is 24), he is looking at a computer screen. I don't stop and bother him; I simply sigh a bit and feel a twinge. The next time we are alone, taking a car ride somewhere, for example, I ask in as innocent a fashion as I can: "So, are you reading anything lately?"

            "Not right now," he says. "There are a couple of things I want to start soon though."

            "Oh," I say, "well, that's good. I'd like to hear about them when you get around to reading them."

            All very vague. Like all parents. I wish my child would read more. There's nothing more reassuring than the sight of your child curled up with a book. That blankety-blank computer, and those darned iPods are destroying the minds of our nation's young people. That's what I think usually.

            But then, one day, I thought, Well, what is he's doing when he's staring at that screen? He doesn't play games. He's reading. And he's taking in information. In his case, the content most often concerns the history of some aspect of American entertainment: humor, jazz, vaudeville, early recording equipment, always set within the historical events that affected their form and content. (For example, Patriotic songs of World War I, or, pre-Hays code cartoons and the length of Betty Boop's skirts).

            About a week ago I walked by Andrew's room and had a sudden realization. If he were sitting reading the same information from a book I'd feel happy. Followed by the question, So, what's more important: that he have a book under his nose, or that he's driven to learn about a subject he's interested in? Even if the information comes from an electronic screen?

            My reluctance to accept the electronic book must be equivalent to the head shaking people did when automobiles replaced horses. No more dainty, reassuring, clip-clops as folks pass by outside the window. Just the dismal roar of the future whizzing past.

            So, yes, okay, I'm certainly happily served by computers now and I'm comfortable with them. And I accept that e-publishing is very soon going to nearly eradicate print publishing. And I imagine it must be pleasurable to read a best seller on an electronic reading device. Those of us who grew up loving the feel and smell and sight of printed books will murmur and yearn nostalgically to the end of our days, but what's coming is coming. Ours will also be the last generation to say we remember being children and seeing horse-drawn carts delivering milk. And holding new books in our hands.

            So be it. But what I need to know is, can the Kindle deliver a book like "Madame Bovary" into the hands of the next generations?

            I'm willing to find out if one of you will lend me your Kindle for a few days.

                                                        

             

C'mere boy, this won't hurt a bit: A bullfighting aficionado waves the cape at me

 We were just two guys with more time behind them than ahead ...

March 16, 2011  

By Hugh Gilmore

I'm sitting at my desk at three in the afternoon -- this is last Wednesday, the day the Local comes out -- and the phone rings. I pick up.

   "You really think bullfighting should be banned? Is that really your opinion? You given a lot of thought to this?"

    Who starts a phone call without saying hello? This has to be one of my friends kidding around. The voice is gravelly, but kind of friendly.

            He goes on, "What would you rather be: a fighting bull, you live for four or five years pampered, nice easy life, and then you go out in a blaze of glory, have a chance to defend yourself? Or live for a year and a half as a dairy cow and then get slaughtered?"

            Whoa. I don't like words like 'slaughter' spoken by strangers in the first minute of a, so far, anonymous conversation. And I just realized that what I thought was friendly in his tone was really just a mid-western accent.

            I said, "I'll be glad to talk about this, but you should identify yourself."

            "I'm Jerry McMurphy (2nd name a pseudonym I've assigned him) calling from southern California. Do you really think bullfighting should be banned? Why? You think it hurts the animals, eh? Animal cruelty. Man you don't understand, these toreros love the animals. They love them. There's such respect. You ever seen a bullfight? Live?"

            "Not yet."

            "Man, I was to 24 corridas last year, up and down Spain. Every feria (festival) we went to was capped off with a corrida. Amazing. I've seen some beautiful bullfights."

            "So you're a real aficionado?" I said.

            "Oh god, yeah, have been since 1966, I've done the whole eight days at Pamplona, I've been up and down that country. Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, even in southern France, Portugal, Mexico City. All over. I met James Michener back in '66 when he was researching his book "Iberia." He based a character on me."

            By now I was very excited and enjoying this conversation. The column he'd read ("Running from Hemingway's Bull, Part 3," March 9) described my enthusiasm to learn about bullfighting for a novel I'm writing. As an aside I'd written that despite bullfighting's occasional grace and beauty it was cruel and should be banned.

             In this telephone conversation though, I had no interest in getting into a fruitless debate about whether animals felt pain. Of course they do. Pain evolved to tell creatures to get the hell away from whatever was causing them the pain. And just because some people had found a way to make a mysterious, aesthetic ritual out of handicapping a competition, that didn't mean the animal felt pain any the less. And the animal is not there by choice.

            But what I said was, "What ferias have you been to? Who have you seen fight?"

            And oh, he was a fountain of information. He told me I should read Kenneth Tynan's "Bull Fever," if I wanted an inside-the-game view. That the perfect bulls come from the Victorino Ranch. That we live today in the "golden age of bullfighting." Unlike the old days when the emphasis was on simply having the courage to kill, today's fights were all about the "prep."

            And each thing he said was a thrill for me to hear because all the words he was using and ideas he was expressing had merely been words on the printed page before he called. Now I was hearing the words pronounced correctly. I was hearing fine distinctions made about concepts I didn't quite understand just from my reading. The information was coming alive.

            From watching YouTube I knew a few matadors of today. "Have you seen Alejandro Talavante?" I asked.

            "He's good, yes, I've seen him. But I'd put him in my top nine, as number nine. My absolute favorite, the best in the world today is Jose Tomas. Then there's Enrique Ponce. He's so perfect, he's too perfect many people say. There's also El Juli."

            I said, "I'm trying to get into the head of this bullfighter character I'm writing. Do you think these toreros you mentioned care about the so-called artistry of bullfighting, really care?"

            "Oh god, yes. You've got to see this one matador, Morante de la Puebla. He's the epitome of the brooding artist. And my own personal favorite along those dramatic lines, Miguel Pererra."

            And on and on we went for an hour. By now, his angry edge was gone; we were just two guys with more time behind them than ahead. An incredible amount of forgiveness goes into that equation when men talk. I was willing to be the pupil if he was willing to be the teacher. I felt as though I were passing some elementary test, given at the end of the first weeks of study. But I needed to satisfy my curiosity about another simple matter.

             "Say, Jerry, how did my article came to your attention?"

            He growled, "There's a website, Mundo Taurino. The world of bulls and bullfighting. It picks up stories from all around the world. I linked to you from there. You should subscribe. Oh, and yeah, there's a group in England that publishes an English-language quarterly. They're called Club Taurino of London. You should join."

            A few more interchanges and then I was being called to dinner. "Jerry, a final question before I go," I said.

            "What's that?"

            "What prompted you to actually pick up the phone and call? What did you want to get out of calling me?"

            "Ah, I don't know. Probably just to say "Eff you" or something along those lines."

            "You mind if I call you if I have questions?"

            He hemmed and hawed a bit, but gave me his home, and, after another pause, his cell numbers.
            "What the hell," he said, "I'm an old retired guy. I got nothing better to do."

           

            PS. I joined Club Taurino of London on Friday. The next time they have their monthly Thursday night dinner I might just fly over and drink some manzanilla (like Carmen, et al.) with them. And possibly rub epaulettes with that "brooding artiste" Morante de la Puebla or whoever the guest is. "Hate the sin, love the sinner" or something.