It’s time someone took a stand against the the filth that has been making its way into our bookshops. Flowing freely, like back in the day when sewage would just sail down the street, but apparently we asked the sewage to come and are erecting large cardboard stands to announce its arrival. Apparently, we want it to stay. For good.
I am talking, of course, about the influx of digital books that everyone from Waterstones, to amazon to Argos is shoving in our faces. Weekly emails screaming of the ‘fantastic new features’ the ‘flexibility’ the ‘1000s of new titles that are quite literally at your fingertips’ bla bla bla every cliché in the book’s being employed by the ad man, which is a sure sign that someone, probably in Asia where they love this stuff, has a lot of money to be made out of these disgusting contraptions and is determined to get it. And get it from the british public, by targetting them from any possible angle: first it’s for the intelligentsia, who, naturally own so many books that it is a travesty that no one has yet thought to cater to their needs by providing so practical and sophisticated a medium in which they can unleash their literary passion. Haven’t you felt maliciously targetted, singled out, as a consumer of books, by the sheer weight of them in your briefcase? When you finally get to take those two weeks off, I’m sure you spend the first night cursing and raving about the indignity of having to select which novels to take with you to the beach in the Maldives, and BA have just introduced a second-bag fee. God, life is tough. But then again, it’s for the ordinary person don’t you - it’s the everyman’s way into books (NB. to the bright spark behind this campaign angle - we already have this, in the form of EVERYMAN PAPERBACKS, they’re quite successful you know and shock horror, weigh less than a pair of sungless). See, look how clever we were, we put it in our name ‘Kindle’, ‘cause we’re ‘re-Kindling’ the masses’ love for reading, hah geddit? Yes, yes, thank you Mr. Kindle person, I guess you get credit for being a little bit more inventive than Sony, with their e-reader. But they’re serious about this books for all thing - I mean, when Argos, starts selling something that enables you to learn, think a little bit....it shows these companies mean business.
Ok so you’ve had my angry strident rant and maybe (if you are wondering this, then you are clearly insane and probably a Kindle-owning bastard yourself - how do you sleep at night sir? I hope the whole weight of literature history is pressing down on your bladder) just maybe you’re wondering why I’m so vehemently against these machines that have designed primarily, for book-lovers’ like mine’s convenience? Well, that’s just the point. I don’t WANT books to be made convenient. I’ll forfeit letter writing for the sake or expediency and I’ll use a computer for the doors it opens (although using a typewriter it is undeniably therapy for the soul) but I don’t see any need and certainly not any want to get rid of books. The paperback isn’t just a word-transmitter. It’s not just the necessary packaging for the goods. That’s like saying the only point and function of our bodies is to house our soul. Call me extreme if you like, but the cover design, the smell of the binding, the feel of the pages: so enticingly crisp or comfortingly thumbed down, the lines you loved neatly underlined, not written down elsewhere, because they belong in that body, their beauty and their value lies from their position in that whole. And you know that in years to come when you pick up that volume your eye will suddenly be caught by those words that touched you so or you’ll laugh over the annotations you scribbled in all the margins. Or, maybe your younger self will prove depressingly insightful and you’ll fall into a gloom of self-pity and inadequacy, hey, I don’t know what it’ll provoke, but it’ll be there, you as you once were caught in that solid collection of pages. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
Waterstones used to have that on their plastic bags. I loved it so much that I saved one, just to keep, and went crazy one time my unsuspecting sister used it to hold her lunch. Now their bags suggest some bland populist titles, that no doubt are on the e-reader bestseller list. Books are so much more than just word machines. They always have been; that’s why the earliest books were such delicate ornate objects - we knew that they, in themselves, as well as their words, were precious. The mass-market paperback, whilst not quite as beautiful, didn’t lose this sense of value, as an individual.
William Lyon Phelps (ok, so you haven’t heard of him, but he’s relevant so shush) made an entire speech entitled The Pleasure Books. And it’s true, books just by existing, bring us pleasure, in the way that knowing you have the complete works of Shakespeare on a little grey disc-thing just doesn’t. Books are for reading, yes, but they’re for holding, for walking around aimlessly with, for falling asleep next to (and this could be for many reasons - you were tired, you just love it so much, or perhaps you are lonely and embarassingly wanted to cradle your book - I’m not one to judge)...but TELL me you can have a relationship with a Kindle?! You can’t! I love my Mac, I truly do, but for what it enables me to do, not for it’s sleek aluminium body and shiny screen. Well, I do kind of like those to. But Phelps hit on it in that speech when he said “your books belong to you; you treat them with affectionate intimacy. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down. One should have one's own bookshelves, which should not have doors, glass windows, or keys; they should be free and accessible to the hand as well as to the eye. The best of mural decorations is books; they are more varied in color and appearance than any wallpaper, they are more attractive in design...and then in one fell sweep Mr. Phelps obliterates any allure of the Kindle/The E-Reader/Book-Killer...and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities, so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight, you are surrounded with intimate friends.” Don’t buy a Kindle. PLEASE!
© Emma Yandle 2009
Love,
