Arbitrary Heaps of Words

As a writer, as well as a lover of all things technological, it should come as no surprise that the Kindle fascinates me. I'll be the first to admit that I'm still on the fence about the future of the book as a physical medium, but terms like "e-ink" and "the last book," with their perfect blend of Jetsonian logic and 1984-esque doublespeak, never fail to get a response out of me.

I should point out that as of right now, I haven't had any real interest in actually purchasing a Kindle for myself. I'm far too content with my books and my bookshelves. All Jerry Seinfeld protests aside, I enjoy keeping and in some ways, collecting, books, even after I'm done with them.

But what I do love is reading Kindle reactions and reviews and obituaries and exultations, and I've read none better than Nicholson Baker's A New Page, published recently in The New Yorker.

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Put bluntly (and used somewhat out of context here), this is what Baker had to say regarding the Kindle:

Here’s what you buy when you buy a Kindle book. You buy the right to display a grouping of words in front of your eyes for your private use with the aid of an electronic display device approved by Amazon.

From the tone of the article, I'd say Baker had some issues with the Kindle, so this summation doesn't surprise me. What he was hinting at at this point in the article was the refusal of Amazon to play nice with Sony's ebook capabilities (and all the other ebook entities out there), which comes at the expense of you and I, Joe Consumer. But in the big picture, how is his definition that different from a "normal" book? Look at this edited version:

Here’s what you buy when you buy a BOOK. You buy the right to display PAGES of words in front of your eyes for your private use.

After taking out the arty, personal parts of the definition of a book, isn't that what it is? In comparison, all that winds up being lopped off from the original Baker statement is:

...with the aid of an electronic display device approved by Amazon.

I'll use this snippet in a bigger point in a moment, but first, I still don't see the issue. If you're talking about access to literature, the debate is over before it begins. Baker points out how many books still aren't available on the Kindle

(There is no Amazon Kindle version of “The Jewel in the Crown.” There’s no Kindle of Jean Stafford, no Vladimir Nabokov, no “Flaubert’s Parrot,” no “Remains of the Day,” no “Perfume,” by Patrick Suskind, no Bharati Mukherjee, no Margaret Drabble, no Graham Greene except a radio script, no David Leavitt, no Bobbie Ann Mason’s “In Country,” no Pynchon, no Tim O’Brien, no “Swimming-Pool Library,” no Barbara Pym, no Saul Bellow, no Frederick Exley, no “World According to Garp,” no “Catch-22,” no “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” no “Portnoy’s Complaint,” no “Henry and Clara,” no Lorrie Moore, no “Edwin Mullhouse,” no “Clockwork Orange.”)

but that's just a result of lack of time passed, not function. If anything, Amazon helps the public gain access to books, simply because they can "stock"--in both the physical and ebook sense--far more items than your local bookstore, be it small or large.

I think that what winds up becoming the bigger question, especially when using Baker's definition as the gold standard, is this:

Is our issue with the Kindle itself, or what the Kindle stands for?

Considering that at one point in the piece, Baker spends almost 550 words--7 paragraphs--describing the unboxing, physical attributes, and color of the Kindle screen, I think the answer is, for the moment, yes. By the end of the piece, Baker points out how functional the (free) Amazon Kindle iPhone app can be, and how in some ways, it does things (lit screen) that the Kindle cannot do, and scratches an itch the (not free) Kindle cannot scratch, a line of reasoning I feel supports my assertion yet again.

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I don't want to come off sounding as if I don't think Baker gave the Kindle a fair shake--quite the opposite, actually. I commend him just for trying it out in the first place, something I'm not even close to doing.

In the final paragraph of the piece, Baker describes coming to the end of his first "Kindle-delivered novel." He writes:

I began pressing the Next Page clicker more and more eagerly, so eagerly that my habit of page turning, learned from years of reading—which is to reach for the page corner a little early, to prepare for the movement—kicked in unconsciously. I clicked Next Page as I reached the beginning of the last line, and the page flashed to black and changed before I’d read it all. I was trying to hurry the Kindle. You mustn’t hurry the Kindle.

I think here, as I always seem to do during times of great personal reflection, of the infinite wisdom of one George Costanza, upon realizing what he had turned down after a date's suggestion that they go back up to her apartment for coffee:

Coffee doesn't mean coffee at 12 o'clock at night. Coffee means sex.

In this case, I wonder if Baker truly meant that we mustn't hurry the Kindle, when instead, he'd rather that the Kindle didn't hurry us.


More soon.

JS