Sunday Analogy Blogging

Via Andrew, Jonathan Franzen on the kindle: "Yes, in theory, words are words. But literature isn't data. The difference between Shakespeare on a BlackBerry and Shakespeare in the Arden Edition is like the difference between vows taken in a shoe store and vows taken in cathedral."

I feel like Franzen's reading this analogy backwards. if the love is real and deeply felt and the vows sincerely undertaken, then what sort of person would hold it against the newlyweds that their ceremony was performed in shabby surroundings? A shallow person, I think. Similarly, it seems to me that one would have to have a poor appreciation of Shakespeare to seriously believe that the power of his work can't come through on a computer screen. I read Notes from Underground for the first time in a crumbling 30 year-old flimsy paperback edition -- it's still a great novel, and I'm sure it'd be great on a computer screen as well.

Does that mean the market for handsome editions you can display proudly on your shelf -- or even just things that feel comfortable to hold in the hand -- will just vanish overnight? Of course not. There's more to the reading (and book-owning) experience than the text itself. But that "more" is precisely what's more than literature about it, it's not the literature itself.

Comments

(shrug) Then every American girl is shallow. your argument thus proves too much.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | December 16, 2007 1:08 PM

I think there is a difference in the experience between a book and electronic text....I believe that several studies have shown that reading on paper is more immersive than current digital dispalys. This may change as resolution and technology improves, of course.

Posted by tiparillo | December 16, 2007 1:21 PM

Shakespeare seems like an odd example here, as many believe that reading his work in a book is inferior to seeing it performed in a theater.

Posted by William Burns | December 16, 2007 1:25 PM

My wife of 15+ years and I consider our anniversary to be the day we decided to be married, not the day we "eloped" and were sanctioned by the state.

Posted by Gore/Edwards 08 | December 16, 2007 1:32 PM

Matt, a crumbling 30 year-old paperback is the perfect way to read Notes from Underground.

Posted by SqueakyRat | December 16, 2007 1:33 PM

SqueakyRat - so true. It could only be better if he was sitting in a dark, moldy basement and battling a bout of TB. I read it as a brand new paperback, which just seemed wrong.

Posted by Minipundit | December 16, 2007 1:52 PM

Franzen sure seems to be one finicky little book fetishist: recall the flap flap, when Franzen objected to having "Oprah Book Club" or "Oprah recommends" on the cover of The Corrections (full disclosure: I thought The Corrections was pretty awesome, as good as anything else written that year).

One would think that the very kinds of books that ordinary readers find a bit of a slog--e.g., Ulysses, the late novels of Henry James--would benefit, not necessarily from Amazon's device, but in general from the possibilities of electronic presentation (the ability to highlight and navigate one clause at a time, for example).

Posted by kth | December 16, 2007 1:55 PM

All new things are bad. The old way is always better.

At least that's what my Dad seems to think most of time. "Damn kids these days. No respect. Hey, get off my lawn!"

Posted by Captain Noble | December 16, 2007 1:58 PM

I think my liver hurts . . .

Anyway, you just know there was some fellow saying " The difference between Euripides on a codex and Euripides on a proper scroll is like . . .'" way back when.

(peeking at wikipedia, apparently there was a major format conversion problem - when everybody eventually switched to codex, a lot of works-on-scrolls that never got copied ended up lost . . .)

Posted by Dan S. | December 16, 2007 1:58 PM

I see both sides of the puzzle. A new(ish) web site, www.dailylit.com lets you read books via email or rss one entry at a time. I'm almost finished with Count of Monte Cristo and this method works perfect for me since I can do it on blackberry when I'm in elevators, waiting in line at coffee shops, or stopped at red lights.

Okay, not stopped at red lights. But you get the idea.

There's room for innovation and it's not going to kill the paper form of books.

Posted by Edge | December 16, 2007 2:07 PM

I haven't held one, but the kindle looks really toyish to me. Imagine an iBook, available in leather-bound versions, that looks like a real book. Open the book to read on one page with a note-taking stylus on the other. Give this idea a few generations of both the technological and human variety and these issues will go away.

Posted by Mark | December 16, 2007 2:12 PM

It doesn't have to be all or nothing, right? If Shakespeare is so good, it could be that quite a bit gets through on the Kindle, while something important is still lost.

Also, I think if you're being consistent, Matt, you have to call weddings a huge fraud, perpetuated by shallow people. There's worse things to be committed to, but that sounds like a pretty reductionist viewpoint.

Posted by Justin | December 16, 2007 2:20 PM

I think we'll know a lot more about the viability of digital books once a new generation actually reads in that way. Reading and memories of reading involve several senses, each of which produces evocative imprints. Someone who recalls the sight, smell, and texture of their copy of "The Hobbit" or "Frog and Toad Are Friends" will probably feel that something is missing if they try to read those books on a Kindle. But for kids who are already accustomed to reading from screens, dealing with printed materials may feel bizarre.

I wonder, too, if the carbon footprint of print publications will be compared to that of digital reading devices. If you like trees, you want to see less of them being turned into pulp.

Posted by tinisoli | December 16, 2007 2:39 PM

"I believe that several studies have shown that reading on paper is more immersive than current digital displays"

I've seen those kinds of studies cited a lot, and they don't seem to take into account that you can always do what I do: make the text really big.

Anyway, a few years ago I read "Life on the Mississippi" and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" online, and I don't think the medium detracted from the experience.

Posted by godoggo | December 16, 2007 2:46 PM

Franzen's argument is weirdly stupid. You can HAVE the Arden edition on a BlackBerry: it's a bunch of words; you can also have one of Bowdler's expurgated editions, or any other edition you want. A different format is not the same thing as a different edtion......

Posted by metalpetic | December 16, 2007 2:49 PM

Matt --

Sorry, but you are just wrong on this one. The heft, the weight, the smell of paper . . . the purely tactile sense the comes of immersing yourself in the written word while reading a book -- this is the very stuff of reading.

A very good friend of mine, the smartest man I have ever known, would -- every so often -- tell me about his favorite Star Trek scene. Kirk (or Spock, can't remember which) needs a lawyer and goes to a man whose desk is overwhelmed with volumes and volumes of books. When it is pointed out that he could have all of the same information provided him via computer, the lawyer just shrugs and says something like "Bah! Computers!! If you want to know the law, you've got to read the books!"

And, speaking as a guy who has had to do a tremendous amount of legal reading, that Star Trek dude was right.

Posted by swellsman | December 16, 2007 2:53 PM

Well, the experience of music has changed a great deal over the last century. For better or worse...that is still debated. Meanwhile, the way it was experienced 30 years ago is a foreign animal to kids today. So it shall be with literature. Welcome to obsolescence, Matt. Or change or diversity or opportunity. This culture is a beehive of innovation. A libido without the STD's.

Posted by chrisk | December 16, 2007 2:54 PM

The difference between Shakespeare on a BlackBerry and Shakespeare in the Arden Edition is like the difference between vows taken in a shoe store and vows taken in cathedral.

I'm going to try this line out the next time I argue a divorce case in court: "Your Honor, plaintiff plainly isn't entitled to any alimony or child support, because the parties married in a shoe store rather than a cathedral . . ."

Posted by rea | December 16, 2007 3:04 PM

kth: good point, but this is where most of the proprietary formats stink, usually they do not allow you to print, and to add such capabilities like
highlighting, search, your own margin notes, etc. that you would get in normal html format or in normal pdf.

About location of the marital vows: from what I have seen, give guest good view and good food, and none will grumble that a cathedral would be better. Plus, can you rent a cathedral and have the wedding officiated by a Reform Rabbi?

Now, suppose that the bride is a heiress of a big shoe retailer and the wedding takes place in the flagship store of the chain, say, with a Cinderella theme (perhaps combined with Puss in the Boots and other fairy tales with shoe motifs).

Posted by piotr | December 16, 2007 3:06 PM

I wonder, too, if the carbon footprint of print publications will be compared to that of digital reading devices. If you like trees, you want to see less of them being turned into pulp.
I wonder how many mining operations, manufacturing operations, shipments of materials by train, ship or truck are involved in just manufacturing these devices, let alone all the energy and materials used in designing, marketing and selling them. And what about the energy needed to run them? And, what about getting rid of them when we are done with them and a better device with more bells and whistles comes out the next year?
Paper is a great medium. I have cataloged incunables (books printed before 1501) in beautiful condition. I have looked at manuscripts from around the year 1000 in pristine condition. If I handed you 5 1/2" floppy disk what could you do with it? Paper has its problems, no doubt. But it can last a very long time if it's of decent quality and stored properly. To access it, one just needs to know how to read the language it's written in. Digital media needs to be constantly updated and transfered at an ever faster pace (an energy and time consuming process) in order to remain accessible to the general public.

Posted by dc | December 16, 2007 3:09 PM

"The Corrections" was mediocre and Franzen is overrated.

Posted by mq | December 16, 2007 3:20 PM

On a related (but perhaps OT) note, what's with all the hate for the Amazon Kindle (especially all the Apple-istas)? Functionally, it's designed near perfectly (good battery life, easy-to-read e-ink screen, 1-handed page turning, relatively cheap (for new) books, free and always-on wireless service with wikipedia, a good newspaper/magazin subscription model, good size/feel, etc), but it doesn't look very pretty. It's one thing to question the economic model of e-books in general or the issue of e-book DRM, but it seems like the biggest dig against the device is on the aesthetics.

Posted by ben | December 16, 2007 3:39 PM

I could not disagree with Franzen more, even his analogy is inappropriate - a vow is a vow, even in sign language. I love a paper books, but when it comes down to it the heart of the reading experience is the words, the voice of the author interacting with all the experience and imagination the reader brings.

For a while now I have been catching up on a lot of the classics 'I really should have read' on my cell phone. http://www.booksinmyphone.com has free books you can install to your phone. The books end up in your phone as a java game, you can read as much as you like when you like. I think it works best for prose, so I wouldn't start with Shakespeare's iambic pentameter. I have really got a lot of value out of the site.

Posted by avagee | December 16, 2007 4:25 PM

E-readers are fine, but they're largely a solution in search of a problem. Aside from the experiential side of reading from a page versus reading on a screen (I like books better), books have inherent affordances that to me make them more attractive. No DRM, for one. Pulpy plane books are great because they don't run on batteries, and once you're done, you can pass it on to a friend, donate it to a thrift store, or even just throw it away. Yes, bulkiness blah blah blah, but that's hardly a huge problem for most people who don't travel a lot.

For, um, higher quality books, there are other issues. Collectibility, for instance, because books are good not just for the information they contain, but for the objects they are. I'm an academic, and books are for me tools of the trade. And I don't mean that in some sort of metaphorical sense. Books are -used-, not merely read: you can earmark important pages, take notes in the margins, underline key passages -- all of which is permanent and not subject to file formats and operating systems -- and you can flip back and forth between book sections quickly and easily. E-readers make all of that very very hard.

More than most everyday objects, books are already close to perfectly designed. E-readers offer a lot of new features that in some instances are attractive, but at the cost of many others. Overall, I'm not yet convinced e-books are (or perhaps should be) the wave of the future.

Posted by km | December 16, 2007 6:31 PM

Seen one Luddite, you've seen them all.

Sure, the tech today is primitive. It will get better.

Paper won't.

You ain't seen nothing yet. Transformations are going to be made that ninety percent of you chimps simply aren't going to be able to handle with this kind of thinking.

Fortunately (for you) they will occur over the next fifty years or more, and new generations will be more receptive, at least to some degree.

Ultimately, however, the only significant issue remaining is the "di-morphic split" (as J. D. Bernal put it in "The World, The Flesh and the Devil" - in 1929) between human and Transhuman.

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul
J. D. Bernal
1929
Preface by Jack Sarfatti
http://www.qedcorp.com/pcr/pcr/bernal.html

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 16, 2007 7:35 PM

Nothing is more perfect than a paperback book. It's biodegradable, cheap, lightweight, and I don't have this slimy jacket sliding all around when I try to read it.

The idea of taking some expensive metal hunk on the bus to read, something that emits light and probably radiation, something that will die if it isn't charged, something that's going to get lost or stolen, and end up in a landfill because they came out with a smaller/flatter/fuschia one, fills me with contempt for anyone who would think of this as a good thing.

Posted by Phoebe | December 16, 2007 8:45 PM

"Also, I think if you're being consistent, Matt, you have to call weddings a huge fraud, perpetuated by shallow people. "

The wedding industry is arguably a huge fraud perpetuated by shallow people who want customers to believe their wedding will lack meaning if it costs less than an Aston Martin.

Phoebe wrote: "The idea of taking some expensive metal hunk on the bus to read, something that emits light and probably radiation, "

The kindle doesn't emit light. It's like paper. Many books would be awkward to read on a crowded bus. Newspapers are a pain, what with all the folding and pieces falling out. Something huge like Decline and fall of the Roman Empire? Not gonna work. And a kindle can be operated one-handed, which is incredibly useful when you're jammed in like sardines and need one hand to hold the strap and stay upright.

tiparillo wrote: ".I believe that several studies have shown that reading on paper is more immersive than current digital dispalys"

The Kindle doesn't use a regular LCD, it uses digital ink, which works with reflected available light, like paper. The main complaint I have with it is that the text is black or dark-gray on light gray. A whiter 'page' would be nice.

Posted by Jon H | December 16, 2007 9:12 PM

km wrote: "For, um, higher quality books, there are other issues. "

Er, no there aren't. It's just stupid to assume e-books will replace every other form of publication.

The advent of mass-market paperbacks didn't spell the end of hardbacks. You can still find expensive leather-bound special editions.

Why would e-books be any different?

Posted by Jon H | December 16, 2007 9:22 PM

Once they make the thing waterproof so you can read it in the bath, I'm in.

Though maybe by that time I'll feel too guilty to take baths, with global warming.

Posted by kali | December 16, 2007 10:59 PM

In the long run I believe printed books will survive.
The real future for Kindle and other ebooks is to replace newspapers and magazines.
Not even Franzen would argue that ebooks degrade the experience of reading the classifieds or the comics.
If my daily paper offered me a free Kindle if I signed up for a three-year subscription, I'd take it.
Newspapers could return to dailies with multiple editions, updating their stories several times a day.
And imagine all the trees that could be saved if the amount of newsprint produced every day was cut, say, in half.

Posted by Xboy | December 16, 2007 11:50 PM

Really, people, go look up the word ceremony. If you think ceremonies as such are stupid that's one thing. But the idea that place and surroundings don't matter for important events is bizarre.

Each new technology changes the experience of reading. The move from hand copied to fixed character was probably the biggest. But the move from print to electronic is up there, although if the they can remove the light emission from the equation (i've not tried kindle) it won't be that different...at least not from a McLuhan perspective.

Posted by nolaboyd | December 16, 2007 11:57 PM

I am holding an Arden Othello as I write this - an old paperback copy of the sort read by hundreds of thousands of college students, dog-eared and somewhat must. It is not particularly pleasant to the touch or the eye. The cover is thin, the paper is cheap, and the binding is glued.

The Arden's value is not in the cheap mass-produced physical object. It consists of the carefully edited text, the extensive explanatory footnotes and its scholarly introductions and appendicies. Far from being a cathedral, it is a machine for understanding Shakespeare. It would not suffer from being read in electronic format, with the footnotes integrated by hyperlinks.

Posted by bloix | December 17, 2007 12:07 AM

I am holding an Arden Othello as I write this - an old paperback copy of the sort read by hundreds of thousands of college students, dog-eared and musty. It is not particularly pleasant to the touch or the eye. The cover is thin, the paper is cheap, and the binding is glued.

Franzen presumably is not referring to my Arden. He has a high-quality hardback edition, with heavy board covers, creamy paper and a sewn binding. But my Arden is the version that is read by the vast majority of readers. Its value is not in the mass-produced physical object. It consists of the carefully edited text, the extensive explanatory footnotes and its scholarly introductions and appendicies. Far from being a cathedral, it is a machine for understanding Shakespeare. It would not suffer from being read in electronic format, with the footnotes integrated by hyperlinks.

Posted by bloix | December 17, 2007 12:10 AM

I'm with Bloix on this one, in fact, I'll go one step further. For the beginner reading Shakespeare (or even for the expert), even Arden is a poor relation to the possibilities of the elctronic format.

The notes in Arden (or any of the other annotated texts) are limited in their number and scope by the available space and the necessarily linear format of the book. In a fully integrated electronic Shakespeare, there is no reason the whole of Shakepearean scholarship can't be at your fingertips. Definitions, period specific usage and etymology for each word. Scholarly takes on the more notable passages. Links to referenced works, and to works that reference a passage. This is a bit messianic, but the potential really is limitless.

With all due respect to a talented writer, Franzen is out to lunch. Shakespeare is Shakespeare - in a $2 paperback, on the original manuscripts, or anywhere else. It's the words that are important, not how they are conveyed.

Posted by heedless | December 17, 2007 12:55 AM

Sure, what's in a ceremony? Maybe we should have the next president take the oath of office at a Chick-Fil-A in the food court at a DC mall. As long as he's really and truly sincere.

Posted by Dan Kervick | December 17, 2007 1:06 AM

You called Franzen shallow. Bonus points for you.

Posted by JZ | December 17, 2007 11:03 AM

For those of us who read for reasons other than the status we expect others to associate with our choice of content, the kindle can only be a good thing. Personally, I've been carrying books around with me every day of my life since the 1st grade. I do not leave my house without a book unless there is absolutely no chance that I'll have more than 5 minutes to myself until I return. I also commute almost exclusively by bicycle. If I can take a book or two out of my bag, especially the thick technical books that I often have to carry to and from work, then the kindle is a no-brainer (I'm still waiting for mine). When I travel, I often have 4 or 5 paperbacks in my bag, and I still often run short of reading material by the end of a 2 or 3 week trip.

My only real objection to the kindle is the fact that you can't loan books with DRM to your friends. To me, a book is something to be passed on. It has to be incredibly special for me to keep a book for myself. I've only got so much storage, after all, and moving my collection is already a pain. Assuming the kindle is as readable as folks say it is, I'll be happy to never buy another book printed on paper ever again. Sure, the reading experience will be different, but the important thing is the content, and so long as I don't feel like the kindle is inhibiting my ability to access that content, I'm happy.

I keep waiting for someone to actually fess up that they don't like the kindle because it prevents them from storing their books in bookshelves where others can see and appreciate their taste in literature. We all know that this is the true source of many of the complaints about the concept of ebooks. Admittedly, prior versions of the technology weren't up to par, but the e-ink thing seems to be the final piece of the puzzle. Maybe I'll go into business building faux-bookshelves that display images of your book collection on a nice widescreen LCD built into some custom cabinetry. That ought to make the literature snobs happy. Side benefit would be the ability to shift to displaying your music collection.

I have to say, apple's "cover flow" interface via a large touchscreen on a wall would be a fantastic way to browse either a musical or literary library. I miss flipping through album covers, and even reading the spines of CDs is an improvement over the interfaces of nearly every music library package available for a computer. Coverflow is the exception, though it annoys me that I can't organize my collection into an arbitrary order based on metadata criteria that might not be storable in standard tags. Surely the iTunes authors have watched or read Hi Fidelity, right? This will be even more important with books, since most of us don't tend to keep our books organized alphabetically by author or title. My organizational system is much subtler than that. So maybe a slick touchscreen virtual bookshelf would actually be a useful product. I'm not sure I'm ready to spend the $1000 such a product would cost, though.

Posted by sdg | December 17, 2007 12:26 PM

I agree with Jon H about the shallowness of weddings, and with whoever said anything bad about Franzen, because I read "The Twenty-seventh City" which was so-bad-it's-good, and don't want to agree with him on anything.

My anti-kindle residue - and this is even ASSUMING it really is as easy to read and lightweight as a dover thrift paperback - is environmental. Paper waste is a big deal, granted, but at least paper is biodegradeable. Electronic gadgets are not, and they have incredibly poisonous stuff in them, and require all kinds of wretched mining to produce. And to all those people who say "but technology will find a way, blah blah, to make that go away" - well, recycled paper and hemp and bamboo and all kinds of other ways to save trees are already here. If trees are still being cut down for this, then it's because there is a lack of incentive to use the other methods, and that should change, but those methods are already here. Even assuming that one day technology's magic wand makes it easy, safe, and clean to get metal out of the ground, and electricity from the sun, batteries without lead, etc. - until that day comes, can't we all just read paperback books? Is that just too hard?

And Mr. Bookshelf hater - I feel you. That's why I go to the library, and give away books I buy that are still in print. The ones with huge beautiful pictures I keep, but those don't lend themselves to a handheld device, either.

Posted by Phoebe | December 17, 2007 1:13 PM

I wonder if Franzen will be donating his profits to a library or some charity that supports the use of REAL books.

Ouch, my eyes just rolled out of my head.

Posted by Chad | December 17, 2007 1:38 PM

When I got married, no one told me that my marriage license was only good in Kindle-approved areas, or that I'd have to renew my vows if the Kindle went obsolete. Now, granted, my marriage can't be passed on to a friend but...I'm not liking this metaphor very much.

The Kindle looks ugly to me. Just plain ugly, in a way my tiny beloved iPod is not. (And it's much more expensive.) It has too much DRM and not enough content, and images-- which I've grown to expect in this digital age-- apparently look terrible on it. I'm definitely not going to be an early adopter on this technology. Give me a cheaper, easily held, easily passed-on book instead-- especially as I pick up most of my books at sales or the library.

Posted by Persia | December 17, 2007 2:11 PM

The Kindle won't replace books just as video tapes and DVDs didn't replace movie theaters. It's one other option.

I see one niche for the Kindle is the traveler. Much easier to take than a stack of books and magazines.

But can you use a Kindle on a plane? Or, since it uses cell technology, is it restricted?

Posted by JJF | December 17, 2007 4:31 PM

Ask a question, answer a question.

Yes, as I just discovered. You can turn the wireless off to use on a plane.

Posted by JJF | December 17, 2007 4:39 PM

What a perfectly goofy analogy. Is reading a given text a once-(or twice; or thrice)-in-a lifetime event, steeped in ritual and designed to involve the community and the state?

A better analogy would enlist intercourse as the comparable-to-reading activity; one would then have to admit that if the partner were the hottest babe on earth (Willy Shakespeare, you go, you foxy thang!), the accommodations wouldn't much matter.

Posted by Steven Augustine | December 17, 2007 5:06 PM

It's not the individual book I mourn, it's the collection. I was fortunate enough to have access to the stacks of the University of Illinois library (one of the largest in the world; yes, Matt, smaller than your alma mater's) at an impressionable age. To wander through the stacks, with the translucent floors, the scores upon scores of dusty shelves, the ancient books crumbling and musty and untouched in 30 years -- those are the sensual correlates of paper books that are embedded deeply in me. The older books had to be handled gently, a perfect physical manifestation of the intellectual reverence with which the library filled me.

Now, with google, not so much.

Posted by jay | December 17, 2007 6:24 PM