My Kindle, in plain view on the subway or bus, keeps my fellow commuters from knowing whether I have good or bad taste in books. Not only that, but their own ebooks keep me from knowing their taste in books. These electronic readers keep me from judging people! I hate that. I am a person who stands strategically near the bookshelf at a cocktail party and squints at the spines of books, swatting away canapé-carrying waiters in favor of Isak Dinesen, all because she had a farm in Africa. I have long held the view that you could fall in love with someone based mostly upon what they like to read. Really shallow or disturbed people could carry Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, or Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, and I might fall in love with them. But what am I supposed to do now, since everyone is hiding their preferences under a black leatherette cover, or even under a whimsical one, designed to look like Hello Kitty, or For Whom the Bell Tolls? Fortunately for me, I am married and not in the market. But as for those people out there who are now deprived of the opportunity to form instant opinions on a Brooklyn-bound train at night, based on another person’s relationship to literature: I feel sorry for them.
Conversations that spring up around Kindle use tend not to be about content, but about mechanics. “Say, is that the new version?” a stranger might ask, leaning close, or, “How’s the contrast on that thing?” in place of the remark,”Why, I love The Man Who Loved Children, too!” But perhaps there’s a chance here for people not to judge one another at all. Apparently there’s a new TV show that’s grasping at the “American Idol” market, called “The Voice,” and the whole premise seems to be that the celebrity judges listen to a bunch of singers without looking at them, and then decide whether or not to let them proceed in the contest. As soon as they let them advance, the judges’ chairs whirl around so they can get the visual effect, too, and think: Oh my God, oh my God, I actually allowed a fat person (or a person with deeply pocked skin) to potentially become a celebrity. Maybe the radical way to think of all this is that people who carry ebooks should not be judged by the likes of me or you. There are a lot of kinds of books that a person can read, depending on mood. And really, who knows what lurks behind the leatherette? Maybe it isn’t even a book at all, but a series of random words strung together. Or maybe, inside the Hello Kitty cover carried by a handsome thirty-year-old banker, resides a novel called Hello Kitty: a Tokyo Adventure. I don’t know what people’s relationship to reading is going to be in the future. I have no idea how brainy young people will fall in love. Perhaps it will only be about pheromones, buffness or banter, and never ever involve the sexual stimulants known as Cormac McCarthy or David Foster Wallace or Virginia Woolf.
Books, those shape-shifters, are changing fast. They are becoming elusive, hidden, and perhaps soon they will be entirely internal, screened on our brain-pans for an audience of one, leaving the hands free. But even so, I know that I’ll keep reading, I’ll keep writing, and I guess I’ll keep judging people in whatever secret ways I can.
May 20, 2011 at 10:40 pm
I’ve had the same frustration and wondered if there could be a phone app that tells you what the person next to you is reading on his/her kindle. fight technology with technology.
I know this sounds Brave New World-ish and perhaps not technologically do-able (but what isn’t)…
May 23, 2011 at 4:12 pm
I am sure it will all be different in a few years… !
May 25, 2011 at 12:59 am
I bet there’s a secret desire to know if they are reading your stuff too, eh?
I totally get Cormac McCarthy books are a sexual stimulant. Suppose he ever considered a post-apocalyptic, baby-eating, human cattle world as a turn on?
May 25, 2011 at 10:59 am
Well, I am sure that’s part of it!
All best,
Meg
May 30, 2011 at 4:29 am
Btw, I wrote a review of The Ten Year Nap on my blog. Here’s the link:
http://prose-spective.blogspot.com/2011/02/ten-year-nap.html
Your book filled me with so much inner turmoil, I felt a review couldn’t be helped. I loved the book. It was amazing, especially because of the discourse it ripped from my brain. Well done and I hope you like it. I’m a fan.
May 30, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Ah, thanks very much. Very cool and intensely felt review. I am glad the book meant something to you! — All best, Meg
June 8, 2011 at 2:11 am
great post
June 11, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Hi jennifer, I appreciate it! — Meg
July 7, 2011 at 12:03 am
Most of us still read books made from wood pulp here in rural NH and I haven’t much to add except: I loved “The Man Who Loved Children” too! So very, very much. (And I loved The Ten Year Nap.)
July 10, 2011 at 2:08 am
That is good to hear about wood pulp still being the literature-delivery system of choice up in NH. And thanks for the nice words about my book! Best, Meg
November 7, 2011 at 3:53 am
PG Wodehouse was what did it for me, when I saw a full complement of his works on my now-husband’s homemade bookshelf, 19 years ago. 🙂
November 7, 2011 at 5:07 am
That sounds like a great idea. Wodehouse, maybe some Waugh…