World Book Day

It seems fitting on World Book Day to say a little more about why e-readers can never take the place of the printed book.

But first, here is a quotation from the compelling and hallucinogenic From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón, translated by the wonderfully named Victoria Cribb (London: Telegram 2011), which I came across a day or two after last week’s post ‘The Living Book’.

p. 58 ‘… I felt the heat of the animosity [p. 59] they bear toward me, the vindictive nature that drives a man to destroy his neighbour in a fire as if he were a banned book … For what is the difference? Every book is imbued with the human spirit …

'My eyes are smarting … In the conflagration I hear the breath of the man who composed the text, and the breath of the man who formed the words, one after the other, and the breath of the man who reads it … I hear this trinity breathing as one and the same being, steadily in and out, until the fire consumes the breath from their lungs, disbanding the fellowship of those whom the book nurtured, like the soil that brings forth different plants … And many were the intertwined souls that burnt at Helgafell when the old monastery library was cast on the [p. 60] bonfire, along with the few holy relics and statues that had not already been destroyed … Alas, I was there! … What could my puny strength achieve when set against the giant pyre that raged like three volcanic craters, so great was the heat from that diabolical act? …

'And who should have been the Royal Incendiary of the first pyre, the Master Incendiary of the second pyre, the Grim Incendiary of the third? He whose duty it was to take the lead in the spiritual education of the flock in that parish, Reverend Sigurdur Pétursson, a young man who had recently taken up the living there… That day the Reverend Sigurdur awoke before anyone else, already raving. He ran in his nightshirt to the library, locked himself in and began hurling the books higgledy-piggledy on the floor … The servants watched aghast through the windows as he tore off his shift, flung himself on his back and rolled around on the books like a flea-bitten stray in the farmyard … Howling, he seized the writings at random ….

[…and after committing acts too lewd for this family blog] '… he ordered his sexton to clear out the library, pile the heretical collection in a heap in the field ,and build three bonfires with the books, which he then set alight himself…… Providence guided me to Helgafell that day … I [p. 62] was meant to witness the tragedy… I covered the whole distance on foot, arriving to find the fire at its height and, falling on my knees before it, I wept …’

On a more positive note, here are some other aspects of printed books that e-readers can never match.

First, I have yet to see a book I wanted to read available in e-reader format.

Second, the e-reader is tied to electricity, which is problematic on several fronts. The folly of having based all of our modern ‘culture’ on something as fragile and fuel-dependent as electricity is summed up by the e-reader. While we certainly need to digitize as many books and manuscripts as possible, we cannot count on preserving our cultural heritage through electronic media alone.

Third, e-readers are extremely hard on the eyes.

Fourth, when the footnotes are at the end of the book, the process of reading, of repeatedly having to scroll the length of the book, becomes extremely frustrating.

Beyond these technical points, bound books provide invaluable services for scholars which electronic books can never supply.

Human beings have a strange and as yet unexplained relationship with the physical book. Perhaps it is similar to the phenomenon (what Rupert Sheldrake used to call ‘morphic resonance’) of knowing that you are being watched, or thinking about someone just before they ring or text or send an email; of having a premonition of what is in the email even before you open it, although you have no rational reason for apprehension.

Sitting in a room lined with books is sitting in a room full of friends with whom you can converse, argue, commune. Their mere presence keeps memory and thought alive.

Bound books also allow you to browse along open shelves in a library, to be exposed to books you would never have thought existed, much less thought to read. Such an encounter makes you begin to realise how small your world is — while e-readers do the opposite: they tend to lock you into a solipsistic world, repeating the same themes over and over, in the same way that Amazon suggests you buy books similar to what you have bought in the past, but never offering something tangentially related in a totally different field. Digital technology is foreign to lateral thinking and tends to lock us in on our selves.

I would never have found The Paradox of Intention which was absolutely key to the development of my work if someone hadn't left a copy on a deck chair on the smallest Alaska ferry going to the end of the world; if it had been on an e-reader, I never would have discovered it.

Bound books engage all the senses, both literally and metaphorically: touch, sight, smell, hearing, taste: each book or manuscript has its own feel, its unique physical appearance, its smell—sometimes when you smell an old manuscript you are transported. And smell is tied to taste: ‘O taste and see …’ says the Psalmist. Ezekiel, Jeremiah and John all knew the bitter and sweet taste of the Word.

As may we.

Long live the printed book!