Last week Maurice Sendak visited “The Colbert Report” for a very entertaining two-part interview. After commenting on the complexity of children, the “hopelessly vile” politician Newt Gingrich, and the abysmal current state of children’s literature, Sendak weighed in on e-books: “Fuck them, is what I say,” he griped. “I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be. I will be dead, I won’t give a shit.”
While the future is arguably already upon us when it comes to e-books, Sendak isn’t the only lauded author to speak out against the technology recently.
At the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts in Cartagena, Colombia, Jonathan Franzen spoke of his dislike of e-books as well. “The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it’s pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model,” said Franzen. He went on:
“I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.
“Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball.
“But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”
Franzen continued:
“The Great Gatsby was last updated in 1924. You don’t need it to be refreshed, do you?
“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring.
“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”
There are plenty of solid pro-e-book arguments: you can buy and download them almost instantaneously; the built-in dictionary makes looking up words incredibly fast and easy; they take up almost no space, which leaves more room in tiny apartments for things like plants and comfortable chairs.
That said, some of Franzen’s points ring true, as does Sendak’s call-down. Franzen’s point about the need of permanence in such a rapidly changing world can be applied to other artifacts as well, like vinyl records and photographs shot on film that can’t be touched up by merely fiddling with the filters on an iPhone. There’s something comforting about art that can’t be easily manipulated and enhanced by technology.
Regarding people’s fascination with becoming immortal, Franzen said later in the press conference, “Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don’t see how you could stand it psychologically.”
For more of Franzen’s comments on art, technology and the state of the world, visit Telegraph.
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