“Good enough for who it’s for.”
I love books. I love the way they smell, I love the texture of their pages, I love their heft, I love the way, as you reach the end of a book, the weight of the stack of pages in your left hand seemingly pulls you toward the end of the story.
I have books that mean quite a lot to me. I have a translated copy of The Odyssey from 1927. When I was living in Hood River I went to see Jon Krakauer speak and had him sign a copy of one of his books. We spoke to one other as writers, as strange equals for a brief and confused moment, about what it’s like being on the masthead for Outside Magazine and what it’s like publishing your own books.
I have a hardcover copy of The Great Outdoor Fight. It did not cost much and it is a thing of beauty. I have a beat-up paperback copy of Walden from 1960, its pages tattered and fragile and orange, not yellowed but orange with age. I have vivid memories of reading it one summer, nearly ten years ago, in the heat and humidity on the deck of my parents’ cabin in Wisconsin.
I have my Geology textbook from college, which is ridiculous because I have long been in love with a geology textbook that looks and smells a lot nicer.
I have a copy of Tufte’s Visual Explanations that has drank more coffee than I have. I have Alan Watts’ Climber’s Guide to Smith Rock which for years never left my car, despite my having left Central Oregon long ago, and whose cover is burned out on one side from sun exposure.
I have a small hardcover copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, beautifully typeset with Ralph Steadman’s art lovingly reproduced, that I have read innumerable times. I have Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, which I mention only because it is a thing and because its last word is mayonnaise. I love my copy of Dharma Bums, because it is so much more popular to like On The Road and I’m a contrarian like that.
So, you should be as surprised as I am to hear that I asked for a Kindle for Christmas.
And I got one.
So what do I think?
For one, I do not believe in automated typography, and the Kindle commits any number of typographic sins. Unreflective page breaks, ignorant widows, and blindly justified text are all crimes against humanity. The inelegance of automatically reflowing text is apparent on the Kindle, and it’s painfully obvious that the words in these books were hastily digitized and slapped haphazardly onto the device. I understand we’re breaking new ground here, but what’s becoming clear is that the written word desperately needs a human touch.
If one bullet is good, a bullet paired with a giant-ass triangle that misaligns with its corresponding text must be great!
Hateful, truly hateful typography. Robert Bringhurst should be livid.
And yet, while the look of it all absolutely infuriates me, I find it forgivable.
I love my Kindle.
Its utility and convenience is undeniable. I’ve read two books in the last two weeks on the Kindle, at a point in my life when I can’t finish reading a beer label without getting distracted, or bear to burden my shelves with another work. I love the device, not for what it is, but for what it enables. It allows me to again consume text, long-form text, not inane blog posts or tweets or Tumbles or what-shit. Not news articles, not opinion pages, but words with timelessness and worth. Stuff and ideas that someone, at some point, believed were worth committing paper to.
The interfaces can be janky, the typography is dreadful, but damn if the Kindle isn’t a great and convenient reading device.
Five years ago I ripped my entire music collection, consisting of more than 200 CDs, to MP3. Three years ago I stopped buying CDs entirely. I still listen to music, I still buy music, but it’s all digital now.
I mourn the loss of record albums and their artwork.
But not once have I mourned the loss of CDs. Filthy, physical things. Sheesh. I feel like they should come with a bottle of hand sanitizer.
And so I believe, based on my experience with the Kindle, that my relationship with books is mutable as well. The Kindle certainly does not possess the aesthetic experience of even a cheaply printed book, with its weight and smell and textured pages and even dumbly intelligent typesetting. As I use the Kindle, however, I am discovering that the true value of a book is in the stories and knowledge it imparts; not necessarily the physical manifestation of the book itself.
There are other upsides to this switch as well. Given our tight living quarters, the choice I need to make is not between a digital copy of a book or a physical book, but between a digital copy and no book at all. I’ve found the Kindle offers a reasonable compromise, allowing me to read, and yes, own a copy of a book, without cluttering up my physical space, and keep it in a conveniently tidy package that reads equally well in a chair, on the couch, on a train, or on a plane.
As an advocate for embodied experience and great typography I am well aware of the compromises I make in reading on a Kindle, a device that lords over the realm of “good enough.” However, I am finding that the utility of the Kindle, in offering a frictionless reading experience, is making a world of difference in my ability, and heck, my willingness to read books again.
And that, to me, is worth everything.
