"It's fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan."
-- Montag, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 –
What would it be like if there were no books?
If books were outlawed? Expressly forbidden?
Fahrenheit 451, aside from being the ingenious title of Bradbury's ingenious book, also happens to be the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns. Bradbury rented a typewriter and holed himself up in a Library basement, and wrote the thing in nine days! It was first published in 1953, and remains an in-print masterpiece. I read it a few years ago.
The main character, Montag, is a “fireman” (rather than put out fires, he starts them!) and in the dystopian “brave new world “ of this novel his particular job is to burn books.
Horrors!
He’s been at it ten years, when, according to Bradbury, he “suddenly discovers that books are flesh-and-blood ideas and cry out silently when put to the torch.”
It is a powerful little book that should be read by all literate human beings!
The thought though, of all the books of the world being forbidden. It makes me shudder.
I am surrounded by wonderful books right now, in the mega-store.
I love the smell of them, the look and feel of them. You could say that I am some sort of book-addict, yes. Proportionally speaking, I spend far too much of my income upon them.
And I continue to believe that we have come too far (in our civilized-ness) to ban books, or (God forbid) burn them.
But there is a different sort of book revolution apace, and it involves computers.
E-books.
Librarians and hard-core (hard-copy?) booklovers the world over are hearing the stirrings of cyber-influence, and raising a collective “Shhhhhh” to Google!
Google (the search engine) wants to create a virtual global library and has already committed to spend as much as $150 million (U.S.) on the “Google Print” project. It is expected to take a decade or more to complete.
The vision involves working with Michigan State, Harvard and Stanford universities, as well as the Bodleian Library at Oxford in in the U.K. and the New York Public Library, to digitalize literally millions of books and create the world’s greatest conglomeration of E-books!
Will “availability online” become the slogan of this generation’s reading public?
Will tomorrow’s (or today’s) kids grow up thinking “If it ‘taint on a screen, ah ‘taint readun it”?
The wheels of this sort of a thing are in motion.
And Europe is a bit miffed with America’s zealousness. Nineteen European libraries (primarily in France, Germany, and Austria) are scrambling to compile their own digital library to rival the “American” Google project. Their stated concern is to ensure that any online library alleging to represent a comprehensive catalogue of relevant literature include representation from every European country.
Several million EC euros are expected to be doled out to fund the project.... and soon.
Think of the wasted duplicate effort that will be going on here. Aren’t we really talking about “market” here? Money? And who is going to make more of it?
Ah well...... I for one, will not be the person staring at a computer screen to get my literature fix! For me... a die-hard book purist, I want the actual book.
I feel the same about books-on-tape. I have never understood how anyone (unless maybe a long-haul trucker) can drive around and listen to a book. If it were me, I would certainly get so distracted in my concentration that I would drive directly into the next power pole or light standard or herd of pedestrians!
Nope. I want the book. The real book. The print. The pages.
Having said all this, let me clarify. As strictly a reference source, yes, I think the Google thing is a great idea.
As some sort of pseudo-replacement for books, no. A thousand million times, no.
It will never sell, for me.
How about you?
Would you read an entire novel from a computer screen?
Besides all this.... e-books ruin my bestest recurring fantasy!
See, I have always imagined finding this wondrously beautiful damsel, quietly laying on the grass, or sitting oh so demurely, leaning against a tree. Her diaphanous dress flows out on either side of her as she turns the page of a wee book, and (not noticing me yet) she gazes off into the distance and sighs deeply and smiles at these three butterflies that flit past in front of her right about then.
Ah yes, I can see it.
But this vision is completely SHATTERED when I picture the same wondrous maiden peering into a computer screen, an extension cord trailing off to the whining Honda generator, every feathered and/or furry beast having long since run for cover.... IT’S JUST NOT RIGHT.
Not that I am a techno-dinosaur or whatever, but some things in life are just fine the way they are!
Let’s stay in love with books that have pages!
2 comments:
As you have eluded to, e-books can never replace the touch, the smell the comfort of a book in hand. The ease of fliping back to the previous page to re-read a particularly challenging or interesting thought. Check a map, chart etc., at the back of the book. Not to mention the eye strain from the computer screen and the doucumented fact that the average reader slows down by 25% when reading on screen!
No Mr. Book Lover, there is no doubt that without the book, we would be living back in the stone age. And if everyone was to switch to a computer screen, we might-as-well go back there.
I most certainly agree with your comments. There are two epochs that I would not want to see the world return to. One is, as you mentioned, the Stone Age, when there were no books.
The other is the Stoned Age, which, for me, was pretty much all of my high-school years, during which time my pupils were too dilated for me to read books!
sincerely,
Mr. Book Lover.
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