‘The written appreciation and understanding of literature, or any kind of artistic endeavour, is absolutely central to a decent society. Why d’you think books are the first things that the fascists burn?’ – Rebecca, Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
For those observant few of you out there, I’m sure the fact that we are in the midst of a huge technological advancement hasn’t gone unnoticed. Items that would previously have taken up a large room now barely fill our pockets, James Cameron can make big blue men, Pixar has mastered water, and with the help of auto-tuning, Rebecca Black can almost sing in tune. Oh, and there are also these little things called Kindles that let you carry around one thousand four hundred books at any given time.
Now, call me a Luddite, but I think that’s taking things a bit too far.
I’m all for technology and its splendored inaccessibility, and progress, and it’s not that I’m Anti-Kindle; it’s just that I’m Pro-Book.
Books are amazing objects. They contain some of the most important life lessons, fantastic people, wonderful messages, and a hallucinogenic fungus growing on their pages. This fungus is what gives books their unique aroma, and guess what? It doesn’t grow on kindles.
I know this is cliché, but the smell is one of the things I love most about books. Synonymous with texture, it’s at the heart of what gets me roped into a story by the simple act of engaging the senses, you can engage with books on a level kindles lack by default.
Books are also the most personal form of media in the modern world. You know upon purchasing that not just years have gone into the creation of the product you hold, but care, emotional turmoil, monetary investment, and love. The physical book adds something to the personal side of the story, as apposed to the calculated, cool efficiency of a Kindle.
Now, feel free to hark on at me, read the Amazon product page back to me like Shakespearean scripture if you must, about how space/money/time saving they are; you shall not sway me with your logic and shininess. It is a book’s lack of logic, their size, and weight that makes them there. Their simplicity makes them almost completely accessible. But kindles? Kindles, on the other hand, are close to hypothetical, and lock you out of the story, and the experience of reading, as a result.
But amid our conflicts and iPod induced comas, comes the real, unheard victims: The fascists.
Yes, you read that right; the fascists. When we all become Kindle carrying clones with 1984 at our fingertips, what will they burn? You can’t burn eBooks with such a heavy symbolic significance as you can a real book (I am not saying fascists are soft hearted poetic beings who chose their actions based on their metaphorical resonance; they are, after all, hardly Augustus Waters, and I am not Nick Carraway). Even if they managed to get such a fire started, that obligatory intimidating speech would have to be so awfully long that they’d lose their voice, and no one’s going to listen to a fascist who’s squawking like a prepubescent goose.
So say what you will, Kindle-lovers. Throw your hypothetical literature at me; I’ve got a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses with your name on it and Stalin on my side.
When it comes down to it, I don’t much care what you read with, as long as you read. Anyway, I’m off to make Adolf and Benito some honey and lemon.
