BOOKS & PUBLISHING
The View From The West - Vol. 1LOS ANGELES 06 May 2010 |
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Lauren Cerand gave me the idea for this. We were talking recently. The subject turned to publishing. Specifically, it turned to "The Future of Publishing," as most conversations in BookWorld tend to turn these days when "where to procure cyanide tablets" isn't the main point of focus. From there we started talking about The Nervous Breakdown and its origins out here in The West---Los Angeles, to be exact---a town which, to my great surprise, has been my home for the past ten years.
Lauren suggested that I write a regular column documenting American literary culture from a Western perspective. I'm taking her up on it. This is the first installment.
While I can't lay claim to being an expert on, say, The Future of Publishing---(and who is an expert on such things? Jason Epstein? Richard Nash? Wil Wheaton? David Shields? Jane Friedman? Steve Jobs?)---I do think it's reasonable (and suddenly common) to say that the epicenter of the industry is shifting. The playing field is undergoing revolutionary changes. Becoming more diffuse. New York, while still vital, is no longer as central as it once was. The Internet and other technologies are having their democratizing effect. Small presses like Featherproof, Two Dollar Radio, and Dzanc are operating well in towns like Chicago, Columbus, and Ann Arbor. Sites like TNB, The Rumpus, and The Millions are growing into formidable online publications and vibrant cultural communities.
Me? I tend to think pretty radically when it comes to this stuff. I guess I'm in the "Big Change" camp. I love print, but I anticipate a thunderfuck. That's what my gut is telling me. (That's probably what my gut was telling me when I founded---and named---The Nervous Breakdown back in 2006.) I don't believe that glue-and-paper books are going to go extinct, necessarily. But I do believe their tomorrow is one of seriously diminishing returns.
Ten, twenty years from now? E-books. Tablets. Smart phones. Touch screens. Integrated media. A nation of blank-faced Tom-Cruises-in-Minority-Report wearing haute-couture bulletproof vests. A microchip in your medulla oblongata, playing Wheel of Fortune re-runs on a loop.
Actually, it won't be that bad. You'll be able to change the channel---by blinking.
***
Future Books.
A new thing.
I'm not even sure if there's a word for them yet.
Hyperbooks? Vooks? MediaLit?
I saw the term "transmedia books" used the other day. If that name sticks and becomes pervasive, one can only hope that such offerings will come to be known as "trannies."
What are you doing?
I'm reading a tranny.
***
A writer friend said to me recently: "I want to embrace The Future. But what if The Future doesn't want to embrace me?"
I look around, and it seems like all of the identities along the publishing food chain are undergoing massive mutations. And really, they've been mutating for a while now. Authors acting like publicists. Publicists acting like authors. Editors acting like bankers. (Bankers acting out the plots of crime novels?) Literary agents acting like film agents.
It's getting weird around here.
But maybe I'm overstating the case. Misreading the landscape. Maybe, to some degree or another, these kinds of crossover behaviors have always existed, have always been necessary, and this is simply the latest incarnation.
And really, what does this have to do with The West?
Well, I'm not sure if it has anything to do with The West---at least not explicitly. But maybe to me, on the level of intuition, it feels like The West might be better suited to absorb such radical and quasi-apocalyptic paradigm shifts. Here in LA, home to reality television and high-concept pornography and $300 million 3D blockbusters and the smoldering wreckage of the music business, the mutations and death rattles of print feel almost natural.
One more apocalypse. Another cloud of dust in the wind.
The click of Lucite heels on the dirty pavement.
And a tumbleweed blows down Sunset Boulevard.
I should add that Los Angeles would appear to be uniquely well-suited to a literary future with a strong multimedia component. In a world where e-readers are dominant and "integrated media" are the culture's most popular form of entertainment---literary and otherwise---it seems reasonable to envision Hollywood as (gasp!) a primary literary epicenter of tomorrow.
Be afraid.
***
I'm sort of rambling here. I'll shut up soon.
Just a couple more things in closing, and then I'll cede the stage to some fellow Westerners.
Both of my final notes are extracted from an essay written by a 21-year-old named Cody Brown. The essay is called "Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should be an App, Not an iBook." Like most writers and people in publishing, I've been reading a lot about What's Next, and What To Do, and What Not To Do. I often read these things with a certain tightness in my chest....a flutter in the stomach. A big reason why I find this essay so compelling, I think, is because it was written by a 21-year-old. And I'm 34. And I'm about to become a father for the first time.
I'm a generation ahead of Cody. And technically speaking, I'm almost old enough to be his dad.
Says Cody #1:
What do you think would have happened if George Orwell had the iPad? Do you think he would have written for print, then copied and pasted his story into the iBookstore? If this didn’t work out well, do you think he would have complained that there aren’t any serious readers anymore? No. He would have looked at the medium, then blown our minds.
Says Cody #2:
It’s not a problem that the experience of reading a book ‘cover to cover’ on an iPad isn’t that great, as long as there are better ways to communicate on the device. On the iPad there are. What’s challenging for authors at this point is that the iPad enables so many different types of expression that it’s literally overwhelming. Once you start thinking of your book as an app you run into all kinds of bizarre questions. Like, do I need to have all of my book accessible at any given time? Why not make it like a game so that in order to get to the next ‘chapter,’ you need to pass a test? Does the content of the book even need to be created entirely by me? Can I leave some parts of it open to edit by those who buy it and read it? Do I need to charge $9.99, or can I charge $99.99? Start thinking about how each and every one of the iPad’s features can be a tool for an author to more lucidly express whatever it is that they want to express, and you’ll see that reading isn’t ‘dead,' it’s just getting more sophisticated.
There are literary techniques; there will be iPad techniques.
I’m 21, [and] I can say with a lot of confidence that the ‘books’ that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.
***
The "books" that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.
That last line really stoned me. It made me get quiet in the way I get quiet when somebody tells me The Truth.
It also sounds like the kind of thing a young whippersnapper might say.
It sounds like the kind of thing I might have said back when I was a young whippersnapper.
No fear.
Excitement.
Reckless ballsiness?
Here we go.
I think about my in-utero daughter (due out: end of summer), and I imagine her at, say, the age of 18, heading off to college somewhere, holding an e-reader, wearing some kind of "viewing helmet," proclaiming the glory of a "tranny" I refuse to read because I'm not willing to have my teeth rattled by the viewing helmet's inner-cranial surround sound and eyeball-activated laser mouse.
***
I want to embrace The Future. I just hope The Future wants to embrace me.
***
Before I go, I'd like to give a few Westerly writers the opportunity to offer their own unique perspectives.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been thinking about this column and what it might entail, and right off the bat it occurred to me that I should talk to some TNB contributors who live on the left coast. I sent out an email to a few of them, asking them to describe their experience of being a writer Out West, and the responses were almost instant. Each is deeply interesting.
Rather than post the whole lot of them in this first column, I've decided to spread them out a bit. I'll offer a few here today, and more in my future installments.
The first response comes from TNB Executive Editor (and dare I say Literary It-Boy?) Jonathan Evison, whose second novel---the appropriately titled and much-anticipated West of Here---is due out from Algonquin in the fall.
JONATHAN EVISON - BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WA:
I live out in the middle of the woods on an island---about as left coast as it gets. People actually buy locally around here. Particularly books. It's not a chain-friendly place, although these borders (no pun intended) are slowly eroding. I've got the best home-field advantage of any writer I know. I grew up here. I know virtually everybody---and anybody I didn't know two years ago I probably met at one of the 30+ book clubs I've attended locally. I've probably sold more books on this little island than I have on the island of Manhattan. Oh, and my cost of living is about 30% by comparison. As a writer, I can't see the advantage of living in New York---not anymore. Before the Internet, yes, big advantage. But at this point, I can network in my slippers and a bathrobe, then go out and take a piss in my front yard. I don't need to rush around Midtown in a haze of martinis.
Don't get me wrong---I heart New York---I'm just sayin': Left Coast representin'!
Besides, I have four dogs and eight rabbits. And where am I gonna park my motor home?
***
Next up: D.R. Haney, TNB rock star and author of the blisteringly good debut novel Banned for Life (which New York publishers would, ahem, be wise to pick up). An accomplished polymath, Haney has acted in Roger Corman movies, written horror films, and contributed to a variety of zines and alt-weeklies on the underground music scene. His interest in music, coupled with the consequences of a life-altering car accident, resulted in Banned, a novel about punk rock that was published in May 2009 by And/Or Press.
D.R. HANEY - LOS ANGELES:
If I had a dollar for every time I picked up a work of literary fiction and flipped it over to read “[The author] lives in Brooklyn,” I’d surely have enough to buy a car, though probably not a new car. I don’t get the Brooklyn thing, but, then, I lived there before it was populated exclusively by writers. However, there were plenty of writers in Manhattan at the time, and their intellectualism frankly scared me to the point where I doubt that I would ever have been able to write a novel if I’d continued to live in New York; and if I had managed to write a novel, I’m sure I’d hate it, since the pretension would have been off the hook. I was desperate to prove myself as an intellectual in those days.
Of course, as we all know, there’s no such thing as an intellectual in Los Angeles. I’m unconvinced that there’s any such thing as an intellectual anywhere at this point, but that’s beside the point; L.A. is all about the entertainment business, and when you go to coffee shops, everyone there is working on screenplays, and you just know they’re bad screenplays that are being written with the hope of a huge sale and the Porsche and the mansion and the trophy paramour that naturally accompany a huge sale. Literature? What’s that?
In fact, when I told people in L.A. that I was working on a book, they’d ask if it was fiction or non-fiction, and when I said it was a novel, thinking I’d answered their question, it was obvious from their affectless stares that I’d succeeded in answering nothing at all.
I apologize if this sounds clichéd, but, hey, it’s been my experience. But my experience also includes a handful of serious writers, all of whom I like very much, though I’m not sure I’d like them if we lived in Brooklyn with all the other writers, because then we’d dress the same and talk the same and so on, just like that song “Rock Star” by Hole. That’s my impression of Brooklyn writers, I’m afraid, but as I said, I haven’t lived in Brooklyn in a good while, and I’m now a stupid Angeleno, having long given up on myself as an intellectual, so what do I know?
***
And finally: Garrett Socol. A native New Yorker turned Los Angeleno, Socol created and produced the cable TV shows Talk Soup, The Gossip Show, and numerous others before turning his attention to literature. His short stories have been published in a number of journals, including The Barcelona Review, 3:AM Magazine, Hobart, PANK, Pequin, Perigee, nth Position, Spork, Underground Voices, JMWW Journal, and Duct's. He has also written for Cosmopolitan, Movieline, Genre, and McCall's.
GARRETT SOCOL - LOS ANGELES:
LA is a literary town if you consider the latest screenplay by Judd Apatow literature.
LA is a literary town if you consider the latest book by Jackie Collins literature.
LA is a town that lives and breathes movies and television. It’s that simple. For the most part, people read books in LA for one reason: to gauge their movie or TV potential. In order to get my daily fix of the literary community, I have to turn on my computer. My PC has become my literary lifeline.
In 2003, one of my plays was produced at LA’s Pasadena Playhouse. During the audition process, several TV stars came in to read for us. At least two of them said, very bluntly: “I’m up for a pilot and if I get it, I would have to drop out of the play.” Similarly, I would guess that if an author were scheduled for a reading at Book Soup, chances are he or she would cancel at the last minute if The Tonight Show called and wanted them to appear.
I created and produced television for 15 years, so I was in the thick of the entertainment industry. At the time, writing [literature] was my “nights and weekends” activity. After leaving television three years ago, writing became my full-time focus, and I began to feel out of place. I grew up in New York (moved to LA to attend USC), and I’ve considered moving back. But it’s difficult (and a little scary) to pick up an entire life and move it across the country (when you’re no longer 18 years old).
Most people don’t read in LA. When I worked in television, I was shocked to discover that a lot of my intelligent, successful colleagues hardly ever read a book or a newspaper. They claimed they didn't have time. We're all busy, but we make time for the things that are important to us, don't you think?
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This is a rare, genuinely thought provoking post. Are we all doomed? Will there be a backlash, like the vinyl resurgence, or Vegas Elvis? Is there any point in writing at all anymore? As I type this, my agent is working an ebooks deal. I don’t want an ebooks deal. I want a hardcover deal, so that when I go home this summer my aunts and cousins will be impressed. I want something that, even though I know will pay me zip, egotistically justifies my time expenditure. But, as you intimate, for twenty year-old’s time is the same thing as cassette mixes were for us. Ruing the past is pointless. And the past isn’t true anyway. A tiny percentage of people read real books forty years ago, and probably the same percentage appreciate them now, despite their download options. I continue to insist that good sentences matter. And then I tweet. Ultimately, I think the end of print is pretty much hype. But I also think my resulting (in)ability to make a living as a writer is pretty much spot on.
Thanks for reading, Sean. You can bet on a “Vegas Elvis” resurgence of some kind.
Maybe ten years from now TNB will go all retro. We’ll stop being a website and will instead become a pamphlet. How punk rock would that be?
I sort of wonder sometimes what the power of a community like this might be, “literarily” speaking, down the road, as new technologies and forms come into being and the possibilities expand. And contract.
It’s hard to predict.
And you know what? There’s a lot of money to be made in keeping up with this stuff, even a little bit, and then seeming really, really confident in your opinions. That’s my suspicion. Panels and committees and books and articles and television specials and radio interviews—all about The Future of Publishing.
People are jittery and ready to follow. And they’ll pay to be told what to do.
Converting TNB to a xerox-and-fold fanzine would be a bold stroke and a major statement against…something. When it happens, I volunteer for stapler duty.
But… but… how would I comment? What would I do with my day at the office - work??
Get in line, man. Everyone wants stapler duty.
I meant, by the way, to say ‘The rare thought provoking post “About the future of books”‘….but for some reason left that book part off. It just seems like most conjecture is of the doom scenario variety. All bookstores crumble. Reading goes the way of the Charleston. Authors fling selves into lava. Kindle becomes sentient and takes over NORAD….what if something really interesting and excellent happens instead?
It will. That’s my guess. I’m an optimist on that one.
Human beings like to have these apocalyptic death throes.
But change is reality.
Art of the most compelling variety has to reflect its times, and if that kind of art is going to happen inside of a book, then the book needs to ________.
The Riddle.
A friend of mine actually does produce a xerox-and-stapler pamphlet. For real. It’s really funny stuff, too.
And you’re right about the expressing-your-strong-opinion-confidently stuff, too. You’ll be like Clooney in UP IN THE AIR setting his suitcase on fire.
I feel like there are a lot of “Music Men” out there right now, either operating at full capacity or gearing up to do so.
Guys in porkpie hats skipping through Midtown singing “There’s Trouble in River City…”.
I wish I could do that sort of thing with a straight face. I’d be a millionaire!
With a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Brad!
Wow. This is…long.
I guess I’ll plan to appeal to the retro hipster demographic. It’s only a matter of time before electronica becomes tiresome and uncool, no matter how pervasive it may be.
Cult paper publishers.
Being difficult just for the sake of it.
The vinyl of literary publishing. Ready your expanders, pierced and weird readers of the world; I devise to be exceedingly poor.
But you know what gets to me the most: The question of whether things were better back in the old days.
Like, I hate it when older people tell me that they don’t like any new music, or any new books, and how it was better back in the old days. They resist what is. They fear change.
I’m determined not to be like that.
But: What if we get to the future and deep down I know that it was better?
Then what?
FUCK.
Well, I know it was better.
At least for writers. My gut instinct is to say “for everybody,” but I’m biased.
That was when a nobel laureate was a world celebrity. Not Kim Kardashian, Brad.
T.S. Eliot.
Wild celebrity. For writing a book. And not some shitty book.
Those days aren’t resurgent any time soon. Literature, in the traditional sense, is an artifact. It’s a cultural curio now.
I want to say I read that 500,000 people poured into the Parisian streets for Sartre’s funeral.
500,000 civilians for a philosopher’s funeral.
That seems impossible.
Do we even have philosophers anymore?
Like, who’s the big American philosopher? Dr. Phil?
Noam Chomsky is the last big-name American philosopher who is still alive, I think.
That is, if being a linguist and sociologist passes for being a philosopher. He’s the last of the old guard. The last unicorn.
That’s fucking awful.
Last time I ever answer you again.
Asshole.
A song to interpretive-dance to.
Also nice at weddings. And wakes.
I hate you. Forever, now.
Forget all that nice stuff I said. You are a monster.
Oh my god. I loved that movie when I was a little girl.
Do you think Red Bull energy drinks got their name from the last unicorn’s nemesis in that movie?
*bows head in shame*
Oh my God. *holds up sheet to obscure Tawni’s shame*
It’ll be okay. We won’t tell anyone. No one has to know. Except everyone who reads this.
Am I the only person who’s genuinely
horrifiedfascinated by people who are into unicorns? Like, how does that happen? What are the common denominators?Tawni, I loved that movie, too! I haven’t seen it in many many years, but I plan a big viewing with Jet sometime soon. Unicorns!
Sorry, Becky. Hopefully our mutual love of Elvis will partially cancel out this shameful revelation (:
Brad - in my experience, the common denominator for people who are genuinely (as opposed to ironically) into unicorns past the age of, say, eight or so is this: they are poor, they are under-educated, they are arrested developmentally (which is not to say they are developmentally disabled), and they have troubled relationships with their sex partners. I know plenty of these people - am, in fact, related to many of them - and so I have tons of anecdotal evidence to back this up.
When the common denominator isn’t “5 year-old girl,” I have no idea.
Probably the same sort of malfunction responsible for the TwiMom phenomenon.
That’s what they’re called, right? Twimoms?
What the hell is a TwiMom?
Middle-aged women who are looney for the Twilight series. At least, that’s what I meant.
Those women fascinate me. I think it’s an extension of “cool mom” syndrome.
Wow. You are sort of easily enthralled these days. I don’t know. In a way, I really hope they’re just trying to ingratiate themselves to their children, but I think some of them are actually in love with those teenaged, fictional characters. Like, if they were ever just playing cool, they have now tipped over the edge an begun to believe themselves. Weird shit. Weird, weird shit.
That’s what I mean. It’s creepy. Watching these mothers of teenagers jump up and down with their daughters and get all red-faced and teary-eyed when Robert Pattinson walks down a red carpet. Something ain’t right.
While we were out buying Mother’s Day cards, Palani was all, “Jesus FUCKING Christ!” in the middle of Target. As I moved to scold him for being loud and profane in public (which is like pissing into the wind), he handed me a card that said something like, “Having a mom who is my best friend is having twice the love…”
then, inside, “and twice the clothes, and twice the shoes, and twice the giggles, and twice the…”
I can only assume the “…” indicated “twice the crushes on teenage boys.”
Brad, you’d best be hoping iPad or equiv solutions. I never figured out how to read a book and hold an infant effectively. But maybe an iPad and some velcro on the baby’s room’s walls . . . just reach up and turn the page. Or maybe there’s going to be a remote?
Anyway, good on you (and your wife). It’s not easy but it’s . . . it’s . . . interesting!
This new stuff isn’t just for the young — well, maybe being addicted to it/having whole life built on it is. I’m not young; I was 50 already when email started to get big.
But for almost as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to do multimedia, even back when that couldn’t be anything more than talking and showing slides (a pain-in-the-ass sequential medium, but oh man, nothing but nothing looks like a Kodachrome 12 feet wide). Now it looks as though these hardware end of it is ready for some serious stuff.
I was just talking to Ruth about how the novel I can’t quite seem to get done could turn into an app. Illustrations, sure, and external links, sure, but there could also be such things as a video clip of a guy that I didn’t base a character on, but who explained things to me and showed me how people like him thought and talked, the same kind of thing for something who was translated more of less directly to a character, and on and on and on. These things could engage an interested reader in what would amount to criticism, for example, or allowing the reader to expand what might have happened based on what presented in the app but doesn’t appear to have been used.
When I was teaching Humanistic Anthropology, I used to give my students a photocopy of a couple of pages of holographic field notes (my notes), then a typed and tightened up version of the notes, then an “academic” version of the folk tale that was embedded in the notes, and then a piece of fiction based on the folk tale’s life as a bedtime story for my son (thus getting back to kids, Brad). Typically, they loved it. I was saying — here are my building blocks, this is what I did with them, think about what you might have done differently. And this was all done with photocopiers and plain old paper.
So I find these times tremendously exciting but in a way that’s consistent with what Jordan Ancel was saying, namely uniqueness and its other face, variation. I’m not about to give up books or trying to write for the classic print medium, for all the reasons that other commenters have given. But I think what we have now is unparalleled delivery options that don’t necessarily compete for the same space. I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game.
I will say that telling myself Fuck that pile of paper you have — get an iPad and start on the app is a little more, ah, interesting move than I want to make next week or even next month. Next year, who knows?
Agreed, Don. I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game. But I do feel like books and “serious literature” are already existing on the periphery of the culture, and the advent of “trannies” will only push them further out into left field.
Kids born today will grow up with this stuff. They’ll be reading their school textbooks on e-readers. (Imagine the scholastic applications for iPads and multimedia, etc.) Sure, they might pick up a novel here and there. Read a magazine. But something tells me, less and less. Maybe I’m wrong.
That sly old Mr. Listi
just announced
that he and the missus
are expecting!
“Publishing”
is just
a pregnancy metaphor, right?
Congratulations, sir.
Maybe in college, the seed of your
loins will be
xeroxing the TNB zine.
The Future is now is The Future.
Gracias, Mr. Blaine. I’ll be live-blogging the delivery on my smart phone.
Who wants some streaming video?
I’ll pass on the video - I’ve seen the live showing twice - but will offer my congratulations as well. Sleep while you can!
That’s what everybody tells me.
In fact, “while you can” has become a common suffix to all unsolicited wisdoms.
“Better have fun while you can….”
“Better have sex while you can….”
“Better travel while you can….”
**
The other thing I keep hearing? “But it’s GREAT!”
Like, people love to tell you horror stories about parenthood, about feces and sleepless nights and paranoia and incessant, non-stop, 24-hour worrying, and then at the end of each horrifying anecdote, they inevitably add, “But it’s GREAT!”
Or:
“Best thing I ever did.”
**
I guess that’s the way it goes.
Indeed. I used to get “but it’s worth it” all the time. You know what? It was… eventually. But I thought “they” were completely full of shit for a long time before I got that payoff.
Entirely unrelated, I am up writing because, at the exact moment I started up the stairs to bed (exhausted, after sleeping fitfully on the floor of my sick infant son’s room the past two nights), I heard my daughter start crying in her room. She has a tummyache. That was about two hours ago. I’ve already gone to the only store open (it’s snowing out, btw) to get her something for relief but everything says to “consult a doctor for under 12″ and she’s five. So I’m squatting by the couch, holding her hand as she dozes, killing time until morning when I can “consult a doctor”, typing with my left hand.
But it’s worth it.
Yeah. Get some sleep while you can.
Yeah. I remember my friend’s graphic story about her vagina tearing open. “But it was SO worth it,” he said, as an afterthought.
Thanks.
Great.
Excellent.
Sounds magical.
I can hardly wait.
I’m sure it IS magical, but smug, experienced friends are mostly useful for babysitters. That’s what I’m thinking.
*SHE said.
Yeah, I’ll admit some brief confusion there but I chalked it up to fatigue. Thanks for clarifying.
I fully expect my vagina to tear open during the birthing process.
Well, you know, if you decide to stop at one and they’re under the hood (so to speak) anyway…. Ah, never mind. Already did that gag.
Anon: I hope your daughter’s tummy is feeling better? Nothing makes you feel as helpless as a sick kid. xoxo.
Thanks, Tawni. Actually, she’s on her way (with Mom, obviously - she’s not that gifted) to the doc’s to get it checked out. It was a long night and, while she apparently woke up fine, the pain came back right after she had a slice of plain toast. First thing I did when I made it to work was email my department and let them know that I was running on three hours of sleep. After working with me for two years, they know the subtext - “My already limited filters for social behavior are currently completely inactive. Interact at your own risk. Especially you, Paul, you whining, puling little fucktard.”
But I digress. And this is Brad’s post.
Pregnant in Los Angeles and working in a Trader Joe’s, my husband and I got so tired of the do this “while you still can” advice and tactless pregnancy/labor horror stories.
We made a pact to never give pregnant couples anything but positive thoughts, because really, what’s the point to the negative advice? It’s not like they newly-informed couple is going to cancel the pregnancy. (”Oh, what? I’m going to lose some of my freedom? Gee, that never occurred to me. Well, then never mind this baby thing! Honey, do you still have the receipt?”)
We found all the advice completely unhelpful anyhow, because every child and situation is different, and because we humans can’t biologically store up sleep for later. The only thing we wished we’d done “while we still could” was go see more movies, but that’s no big deal. You can watch movies later, we’ve discovered. They don’t expire after a few years or anything. (:
I love how an article about publishing has morphed into a discussion about birthing and vaginas.
I would like to extend to you, Brad, the same thanks that I offered to Anon, for extending my single life by quite a few years with a simple “While you can…” illustration.
To that end, I’m going to go home from work today and soak up some rays by the pool while I can, then go watch baseball while I can, then play really loud guitar at baby-waking levels while I can, and then perhaps go out and meet some of my idiot friends in Del Mar while I can.
I’ll need your address so I can send you an Edible Arrangement or something.
@Tawni: See, we went the opposite route. Everyone told us about the joy, happiness and light and waited until after the birth to mention the “Oh… yeah… that”s. So, being one for full disclosure (in some arenas, anyway), I vowed to educate in a well-rounded sense - sort of taking the shock out, leaving the awe in. “You will cherish this child and be amazed in ways you never imagined BUT you will also look like an extra from a Romero movie on many a morning.” As for not being able to store sleep, no, of course not. But I don’t envision a camel traveling through the desert when I offer that advice. I envision an avalanche - it’s nice to have a running head start so perhaps you don’t get bowled over into exhaustion quite so soon. (:
“…BUT you will also look like an extra from a Romero movie on many a morning.”
HAHAHAHAHA. Nice. So true.
We may have gotten more of the negative commentary because we were working with people who were in their early twenties who already had many kids, but were still living with their parents. Teen pregnancies, etc. Completely different perspective from two people in their early thirties who were actually thrilled they were going to get the chance to experience parenthood. (I was 34 when I got pregnant, and was starting to wonder if I’d missed my window by playing in bands for too long. My husband was an actor, same deal.)
I do wish I could have gone into my 36 hour labor/emergency C-Section well-rested. I spent the last month of my pregnancy enormously pregnant (my giant husband’s 9.5 pound child wouldn’t fit through my hips for a vaginal birth) and my husband often woke to what appeared to be a nude alien squatting at the end of the bed, as I would do yoga poses there, trying to get my son to settle down. He would often find me sitting in the dark on the couch, crying, because I was so exhausted, but the baby wouldn’t let me sleep. I can honestly say that the last time I felt well-rested was in the second trimester of my pregnancy. So I think you are nothing but very sweet to want to give folks a running start in the battle for sleep. Might as well try, right? (:
Thirty-six hours. Oy gevult. And the stories you and my wife could trade re: discomfort and sleeplessness. We had our girl at 35/36 and son at 39/40 so I definitely hear you as far as differing perspectives. I think I’m just miffed because, once they detached from my wife, they immediately attached to me like little sleep remoras. They kept her awake for seven months but I’m working on years here!
I’m intrigued and inspired by the last line of the 2nd Cody excerpt. I think I flip between that and a sort of affinity for the past. Having graduated with a degree in literature, I’m attached to the books of the past… but yes, I’d be foolish not to embrace the future.
I dig his optimism, certainly. People like him will be the ones who make those unprintable books.
It feels sort of like space travel to me. There’s something deeply human about pushing forward into new frontiers and building new technologies and inventing new forms. And killing one’s fathers. It’s sort of unstoppable. And in many ways positive.
The Beats, to give a ready example, definitely did that sort of thing with literature, in their own way. They “blew it up.” Or tried to. (”That’s not writing. It’s typing!”)
Future generations, I suspect, will look at old paper books and their limitations, and for the most part they’ll think: Meh.
And then to go back to the space travel comparison….I guess I sort of wonder what’s out there. Like, what if these future writers and tech nerds go to all the trouble to “go off to space,” but when they get there, it’s just….empty.
We’ll see.
I’m generally optimistic.
We’ve discussed this before (in Beatdom#5), and both agreed that if the Beats were around today, they’d have used and abused the internet. Ginsberg would be friends with everyone on Facebook, and would have revolutionised Twitter.
Which says something about the rest of us… We need to take advantage. I think that blogging is a great advance in the world of writing. There are some amazing, creative blogs out there. And literary communities. By starting this place, you’ve made a huge contribution.
Just the other day I stumbled upon a website… the idea was that an artist would pick one random Tweet per day and illustrate it. Strange idea, but it works amazingly.
I think that with stuff like that, you can merge the old and the new. Have a website that does things books can’t… and a book that bring the website into a physical form. Something that people can carry into the few places computers don’t yet generally go.
I sometimes wonder if the long-term value of a site like this is anthropological and sociological more than it is literary. Not that there isn’t some great, literary writing on the site. There is. But it also seems to function like a record of its times. A window into the collective consciousness or something.
“So this is how those crazy fuckers thought.”
I think you just described literature… Literature is in some ways a record its times and a window into the collective consciousness.
Yeah. I think you’re right. I posted that comment late last night. My brain was mush.
I do still like the idea of scientists in the year 3,010 looking through The Nervous Breakdown for…clues.
Those poor, poor bastards.
I think your T-shirt should say: “I anticipate a thunderfuck.” We’ll have to ask Gloria.
Congratulations on the upcoming baby one. You’re going to be a great father. Sending your wife positive, restful thoughts. xoxo.
The Listis are pregnant! The Listis are pregnant. Woot!!
I just hope it’s mine.
So does your wife.
GH: Ha!
First. Congratulations on soon becoming a dad, Brad. That’s awesome.
Second. I don’t live out West. Quite the opposite. I’m on the east coast in Virginia. But I see the future of writing and the written word as sort of a combination of many media forms available at a click to us today.
While reading Orwell’s 1984 back in December, part of the experience I had which made the book even more eery was that I listened to Mussorgsky’s Reverie on a Theme of V.A. Loginov and Mozart’s Piano Concerto N24 on my iPod over and over again as I flipped through the pages.
Music has been available to us for a while. Many people have listened to classical music while reading. It’s not like I’m the first. What I envision, however, is that The Future of reading will be one that incorporates this even more so like films currently do providing a specific scene. Think of it like a book’s soundtrack.
I also see the new book as a combination of hyperlinks (the way Wikipedia is) that allow the reader to choose their own ending. Turn this page, enter this door, and ______ happens. This has been done in print, yes. I read books like this growing up. But imagine the capability we have today to create this type of storytelling with new media.
Incorporating video and art will also add another dimension to the reading experience. We’re a YouTube generation and I don’t think that’s leaving anytime soon. I see a morph in literature and film that will be able to create drama and tragedy in a whole new way, particularly for someone who is a documentarian or is talented enough as a cinematography.
I’m 28 and the reading experience for me has changed drastically even over the course of 10 years. I probably read more stories on this site than I do in print on a daily basis. Actually, I know I do. I’m sure I’m not alone.
It is also interesting to me to see the difference between how I view technology and how people even 3-5 years younger than me view it. I personally don’t like text messaging, don’t have an iPhone or Blackberry, and personally wish Facebook was more like it was six years ago when I joined than now. But they are used to it. Technology is more a part of their daily life.
I’d be interested to see what someone 18-years-old that is a writer thinks about this.
That’s my two cents.
I’m glad you took up this topic. It is an interesting and necessary one to dive into.
Didn’t mean to make this so long.
I agree with you, Jeffrey. That’s pretty much what I think, too.
It’s a strange dividing line. I’m a guy who saw the emergence of e-mail into mainstream culture when I was in college. A guy like Cody Brown? He never really lived in a world where email wasn’t a fact of life.
I think it can be difficult for some people to imagine what it might mean to experience the world like that. My daughter? How will she view technology? She’s about to be born on an “iPad planet.” Something tells me a future filled with multimedia books won’t faze her in the least. There will be very little nostalgia for the old way.
Kurt Cobain appears in the same place on my daughter’s timeline that Buddy Holly does with mine.
I don’t know what this means, other than some neo-Weezer band will write a song called “Kurt Cobain” with a video shot on the set of “Friends.”
They’ll have to digitally enhance that episode where Ross and Rachel make a suicide pact and briefly get into cutting. Those were some gloomy days at Central Perk, man.
I remember being blown away when Stephen King first introduced his online serial, “The Plant.” It was quite a few years ago, and the premise was (then-)mind-blowing- he would release the book as he wrote it, one chapter at a time. You could pay by installment, but payment was voluntary. He beat Radiohead to the punch by a light year.
I was all in.
Training myself to read at my computer (no laptop then [yes I'm old]) was a bit less comfortable than I had expected, but I got over the adjustment quickly and since then I’ve been wondering two things:
1) Why hasn’t this caught on to a greater extent; and
2) Will Stephen King ever finish “The Plant” (it’s still in media res)?
I prefer the lethargy of the west to the mania of the east in many aspects of life. But I have to wonder if I’ll feel the same way when I take the draft of my first novel, straighten out its tie, fix its hair, and send it off into the brave new world.
I could totally see Stephen King doing something really elaborate (and scary) with an iPad and some multimedia technology.
I’m pretty sure his son (who is showing every sign of surpassing his father as a writer) has tweeted about being engaged in exactly such an endeavor.
You are, in fact, literally old enough to be Cody’s dad. Which means you’re technically old enough to be a grandfather.
“…and when you go to coffee shops, everyone there is working on screenplays, and you just know they’re bad screenplays that are being written with the hope of a huge sale and the Porsche and the mansion and the trophy paramour that naturally accompany a huge sale.” - Man, that Duke guy has a way of just nailing it.
You’ve written a lot about the changing landscape of publishing in the last couple of years. It seems to be a pretty serious obsession for you. I guess that makes sense. As a writer, you want to make sure your product isn’t outmoded before it’s even rolled off the assembly line. Also, like young Cody points out, it’s important to make sure you’ve considered all of the tools in your toolbox before building your product.
My sincerest congratulations on your new baby girl. That’s neat-o. You’re going to be ridiculous. It’ll be awesome.
And yes, your shirt absolutely must say “I anticipate a thunderfuck” and you must wear it into the birthing room. I’ll get this in the mail to you; you work on seeing if Mizz Listi will get on board with the idea.
This is magnificent…like four great posts wrapped in one. So much to comment upon (like the first public revelation of Brad’s fatherhood, for which a public congratulations are the first order of business) that I don’t know where to begin…but let’s start with this:
I think we need to focus more on the art and less on the commerce. Really, if I spend my time worrying about how to connect with Cody Brown and his post-MTV-generation coevals, or any demographic for that matter, I’ve already lost. I’m trying to communicate my own truths in an entertaining and accessible way, and if someone is not interested in what I’m doing because of inadequate bells and whistles, so be it. At the end of the day, the art wins out. It always does, and it always will, which is why we strive to write well. Well-packaged shit is still shit.
If books are going to be replaced by apps or trannies or mollies (to tie in your other post) or what have you, the ones that will go are the Lost Symbols and the Twilights. The Atonements and the Afflictions are safe. Might there be great art made that better utilizes emerging platforms? Sure. But I don’t know that the experience of reading the work of a truly great writer, McEwan or DeLillo or Claire Messud or whoever, is going to be enhanced by…what? Having an iPad vibrating in my lap during the sex scenes?
The primacy of novels is over, perhaps, but they are still important — to Hollywood especially, which routinely adapts novels to the big screen — and will be for as long as people can read.
Greg, I think you just sold me on the iPad.
Hear, hear.
Nicely said, Greg.
Growing up a sci-fi nut as I did, I like The Future. I kind of have to. I’m excited, and interested, in the new opportunities technological developments are going to allow writers and publishers, and how those emergent technologies are knocking down the long-established walls demarcating the publishing industry much in the same way they did the music industry. I like being able to connect on a world-wide level with readers and writers (and even compose and publish) via a small gizmo I can carry around in my hip pocket.
But.
I love books. And libraries. And good, independant and used bookstores (fuck you, Borders!). I think they are very important things. They are physical, tangible repositories of information. They exist in the real world instead of as intangible packets of data zipping around cyberspace. I emotionally respond to the physical sensation of holding and reading a book or newspaper far more than I do my iPhone; mind you, according to my coworkers, I’ve become an iPhone junkie. Your daughter’s generation will probably not feel the same way, but if there’s anything the rise of eBay has taught us, it’s that there is still a huge market for the antique and the old-fashioned, which has always seemed to me to be something of a response to the developement of our use-and-throw-away culture.
The one issue that’s lately been niggling me about e-readers et. al.–especially in the wake of this catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico–has been the question of power. All of these devices require electricity to function, which we are still primarily generating with fossil fuels, a situation that is rapidly growing more and more untenable. Any cultural shift into a more renewable energy source isn’t going to be smooth, and will likely come with some HUGE changes in how abuntantly and efficiently we use the power available at any given time—and none of these devices seem designed to capitalize on that.
We can power a calculator with greater computing power than the computers that sent the first astronauts into space on a single solar panel built into the structure. The technology to use solar power on a small scale is cheap and readily available—so why is there not a solar panel built into the iPad, or the Kindle, or any cell phone manufactured in the last five years?
One upside a book has over an e-device: I can sit on a park bench and read my book for as long as I want, and not have to worry about making sure there is a socket nearby for when my battery dies.
Okay, first of all, way to bury a baby-on-the-way announcement in a post. Congrats to you and the lovely wife! A little girl… awww…. Best wishes to your wife for a healthy pregnancy and to you both for a healthy happy bundle of joy!
Not being on or anywhere near the inside of the publishing industry, I can’t really offer any comment on its future. I can only say, personally, that I would have never thought to buy an eReader for myself, but I received one as a gift over Christmas. It sat for months, unopened, until I was taking a trip (to Portland! Whee!) and would be spending several hours on planes and airports. I downloaded 5 books, and I have to say, it was wonderful. 5 books on a device the size of a notepad that slipped into my purse. No lugging around a huge bookbag. I love traveling lightly.
At the same time, I can’t see myself giving up bound books entirely. I love them - the smell, the dust, the dog-eared pages of well-loved books. I keep a number of books that I cannot bear to part with, and have always thought of some of these books as items I will pass on to my daughter and possibly to my grandkids.
I’m not sure a “thunderfuck” is on the horizon. if so, I anticipate that it will be a slow-motion thunderfuck.
Of course, what do I know? I live in Texas.
Your “thunderfuck” comment made me LOL.
Oh! And I feel exactly as you do about physical books. Not much better.
All good wishes, Brad!
She will be the light of your life!
(Before we had kids, we speculated that our kids would be putting electrodes to their heads to get high.)
As for West versus East… I know an awful lot of my writer pals on the East Coast are having fits over the publishing industry. We can hardly have a conversation without it eventually getting around to that mournful tone regarding the latest newspaper to shut down or the latest round of rejections someone has received because her highly intelligent book isn’t “marketable.” From her perspective, of course, it’s truly heartbreaking to have done all that good work and then be told they can’t sell it because not enough people have the attention span or the background knowledge required to fully appreciate (and buy) this book. On the other hand, I’m a southern girl, a subscriber to the “make lemonade” approach to life, and a big fan of getting down in the dirt and mud to do what must be done.
Granted, I’m also somewhat young and a bit of an underdog because I’m not established in any way, but I feel like all this upheaval gives us underdogs a chance to shine. I’d say mine is a rather southern approach. Yours is western. Apparently freaking out is eastern.
Also: Whoa! Dad time! Congrats!
We freak out in the West, too. We just do it casually.
they can read it in goggles that scroll the dot matrix words across a warm skyline background as long as they read my novel….and keep reading novels.
or toilet paper. there should be novels on toilet paper since we all read in the bathroom, then it would be biodegradable and we’d always remember where we left off.
That’s not a bad idea.
Hmmmmm….
That last quote by the 21-year-old made me get quiet too in that I just heard the truth kind of way. I think books and reading in general are definitely going through an irreversible change. Who knows where it will lead.
I don’t think it’s the end of books though. I don’t know, I think people get nostalgic for paper books. I know I do. We’ve all embraced the new technology, but there’s something nice about being able to flip through a real book when you have the time.
Also, am I the only person that was completely oblivious to the upcoming addition to the Listi family? I feel like I’ve been living in a cave. Anyway, congratulations!
Great debut, Brad! I mean the baby, natch.
I’m with Matt and Cheryl and Rebecca on the “love the feel, lazy convenience, no batteries” aspect of physical books.
And I’m grateful for TNB that lets me read live stuff from live folks, and even “chat” with them about it and anything else! TNB’s a brilliant effective practical combination of loving, humane wisdom and awesome creative e-technology.
Same, I think, for what folks keep saying is weightily “either/or”: iphysical books versus e-books.
I mean that for those physical book-adoring obsessives, we’ll continue to have an amazon.com linking the used books shops people with book-adoring people. And we’ll hit the buttons online or iPad’ly or Kindle’y to read “books”. Most of us will continue to enjoy what we’re enjoying right now—-physical books and e-books.
Mary mentions her east coast writer friends having fits about the decline of publishing. You, Brad, are having those fits as well, but you’re befiddled about how to effectively and creatively e-respond to the shift, and you’re thinking H’Wood might be the best new home for the shift (both from physical books and from east coast control of them). But isn’t it a fact that e-creativity and non e-creativity re writing, marketing, and publishing books can now be done from anywhere, any home, any computer?
Thank you for this provocative piece—–and for the LAUGH OUT LOUD comment line of yours:
“I fully expect my vagina to tear open during the birthing process.”
Don’t worry. Ask the doc about an episiotomy. Docs often tell a patient that their sex lives will be soooo much better after such a procedure. Yeah, right!
Thanks, Judy. I’m actually aware of the whole episiotomy thing. Painfully aware.
As for Hollywood being well-suited to a multimedia future….my point here, I think, is that there is a high concentration of artists in LA. And huge numbers of them. Musicians, actors, voice actors, writers, comedians, directors, photographers, fashion designers, you name it. It’s a zoo. The place is positively crawling with creatives. So that sort of lends itself to production.
But you’re right: The new technology is going to allow almost anyone, anywhere, to do this stuff. And that’s wonderful.
Brad, I love L.A. It’s heaven on earth, except for earthquakes and a limited water supply. My son and family live there; his best buddy composes music for films. Yes, it’s always a good idea to tap local talent—–and equally a good idea to *attract* folks from everywhere, the world-wider the better, which is what TNB does already with amazing results.
Re e-books and Real books, Rodent has reminded me on occasion of the evanescence of e-words. One big electronic “ouch” and we’d have no record of what we said on TNB. (Now I regret my cancelling receipt of TNB’s weekly hard copy)
The love of Real books has precisely to do with non-evanescence, with sheer physicality.
Recently, I googled an entire book with its illustrations—–and immediately ordered the Real book, treasuring its every page for the page itself, the paper, the feel of it, the ink, the oldness of it all. I can put it down on the sitting room table and return 2 hours later to the same page while eating my dinner.
It’s a tactile thing, a convenience thing, a touchy-feely thing, a feeling of history thing, an inborn thing that endures and loves enduring—-like watercolour paintings and Edwardian mahogany chairs, old silk wedding dresses, and people.
Something weirdly weird has taken hold of my copy and paste mechanisms on this little HP notebook. No matter how many times I copy different things, when I’m about to paste into a Very Serious comment on a poetry list, here’s what comes up: “I fully expect my vagina to tear open during the birthing process.” I’ve had to be very vigilant about editing comments.
Brad, so excited to see the launch of this column. Go Lauren for prodding you to do it! LA has been Other Voices Books’ “second city” for many years, and the climates are extremely different in Chicago and Los Angeles, on every level including books. So this is fascinating to me personally/professionally, and I really look forward to more thoughts in this direction.
(And, like, when is Johnny Evison having some kind of TNB festival on his island, or whatever, right out back of the rabbit shacks–man, that place looks and sounds wild, I totally want to see it!)
I think Evison is officially the Mr. Roarke of TNB. One can only hope for an invite to his island of rabbits and beer.
And wait til you meet Tattoo!
I feel like I have so much to say but I don’t have the time or brain power at the present moment to do so. I just wanted you to know that it felt good to read your thoughts again, Mr. Listi.
A breath of fresh air.
Like coming home.
Ahhhhh.
Keep ‘em coming!
Oh!
And congrats on the offspring!!
I can’t believe this is how you tell us! …then again…
I enjoyed this piece. You’re onto something with this column, Brad. I hope you keep it going. The West Coast perspective IS important and worthy of expressing.
Congratulations! The more Listi’s in this world can only make it a better place.
Love to you and Kari.
x
I have no interest in reading a book that’s a game. Does Cody think I’m 12?
Good literature will be good literature no matter the delivery system. There’s no reason to think that good writers will also need to be programmers.
Also, gee, it looks like “the future” is full of white males.
The future is full of trannies!
I’m not so much older than Cody Brown and I find his pronouncement terrifying. I love books. The physicality of them. The act of lying, curled, in my bed, paperback in hand. You can’t do that with an iPad. You’d crush it.
Of course, I’ve always loathed change. I often find myself bemoaning the fact that it’s impossible these days to be say, Dorothy Parker. You couldn’t afford to live.
Also: congratulations congratulations Brad! I’m so excited for you-
I’m a bit skeptical about the death of the traditional novel. It’s like science fiction movies from the 50’s in which they imagined the future to be totally revolutionized, with flying cars and solar-powered everything and alien hookers.
Meanwhile, well, here we are still cleaning up oil spills.
I believe the strength of the novel is in the actual experience of reading it in a book form. Now, an e-reader is not so different, really, so there is a legitimate move to going paperless in the future. But bookless? Novel-less? I think it is akin to saying paintings will go out of style…or piano concertos…choose your medium. The audience may dwindle and refine itself, but to say they will disappear entirely seems to deny the very reason they are such cornerstones of human art in the first place.
Sure, there will always be new means of creative expression that take their cues from the technological innovations of the time, but how many of them prove to be more than fads, well, only the future will tell.
And I’m still waiting for that solar-powered flying car.
I don’t know about “cornerstone of human art.” The fiction novel proper is only a few hundred years old, and that’s using somewhat generous criteria. English-language novels are younger still. Narratives are certainly older than that, but they appeared mostly in the form of poetry and theater or some combination of the two. Something performed, something that didn’t require widespread literacy.
Poetry is much more arguably a cornerstone of human language art, potentially the oldest of all, and it appears to be at least somewhat endangered, so I don’t think anything is really immune.
That said, I think you’re right. As long as people continue to be widely literate and enjoy stories, I think there will be an appetite for novels. The delivery is what’s in question.
Reading large tracts of text on a screen hurts my eyes and I’m reluctant to entrust the stewardship of my book collection to an electronic device. Much easier to carry out of a burning house than a book collection, granted, but it’s way more likely that the electronic thing will malfunction and give me headaches than that my house will catch on fire.
“Reading large tracts of text on a screen hurts my eyes and I’m reluctant to entrust the stewardship of my book collection to an electronic device. Much easier to carry out of a burning house than a book collection, granted, but it’s way more likely that the electronic thing will malfunction and give me headaches than that my house will catch on fire.”
I hear you, Becky. I had that reservation about the eReader, and why I only downloaded a few books onto it - I would hate to lose my library because of some glitch.
When I think of it, though, I keep thinking of music and pictures. We hardly print any photographs anymore - just a few that we frame. The rest are all digital and backed up and stored. We converted all of our music to digital last year and barely even have any cds anymore. If the iPod goes haywire, all our music is backed up. That’s also how the eReader works.
The real problem, I think, is many years down the road when written records and stories have become completely obsolete. When civilization ends, and lithium ion batteries are all dead and no one remembers how to make them, what will the future savages make of all of our “god boxes” that they can’t make work? Anthropologists in future millenia will be finding dead iPhones and iPods everywhere and declaring them to be fertility cult symbols. Televisions will be lovingly pieced together and put into museums as religious iconogrpahy, since they occupied the central place in the ancient home. Who is going to know what we did when all of our gadgets die? I find that kind of amusing to think about.
Good point…the novel is still a somewhat new development, but I do believe, as you point out, it is the manifestation of a world that has become widely literate and evolved from narratives and poems and of course in saying that it’s possible that a new form comes along and replaces the novel.
I guess I am advocating more the “written word” serving a transcendental role in human lives, and I just don’t know that it will die out. I’m not sure how old you are (I’m 28) but I just can’t see an e-reader getting good enough that it’s better than a book. I forget who said it, but it was to the tune of: ” a new invention needs to be twice as good as what it’s replacing in order to catch on.” I just don’t see that with the e-reader…and don’t see how any amount of screen resolution or light-weight will make it as good as a paperback. But what do I know.
I’m older than you, but not by much. 32. Of course, there’s also the issue of familiarity. I mean, my parents listen to the radio much more–and to very different types of things, often–than I do.
To me, radio is a venue for music and not much else, but both of them were alive when TV didn’t exist, so to them, it is also a venue for narratives, news, etc. and they listen to much more of that stuff. So there’s an issue of perception at work. WILL a kid born into the e-reader age even perceive or consent to the virtues of paper books like we do? I mean, without as much context for comparison, how could they possibly? They won’t have the same nostalgic feelings for paper books that you or I might. They’re internet kids. Paper plays a diminished role in their lives, period. It’s a whole other reality at this point. There is no need for a new invention be better than the baseline if it IS the baseline in their reality. You know?
I raise my fist in old fogey solidarity, though. I like my books. They smell good.
. . . god, i feel old saying this, but i just can’t get excited about all these apps or these “unprintable” generation defining books . . . personally, i think everyone involved is underestimating the staying power of the book as an object . . . if amazon is going to rape publishers with loss-leaders on hardbacks in the name of converting everybody to digital, then publishers, why not re-think price-indexing and produce a beautiful product that can’t be distributed digitally? . . .i’d pay 70 bucks for stewart o’nan’s next book if it came signed and numbered in a gift box, surrounded by printed artifacts which related to, or even expanded the context of the story itself . . . i’d also pay 7 bucks for a mass market soft cover, or 15 for a trade paper, just so i didn’t risk damaging my lovely object by taking it on an airplane . . . just sayin’–that would be way cooler for a book-nerd like me, then some e-book loaded with bells and whistles and a bunch of distractions . . . i feel like all this technological drive to make reading more sophisticated simply disrupts the beautiful equilibrium between reader and writer, and makes me yearn all the more for plain old black ink on the page working the sort of magic that only plain old black ink on the page can work. . . thoughts?
I think books will continue to exist in print, and they may well be rolled out in $70 signed editions with extras, and so on. And they’ll be sold to hardcore fans and fetishists, just like vinyl is sold to those who prefer vinyl to iTunes today.
E-reader technology is only going to get better from here. The screen is only going to get more and more sophisticated, more and more “page-like.” The headache of reading on a glowing screen will be mitigated eventually. They’re already working on it.
And the truth is that the equilibrium you speak of can be more or less maintained on an iPad. I’ve read stuff on my phone that had me absolutely riveted. The printed page is much better at this point, but the page is not critical to enjoyment. If the writing is great, I’m in. I’ll sit there and scroll on my phone if I have to.
When it comes to reading on an e-reader….you just have to be willing to flip pages by dragging your finger across the screen. It’s black “ink” on a white screen. It’s different, but it’s not that much different. The iPad presents books pretty nicely.
Maybe I’m just a fatalist here, but I can’t see a future that doesn’t involve a new form, a mixed media form, and the e-reader/iPad/iPhone being totally dominant.
A critical point in my mind: schoolbooks. The educational possibilities for the iPad are pretty limitless. Kids carrying all of their books in this device. Text books that can run text and video and audio and can hyper-link to the web and social media and discussion rooms….
That’s where it’s headed, I think—even if only because it’ll be cheaper. Teaching over at Santa Monica College, I was forever hearing about the ridiculousness and onerous burden of the $150 textbook. The e-reader ends that. (I think it ends that.)
So assuming I’m right, I gotta believe that future generations will be so well-versed in e-readers, so connected to the technology from moment one, first grade, it will seem entirely natural to read books (and mixed media forms) on these kinds of devices. Books and magazines will still exist on paper, but they’ll be more and more peripheral.
Book nerds—people who really appreciate and fetishize the book as an object—will still have their books. They’ll still have a market. What sized market? Who knows? Probably not huge, comparatively speaking.
I suspect that most of the real talent, artist-wise, will gravitate towards digital, because they’ll have more options and a much bigger audience.
I don’t know, man. Don’t mean to the bearer of bad news, nor am I a digital evangelist. I just suspect that radical, radical change is afoot. I can’t deny it. It’s hard to decide whether or not I’m happy about it—it almost seems like being happy or sad about the weather—but for now I’m choosing to be open to the possibilities. Some of them are interesting. Some are even exciting.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!”
Boom.
As much as I try, there’s a nagging feeling in me that my protests about the immortality of the book are founded on a personal Luddism and attachment to books, and a reluctance to embrace change.
But, you know… the shock of the new can be just the cold shower you need.
Also, re: textbooks.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Check out the new iPad version of Alice in Wonderland:
Think the kids are gonna like it?
Yup, no question!
But I still want a wigglies and pop-up version of it with some quilted, removable body parts and clothes like old-time paper dolls, as well as a Lego and Meccano construct or two.
Seems like we can have both—-why not? It’d be a win-win for e-creators, their manufacturers and appreciators, as well as Luddites (thank you, Simon) and handcrafters.
Brad,
Nice thought provoking and, a little depressing, piece. I thought I’d add my two cents (can’t we get rid of pennies, btw?) Anyway, Hyperbooks, Vooks, MediaLit.
I personally think it’s a bit of The Emperor’s New Clothes (Google it.) A book is something that has always been a place you enter to turn off the real world. These flashy and sexy abominations will appeal mostly to the folks who are focused on getting to the next level of Slasher Foo Blood Fighters so they can acquire a laser, the better to chop their opponents into quivering cubes of flesh and win bonus points redeemable for ecstasy or sugar cookies or Frapachinos. They will also appeal to those who cannot take a step without consulting their phones for their emailed horoscope or to see who Googled them. Others like this bitter old mother fucker will limit themselves to “DEDICATED” ereaders. Period.
Regarding Cody’s comments on Orwell. If Orwell had the iPad? What would he had done? Answer: probably taken the gas pipe. If he had written 1984 now, at this time, he would have titled it, 2022, of course. And it would have immediately been buried by tons of psycho chop-em-up crap and chick lit fluff, coming in at number 7,456,992 on Amazon. Nobody except for the last 4,736 serious people living on the planet will have read him. And that’s while they’re waiting in the queue to be machine gunned for “thinking against the state.”
During the Clinton impeachment scandal, it was alleged (I don’t want to get into some kind of political battle here) that the Clintons did ‘document dumps.’ That is, if certain documents were requested to ascertain if laws were broken, they dumped tons of it at the investigator’s door. Yeah, the other side probably did the same. Point is, finding something good is like finding that needle in the proverbial, you know.
If more is good, than too much is even better.
All the possibilities that are offered up by Ipads and interactive readers seem to me to be a bunch of crap. What serious person wants to work on a serious work for years and years and then offer it up to be ‘edited’ by a bunch of children? And how this means that ‘reading isn’t dead, it’s just betting more sophisticated, is nonsense.
Some might argue that we’re already over bombarded by too much communication. Does the world really need that latest tweet from Ernest Gabalot about the awesomely unusual bowel movement he had last night?
Cody may be right in stating that, “the books that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.’ Well, it may be great for his generation, but probably not for the world and for culture.
Bottom line, I’ve read books that increasingly more and more readers could not get two pages into before running for their ipod or ipad or gizzy. Not because these books have become irrelevant or have somehow become stale and boring by virtue of being around for fifty or more years. But rather because of the great ‘dumbing down’ that’s been going on for the last thirty or fifty years. This all reminds me of the debate that surfaces too frequently these days over college testing and other competency tests, with the usual calls making them more relevant, or whatever.
What it really amounts to is, more and more students can’t pass these tests because they’ve spent too much time twitering or frittering when they should have been studying and reading… so throw away the tests.
So yeah, books are becoming too hard, so let’s throw a bunch of flashy, musical crap in there and call it a ‘schmook’ or what ever, so we can still make a buck.
As for this bitter old MF, I’m salting away my books, beans, bullets and bullion, waiting for the coming meltdown. If the internet crashes and burns, does it make a sound?
We may find out soon.
The Grouchy Old Guy!
Good stuff, Paul, a healthy mix of cynicism and pragmatism.
“Cody may be right in stating that, “the books that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.’ Well, it may be great for his generation, but probably not for the world and for culture”.
I agree. I’m only 28 and when I look at my nieces and nephews and youth at large, I’m scared. Very scared….they are DUMB! Living overseas for a few years, when I come home I’m always that weird, uncle guy the kids only kind-of know. And of course my mother regales me with tales of who is smart, etc. among the grandkids. So, trying to be the somewhat-good-influence uncle I have tried to talk to these kids now that I’m home again. Problem is, THEY DON”T KNOW ANYTHING! Even the smart ones. I told one I was living in South Africa. “Oh, what country?” he said.
“Yeah, I was teaching in South Korea.”
“Isn’t that in, like, China?”
9/10 High school kids don’t know where Afghanistan is on a map. Half of them can’t find Iraq. If we’re going to blow the shit out of countries, we could at least extend the courtesy of our youth knowing where they are.
The supposed prodigy of the family does not read. I think he’s read “The DaVinci Code.” That’s it. This is truly worrying. To me, you can’t be smart and not read…or rather, you can’t be smart and not read serious books…classic books…challenging books…
Or maybe smart isn’t the right word. You can’t have a truly developed mind and not read.
Now, there are more gaps in my history than I’d like to admit, but I swear these kids have no knowledge of history. If you ask them to discuss 1984 they would probably dismiss it as “like, some year a long time ago.”
They live in a product of the moment, with not historical context in which to place themselves. I’ve often wondered if this is a product of bad education or maybe, from being immersed in so much information that they are drowning…unable to make sense of a world in which any point can find a counterpoint through a .34343 second Google search.
Whatever the case, it seems to me that the “smart kids” these days, if you inserted them in a curriculum from school even 10-15 years ago…they would be one of the not-so-smart kids. And I can only imagine how they would compare in the schools of your youth. In the days of lowered standards, being good isn’t all that good. Being average is good. And being bad is kind of average. How this all bodes for the future I don’t know. But I don’t feel particularly good about it.
I feel that social media, iPads, etc can be used for good or bad, like all technology. But I’m with you. I see them used to spread lots of drivel…and the good stuff they could also be spreading is buried under so much manure. I often think of the speed with which headlines are replaced. What ever happened to Haiti? The earthquakes in China and Chile? Old news. Now let’s watch a video of a panda sneezing.
With the average attention span today being around .43943 seconds, what kid is going to read Orwell…Tolstoy…Dostoevsky? Why bother when you can Google the plot summary. But something is lost in translation. It’s like reading an article about Italy instead of travelling there. In the rush to supply information, the modern age has lost wisdom. The wisdom to separate the mundane from the meaningful…the reflexive from the creative…
I can spend weeks on a piece, trying to be deep, serious, though-provoking…then put up a link of Facebook, hoping to elicit a response…some good conversation. I’ll get maybe 20 reads. Then over at YouTube a video of a boy pretending to shove a remote control up his ass gets 25 million hits. Sigh.
Nah, you’re not a grouchy old guy…you are a guy concerned about where all of this sea change is taking us, whether it is a good place to be…or just a new place to be.
Brian,
thanks for responding. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who hasn’t melded into the group mind, the hive. BTW, President Obama must have read my comment. I see in the papers he said, “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,”
You go, Prez!
Although I do sorta agree with him, I get a little nervous when Big Govt Officials call for less media and less distracting POVs.
I hope that there will be a call for more traditional schools that emphasize self discipline, hard work, the classics, even rote learning for the little ones, etc.
I take it all back. Let the world go to hell. That’s one funny panda.
James Joyce was always short on cash.
I think the West Coast has some damn great writers, but no a lot of readers. Having been in LA for the past sixteen years, I’ve seen very few home with book cases. It’s mostly magazines and screenplays and HBO Series DVD sets.
What may happen is the East coast may be the only place you can buy a printed book, and in the West, it’s gonna be iPads or, as Brad said, some kind of viewing helmet.
But who’s gonna read an iPad in the tub?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIVPfj6ryME&feature=fvw
Ray Kurzweil on the future of reading.
Here’s the video of Ray Kurzweil on the future of reading. -MGMT