This was a highly debated subject for my Lit. Theory class this past quarter. Personally, I am in favor of print. Believe me, I love my technology and hardly ever go a day without getting on my computer (I just about couldn't stand not having internet for a week when it went down at our apartment), but I just can't give up the rows and shelves (and piles in Scott's case) of books in our apartment. I can't give up browsing the titles, touching the spines, and picking up the book to thumb through the crisp new pages at a book store (or used pages in the library). I know many respectable people, even some literary people, argue that the new electronic books allow one to carry around thousands of books with them, but who is honestly going to need to carry them around all the time? Another argument is that printed texts cost so much more to produce; but is that what it's all really about, or should be about?? Perhaps this argument will never be resolved, and hopefully it will never need to, but I just hope that the end of printed books will never come in my time.
{here's a poem I wrote on the subject}
"Ode to a Book"
I lie reading a book before bed,
comforted by the soft light of my lamp,
and the slow rhythm of turning the page.
The powdery feel of paper on my fingertips
as I lift the page up and over
to reveal more of Lily's concern with the bees
and a black madonna in a living room.
This is what reading is about, I sigh
thinking of someone else
more than likely tucked in bed just as I am
staring into a small bulbish screen.
Where is the lamp beside their bed?
Where is the comforting powdery turning of the page?
Where is the rollar coaster thrill of lifting it up and over?
Nothing.
Just a rectangular portal that can hold
thousands upon thousands, or so I've heard.
I imagine all of the books standing on their computerized shelf:
soldiers ready to serve their duty on the screen.
I lovingly take down the titles with their colorful spines;
thumbing over the pages with a faint smile
then raising it to my nose
taking in the smell of paper,
of years,
of wisdom.
My fellow reader views words backlit like flies hanging on a light.
Buzzing. Wurring.
These discomforting thoughts finally leave my mind
as I sink lower in my strawberry sheets,
and follow the small black ants skipping across my page
lifting them
up and over.
up and over.
{Another poem I've written recently after reading Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library"}
"Ode to a Library Card"
"...one thing should be noted: the phenomenon of collecting [books] loses its meaning as it loses its personal owner. Even though public collections may be less objectionable socially and more useful academically than private collections, the objects get their due only in the latter." - Walter Benjamin - "Unpacking My Library"
A golden plastic ticket
giving me admission to
rows upon rows of voices whispering
under the pointed nose of the
middle-aged cardigan up front,
telling their stories,
sharing their histories,
bearing their flaws.
As a child we carried it with both hands
and reached it up to large eyes that looked through
magnifying glasses, we were granted two weeks with a dog riding in a taxi,
or an absurd breakfast of green eggs & ham.
Later it was carried in back pockets or wallets -
often cracked or broken,
caught in the wash or stolen.
We didn't care so much because it wasn't so cool to know much
so we'd stand around the magazines just to be safe.
Some of us decided the laminated treasure could save our lives
and we'd stash the bounty they rewarded us in book bags -
bring them out to hide behind,
comforted by the coffee stain on pg. 103
(evidence there was another reader out there,
an anonymous companion who shared our interest for
words and voices.)
No, we don't have rooms devoted to leather-bound first editions
and hand-painted children's books,
we can't take our guests into our studies
to wind through mahogoney bookcases
to sit in finely-cushioned chairs
and bask in the floating dust of bookcases.
Instead we borrow and share, and leave our own legacies on
crinkled pages worn from a day of beach-reading.
So Benjamin, you can keep unpacking your library, but as for me,
I'll take a public collection any day.
{photo from: http://jpsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/ebook-vs-book.jpg}
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