My copy of Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility
As the Kindle
leaves the shelves and the iPad is about to land on them, across the internet people leave comments on articles and postings about e-reader devices and the future of reading - comments that are pithy, ill-informed, knowledgeable, crass or whatever, but almost always short.
There's something about electronic reading - at least on the computer, maybe e-readers will bely the habit - that favours the short. The separation of reading (or researching) on-screen from reading the printed word was given interesting coverage last year in an excellent
Atlantic article (
by Nicolas Carr and available here).
But this is a design-biased blog, and (in a short post, naturally) I want to wonder about the book-as-object - and my fear that the physical book is something that, if print reading finally succumbs to on-screen reading (and that's a big "if" still), would be well and truly missed. Or at least would alter even further our book-reading habits along the lines covered in that
Atlantic post. It seems that, perhaps for the first time ever, words are being separated from context. Not the context of their own subject, but the context of presentation (and occasionally, perhaps, because of that, even the context of conveying meaning). Presentation not just through the words themselves, but through font, paper, design.... Surely this is the first time this has happened - even in days before print, in days of storytellers, there were expert storytellers, who presented the words in ways that a non-specialist couldn't. The words weren't just words, they were wrapped in a presentation. Books then provided another presentation.
Words, of course, are for everyone - as is the cry about information of all kinds across the web - but then so are books. But a book - not the writing, but the "object"-plus-the-writing - can be treasured, valued, remembered. Is too much becoming disposable, non-valued, unremembered? I read
The Guardian online, just for example, but while still a great news source, its news priorities are now obscured: serious news affecting the actual lives of many is no more prioritised than a paragraph of absolute trivia. Easy access online means everything is available, nothing is given prioirity. We could become even more a culture of skimming, of not valuing. It's possible this is already happening in how we disposably listen to music, as well as how we absorb news or magazine articles. It seems to me that an object - a creation to store
each novel, biography, history, or whatever - helps give value to the effort of the writer's creation. Certainly, designed "packaging" might also surround an e-read novel, but its creation is abstract and not intimately associated with the book.
Of course, there were always books that were "throwaway" - like airport paperbacks. Sometimes that's used as an argument in support of e-readers (disposable things were disposable before, so why worry about the disposable now?). Partly that's the case with designer
Craig Mod's posting. But it seems an argument that chooses the lowest common denominator of the print method to support the introduction of a new way of reading that risks becoming a new way of reading
everything. "Disposable" can be a valid choice in the selection of a book, just as is thickness, impact, styling, upmarket-ness, cheapness, emotion... (and not forgetting that first priority, the content!)
Of course, print and e-reader may exist alongside each other, with (as Craig hopes) the disposable or word-only content on e-readers, and the valued or well-defined content in print. But if e-reading takes off it may not be economic to print. Or print may become a luxury, leaving print for those with disposable income more than disposable reading habits. A novel would become "formless" whatever its "value".
Following the argument that novels are suited to e-readers, Yukio Mishima's
Sea of Fertility would be easily (even preferably) adaptable to electronic reading. Yet, for me,
Sea of Fertility is not only one of the great novels (over all the 800-odd, tightly type-set pages) but the
book is tied in with my reading experience of it. Read at home, carried around, taken on holiday, taken over time. Worn and thumbed. A Penguin edition (a company which thought about books, and which
considered design as a communication "tool"). Even its choice of illustration (I'd have chosen otherwise) to attract the reader is part of the experience of reading it. It's not that I so much want the feel of paper, but I do want the whole object. Of course, ultimately it's just Mishima's words that matter. But taking that too literally could be like saying to hear all the notes of a Mozart piece is all that matters, not where, when and how well relayed - and even played - you heard them.
I don't want to argue only for reading on paper for paper's sake, but perhaps I do for reading as an individual product adding value to the creation. Less skimming, more concentration, more flexibility in reading. (People also say that e-readers are heading more in the direction of the experience of current book-reading, but that only seems to reveal that books are already the better final aim rather than e-readers being inherently better way of supplying the content.)
I have a version of Mishima's
Forbidden Colours (after which, in part, I took the name I
work under) which is an attempt to make a dense and literate book into a disposable, controversial, sexy "airport" read. I'd read the book (again in a Penguin edition) but couldn't help buying secondhand this classic attempt at repackaging. You might argue that buying twice - and with secondary, "trashy" packaging - could be avoided in an e-reader. But so could the enjoyment.
Let's forget Mishima for a while - it's been a long time since I read one of his novels - Alan Moore's
Voice of the Fire is again tied up with its design for me - and I don't even like the design that much. Still, an interesting package, and it's part of how the words are conveyed and remembered - and valued.
Of course, the likes of Osamu Tezuka's
Ode to Kirihito would likely still be printed, assuming print carries on alongside e-reading. So the Chip Kidd-designed book, with its cover split in two by a vertical
obi would probably still exist. But is it worth the risk that printing would be unviable economically if a company has to choose electrionic means and or print?
Chip Kidd, by the way, gave his concise
200-word celebration of print here, expanding from his initial response to being asked
what effect e-readers would have on book design - "None". (That was over two years ago - an age in the electronic world - so I don't know what he thinks now.)
So, for me, most often, words are better off with weight as well as an ethereal existence. Perhaps, nevertheless, an e-reader will take over my book collection as an iPod has my music (while my CDs sit in storage but not yet thrown away). But I feel that the iPod has changed my music-listening ways, and perhaps not for the better. Music so far survives that change. I've to be convinced that there isn't a further element of change involved in removing reading from books that will alter reading habits for the worse. I just want to raise the question.
::: Arguments for e-reading:
It's inevitable. You can't fight progress:
It's an argument which makes obvious sense for the business (publishers better get on board) but from a reader's point of view, it's surely fair to raise arguements against that? And from a designer's point of view all is still somewhat up in the air. "Business is business, progress is progress." In the "counterculture" film Performance, for example, that was a call of the businessman and the lawyer, an "anti-"creative statement. Often now, it's the statement of the web and used as a "pro"-creative statement. Get on or get left behind.
Dead trees:
I wish someone with the knowledge would compare the energy expenditure/carbon footprint of printing and distributing books to that of making and using e-readers. But until they do so accurately, the talk of the end of "dead tree" book production is a real bug-bear to me. If the "don't be evil"-style major businesses behind new technology will be planting trees instead of building factories to make computers, or using eco-friendly plastics instead of killing trees, then saving trees might stand as an argument. Meanwhile, many books use farmed trees (ie, trees that wouldn't be grown without an end-use) and recycled paper. I hope that people who mention dead trees aren't sitting at a wooden desk as they type.
They're good for students:
This seems the best argument. How many of the text books from your days of studying have you kept. Text books (rather than novels and books chosen after studying is finished) paradoxically seem the most dispoable of books. Often unkept, weighty and part of a set of a number of books needed for study, they could benefit from e-readers. And other aspects of a course could benefit from the other uses of an e-reader could be turned to. There's a Japan-based example of that argument here.
Will e-readers take off in Japan?
It's unclear, party because reading novels by mobile phone has already established itself as a niche market. Like the argument that all you can do on an iPad you can already do on a iPhone, that early establishment might hinder their spread
