Kindle Redux

Two startling testimonials last week about the Kindle: first, Charles McGrath, former editor of The New York Times Book Review and a proud troglodyte when it comes to print, confessed that he had taken his new Kindle 2 with him on a golf trip. To his surprise he was smitten.

But if the Kindle isn’t the future, exactly, it’s a precursor. What it tells you, even if you are an unreconstructed book lover, is that the future will not be as hard to get used to as you imagined. Books are heavy, the Kindle reminds you, and they take up a lot of room. (I wish I’d had a Kindle last summer, when on a nearly month long trip to China I lugged along an entire suitcase full of books just so I wouldn’t run out of something to read.) And though we think of them as permanent, our books are slowly combusting right there on the shelves, the pages growing yellow, the bindings stiffening and becoming brittle.

McGrath goes on at some considerable length with the all the recognizable passion of the convert. And if someone like him is converted–well, that suggests a part of the battle–an outright defense-to-the-death of print–is over. Of course, neither I nor McGrath is suggesting that printed books will disappear, but it’s pretty clear now that electronic readers will provide pleasure and convenience as an alternative in the years ahead.

Perhaps more alarming was a conversation at a meeting of the Kenyon Review Board of Trustees in New York. We too were discussing the Kindle and our intention to make KR available on that “platform.” (There are some significant formatting issues, but I assume these will be overcome.) One trustee asked another, Roxanne Coady, proprietor of R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut, one of the country’s best independents, whether Kindle would eat up her business. To my surprise, she said yes. Whoa.

Looking back a couple of decades, we can now see that the advent of the “Big Box” bookstores–Borders and Barnes & Noble–didn’t wreck the book selling industry to the extent some of us feared. Smaller, weaker shops did indeed vanish. Others, in truth, who had plenty going for them, simply couldn’t stand up to the mighty foes. Still, Powell’s in Portland, the Tattered Cover in Denver, R. J. Julia in Madison, and plenty of others remained strong, inspired loyalty, and offered choice.

By pleasant chance, the day after last week’s board meeting I hiked from midtown New York down to Chelsea to see the exhibit of late Picasso work (truly astonishing) at the Gagosian Gallery. And strolling away afterward I came upon 192 Books on Tenth Avenue. Hardly more than a hole in the wall, but many wonders on the tables and shelves. Browsing, I discovered a book by the poet who receive the KR Award for Literary Achievement in 2010. (No hints yet!) Just as the Kindle simply can’t replace the tactile pleasures, touch, sight, smell, of print on paper, neither can a Barnes & Noble barn replicate the joys of exploration and discovery in a thoughtfully stocked bookstore.

If Roxanne is right, that her business is truly headed for extinction, that will be very, very sad.

As with so many other aspects of our contemporary lives, it hasn’t been a better version of an industry, but something entirely different–Amazon and the Internet–that now threatens all brick-and-mortar book sellers. Amazon and its lesser online kin, with essentially unlimited variety, deep discounts, and quick delivery, are all too tempting for many readers. And now, with the introduction of the Kindle, which can fetch a book to your grasp almost instantaneously, Amazon poses a further challenge, replacing not just how books are purchased, but the good old printed codex itself. See above.

Not that the Kindle or even the Kindle 2 are all the way there, yet. Aside from clunky design and cheap plastic, which surely will one day be remedied (take the hint, Apple), the screen is problematic. Yes, you can change the size of font, which is very nice. And yes, the screen really does look like a printed page, sort of.

One argument for “electronic paper” is that reading this mimickry is easier on the eyes. I might buy that, except that, just as with a good old book, unless there’s adequate external light at an effective angle, reading isn’t possible in any event. Personally, I’m hoping that someone will develop a screen that is aesthetically pleasing, easy on my aging eyes, and yet visible on a dimly lit airplane or in the dusk of my front porch. Now that would be an advance on paper.