Tactile Experiences

In the Village Voice, David Ulin writes about his 30-year quest for a hard-to-find Vonnegut book, Canary in a Cat House. Of course, the search ends with the internet makes short work of what 30 years of peeled-eyes in bookstores could not do. However, it's something of a hollow victory:

But here's the thing: Now that I have Canary in a Cat House, I'm dissatisfied. Once in a while, I take the book out and peruse it, yet this feels more like handling an artifact than any kind of reading I know. Partly that's because my edition is old, cheaply bound, and printed on acidic paper, which means that any time I touch it, I add to its decay. Partly it's because I've already read these stories, which means Canary in a Cat House can never exist for me as a text to discover on its own. Partly it's because ownership itself is anticlimactic, which means that after three decades, Canary in a Cat House has become less important for what it is than what it was: a vehicle for longing. Most of all, it's because of how I came across the collection not by discovering it in some forgotten bookstore, but through the clinical precision of the Internet. There was nothing tactile or serendipitous about it; I just visited a website, and there it was. Thirty years ago, all I had was my own wanting, the sense that if I hung in long enough, I might have a small epiphany. On the Internet, though, epiphanies become prosaic, since nearly anything is within electronic reach.

There's some implications here for e-books vs pulp and paper, and also for Google's (and many librarys') quest to put millions of books online.

Interestingly, this article indicates that people are warming to the idea of visiting their local library's collection via the internet. Perhaps the tactile pleasure of books is something not everyone prefers to a computer screen?

Comments

[Bud Parr]

He hits on some good themes there, one of which buying books as collectors items. I always thought that missed the point (the one's I have bought for that reason, sit on the shelf, never to be touched.)

Granted I like to have long-lasting hardbacks, but that's so that I, and hopefully my son, could read them again and again. I also love owning books, but I love browsing around for them more and always keep a list, both in the head and notebook of books to buy should I find them.

I read a lot on the screen as many who use aggregators do, but how would you impress your friends with all those smart looking books if they were crammed into a hard-drive? The first thing I do when I go into someone's home is to look at their books - and yes, I make instant judgments about them based on this, being the shallow fellow that I am.

I do like having electronic versions of books for searching for specific passages, but that is more fun with the real thing too.

Coincidentally, I use a dictionary card in my Palm Pilot and hardly use anything else because I can carry it everywhere I go. So much for tactile experiences.

[bookdwarf]

I'm with Bud. I;m shallow enough to admit that I too always check people's shelves when I visit their homes and judge accordingly. I have tons of books at home and add to them daily. I also have a great deal of galleys, but I don't think they survive as long.
I have a small collection of stuff that is 'valuable' I guess, but I mostly collect them because I like them. Mostly I have some 16 & 17th century texts of classics such as the Odyssey and complete Aristophanes. Some I got online and some I got in stores.
Mostly I read the NYT and good blogs such as yours online. I think just like most things there are pros and cons to the availability of books on the internet. It's an interesting age we live in at least.

[Scott]

The bookshelves point is a good one. I think most of us to like to look through another's shelves thinking we can figure something out about them. It's usually one of the first places I go in a new friend's home/apartment.

Sometimes I like to even just look at my shelves, both to appreciate the books and to help me get a sense of what I should look to read next. You can't quite get the same thing from a list of names on a computer hard drive.

But who knows--perhaps tomorrow's booklovers will gleefully thrust laptop screens or palm pilots at each other, exchanging lists of books like business cards. Or maybe we'll learn to project holograms of bookcases upon our home's empty walls.

[SisterRye]

No, no, no! No holograms! No palm pilots! A book, it must have a spine, a spine for to carry the bundle of nerves and fibers that give it life!!!!!!!
~SisterRye

[Bud Parr]

Oh SisterRye, I understand, but it's the words that matter.

My family thinks I'm crazy because I carry a selection of books around with me everywhere (and I mean everywhere) I go. You will rarely see me without my backpack. And I live in the city, so this ain't no sittin' in the carseat, my 3-5 books, plus notebook, and a couple of pencils. This is hanging right on my back, just to make sure that I have everything I need - and it gets heavy.

Personally, if the right device came along, I might be willing to carry all that stuff in one. My biggest problem then would probably be that I would carry a library instead of 3-5 books.

Having recently switched to a Mac from Windows, I have found the screen quality to be so much better than before, and I think that's encouraging for the idea of electronic books. I also met an optometrist (this guy had been John Lennon's optometrist, which is cool in that six degrees way) who had been studying the effects of computer reading on the eye. He didn't believe that it was any more damaging than normal reading.

Still, I hear your lament, and there are those things that I mentioned above. I read in a book called "Information Anxiety 2" that, according to the author's idea, not-too-distant computers would be more like today's video games. That might have interesting implications for what Scott was saying in his comment above.

And...

[SisterRye]

Yes, the words are the meat of course and I sympathize with the backpack problem, but it should keep you fit to bear weight (it prevents osteoporosis). I'm probably speaking from my own personal bias, being a visual artist, so I see things from an artistic point of view when I think of books. I think cover art, design, layout, size, format, edition and fonts matter. I'm also into the art of book-binding, so I notice the way books are bound, stiched, cut, what type of paper is used, etc... I guess I'm into the whole package, which is kind of unpopular. It's seen as more of a marketing tool, and less as an expression of something meaningful. From a tactile perspective, I really like just turning pages. Turning pages feels good. Dog-earing is a pleasure (even though it damages the book). I could say more...