Sun 17 Nov 2013
THE SECOND GREAT PAPERBACK REVOLUTION: E-Books and the Second Coming of the Pulps and The Paperbacks, by David Vineyard
Posted by Steve under Collecting , General[20] Comments
E-Books and the Second Coming of the Pulps and The Paperbacks
by
David Vineyard
　
It is common on this blog for myself, and others, to bemoan why so many of the great (and admittedly not so great) writers of the past are not represented in today’s book market. The lament usually goes something like this:
They don’t write them like they used to, and all the great old books are lost, forgotten. You can’t find (choose the name of your choice) in print. The only books out there are dull and badly written in comparison. The new generation doesn’t know what it is missing …
In the immortal words of Seinfeld: ‘Yada yada yada…’
Well, I sorry to deny my fellow curmudgeonly collectors and readers one of our pet hobby horses, but our favorite lament is no longer true, and so untrue that the solution to the problem is not in some dusty musty smelling used bookstore, crowded book fair or busy convention where you have to cram a year’s worth of book hunting and buying into a few cramped hours, but no farther away than a fingers touch away and under $10 in cost.
In the last 24 hours I have recreated some major elements of my lost collection, and the most it has cost me for a single volume has been $4, in many cases less than $1. Understand I’m not just talking about obscure or once famous writers from another age, though I’ve recovered my complete Charlie Chan, Philo Vance, Mr. Moto, Bulldog Drummond, Dr. Thorndyke, Father Brown, Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, and Tarzan collections — all for a grand total of $1.99 (the Tarzan); those have been around almost from the beginning, in public domain.
No, I’m talking about a second paperback and pulp revolution equal to the first, and, like the first, in cheap readily accessible attractive and easily transportable editions. Oh, and I might add so far I haven’t spent a dime for the devices to read them, though I certainly plan to buy an inexpensive Kindle soon. Carrying a thousand books in a device smaller than a trade paperback gives a new meaning to the word ‘pocketbook.’
More importantly, some of these writers haven’t been available at these prices since the 1980‘s.
Who am I talking about?
John D. MacDonald, Dan J. Marlowe, William Campbell Gault, Ross McDonald, Peter Rabe, Wade Miller (the complete Max Thursday for .99 each), Frank Kane, Brett Halliday, Mickey Spillane, Donald Hamilton, Stephen Marlowe, Ed Lacy, Henry Kane: and from the pulps, Nebel, Chandler, Hammett, Paul Cain (for free), Carroll John Daly, Robert Leslie Bellem, not to mention Doc Savage, the Spider, the Avenger, the Black Bat, even Nick Carter, Frank Merriwell, and the Rover Boys …
Almost all those books are under $10, most under $5 and many under $1. Some are even free.
Granted, you don’t have the pleasure of an actual book in your hands, and it takes a bit of time to adjust to reading in this format (arguably the Kindle, Nook, etc are closer to actually reading a book), but many of the complaints I’ve heard lodged against e-books here echo what was said of the pulps and paperbacks as well. E-books will never replace the feel of a book, certainly not a leather bound or quatro buckram edition with its scent and heft, but frankly I had less than 100 such books in my extensive collection and few of them were worth what I paid for them. E-books won’t appreciate in value either, but they are here, available, and no doubt will develop their own following.
To quote James Joyce, I’m not trying to convert you or pervert myself, but I am trying to point out that this is far and away the most important revolution in books since the paperback was born. When I began collecting it took me years to accumulate books by John Buchan, Sapper, Dornford Yates, Louis Joseph Vance, Maurice Leblanc, Talbot Mundy, Edgar Wallace, Rohmer, Van Dine, and others. Now all it takes is a few keystrokes and a WiFi or DSL connection. I could, with a little effort, and under $500 dollars, download my entire collection of over forty years worth close to $100,000, in less than eighteen hours — and that only because of sheer volume.
I don’t ask that you adapt to the e-book, or even read one, but don’t complain about expensive limited reprint editions or the scarcity of this material. Everyday more volumes are being added and new generations of readers are discovering these writers, people, I might add, who would not have purchased them from a paperback kiosk and certainly not in limited overpriced editions. Most of these books have reviews by people who read and enjoyed them and don’t know there ever was a paperback revolution.
I currently reside in a small town, a small and spectacularly illiterate community, where the only source of books are a high school library and the Dollar General, and neither updates its stacks often or carries much more than women’s soft core porn, vampire and ‘romantic suspense’ novels. A treasure is a remaindered Preston and Childs or Cussler. Once a month, if I’m lucky, I get to a Hastings. For now that’s it. But, at my fingertips I have access to books from around the world in countless languages and libraries as important as Oxford’s Boedelian and Harvard.
Like the first paperback revolution this includes an entire new world of original e-books, many better than you could hope, or no worse than what you find on the mass market book stands at Wal-Mart, and numerous sources of free books. I can also, for far less than the near $30 they cost on the stands, purchase the latest bestseller. You can even purchase an e-book “safe†for $20 to protect your collection — more than I can say for actual books.
Then too, those of us who have been married should welcome the end of those long forbearing stares when our collection threatens to over run the house having already driven the cat and both cars out of the garage and threatening to cause the ceiling to collapse by their sheer weight in the attic…
Books and collecting have always evolved. Don’t be the guy complaining because some German named Gutenberg put all those monks copying books out of business. This is not a fad, it’s a revolution, and standing in the way of one has never been a good idea.
How could any of us complain about our favorite writers being in print and finding new and enthusiastic readers? Because digital editions take up no actual physical space (a Kindle can hold 10,000 books and will only get more powerful), and cost virtually nothing to reprint, the possibilities are endless.
Most of us converted without pain from 16 mm to VHS to DVD, to Blu-Ray. This is the same thing, only here when a format goes kaput you don’t have to replace everything you own in Beta, you download a free converter and soon it’s all back. Granted Kindle won’t play on Nook and so on, but you can get a free app to read any format or get a free Calibre converter for extinct formats like Microsoft Readers LIT that take up little space on your PC and require no tech savvy to use.
For those of us born in the shadow of the first paperback revolution this one is even bigger, and likely more fundamental culturally. You don’t have to embrace it, but recognize what it means. Book collecting will never be the same again. This is the most important thing to happen to books since Gutenberg, I have no idea where it is going, but if it keeps my favorites from the past available I say it’s going in the right direction.
Somehow I don’t think Erle Stanley Gardner or Mickey Spillane would be the least bothered by having their work bring in money in another format — I can promise you Alexandre Dumas, the most business savvy author who ever lived (despite losing everything numerous times) wouldn’t mind at all.
Collectors, and I include myself, need to dismount our high horses before we fall off of them.
Oh brave new world that has such formats in it.
November 18th, 2013 at 5:22 am
Yeah, but there’s something about the smell of old books and the feel of a cheap binding coming loose in your hands as your eyes prowl the dark streets of the imagination…
November 18th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
You make a great case for ebooks, David, especially for younger readers who never had the chance to accumulate vintage reading material when it was available in brand new condition in spinner racks in every drug store, dime store and supermarket in the country — as I did.
Or in other words, I don’t have the need right now for a Kindle, Nook or whatever, but I’m certainly glad they exist. I read a lot of science fiction back in the late 50s, so I’ve known this day was coming ever since.
November 18th, 2013 at 1:21 pm
David, you are right. It’s a great book revolution going on and it does not make sense to oppose against it. But I am an old man and am used to read printed books during my whole life and I will prefer this kind of reading. Younger persons may prefer e-books.
November 18th, 2013 at 3:24 pm
An excellent post, David. I have experienced the same thrill locating books from all of my favorite authors of the hardboiled era which are now coming available online in a veritable tidal wave.
For those resistant to the new technology, I can highly recommend the e-Ink Kindle (as opposed to the Paperwhite). The screen is not back lit so it’s just like reading a paper book, and thus there’s no eyestrain. For those preferring a bigger font to read, the Kindle DX with the 9.7 inch screen is darn near perfect.
November 18th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Much like the printing press and the introduction of the paperback the e-book is less a revolution than a movement. All three struck fear in the established publishers and book sellers. All three created easier access to the word and ideas for more people. And all three forms survive.
I grew up with books. Mom had been a librarian and Dad was a reader as well. I was “reading” picture books before I could walk. I lived in a small college town in Kansas (think LEAVE IT TO BEAVER) with one nice city library and no bookstore. I got my books from spinner racks in a small knick-knack shop next to a pool hall (remember those?) and book of the month clubs.
I have no fond memories of books as like Dan in #1 too many of my beloved self-destructed. I am at an age where I can no longer read the type of most books (many not available in larger type) and I find the adjustable type on Kindle to be the only way I can enjoy the words and stories.
And this is where both sides of the revolution loses me. I don’t care about the container, I care about the words. If Dashiell Hammett was alive and writing a story in chalk on the sidewalk I would be happily walking behind him reading.
The paperback did not kill the hardcover and I don’t think the e-book will kill the hardcover either. I see both print and e-books surviving and continuing to increase the number of total readers.
I agree with David’s post. My problem is the belief we have to choose sides. I own both print and e-books. I am replacing most of my print books with the e-book version because I got tired of wanting to read a book and unable to find it in my countless boxes of books, countless neglected words and stories. I try to find good homes for my print books. All this talk of print vs e-book forgets the only terrible thing is an unread book.
November 18th, 2013 at 3:59 pm
We can never recreate the feel of browsing at the local drug store and finding beneath a garish (and hopefully sexy) cover a treasure. And I love reading hardbacks and paperbacks, but more than the smell and feel I love the Books themselves.
No one is suggesting we abandon the hardback — though at close to $30 a crack it has abandoned me — or the paperback — which is pushing at $10 a pop. But if this genre is going to survive, even prosper, it has to grow, and there is nowhere for the hardcover or paperback to go.
And just maybe if we can get over the physical condition of the book and pay attention to what is written inside, we can find the true value of books again.
Of course I’d love to have the mahogany paneled library two or three floors deep with ladders and catwalks we see in movies about the rich (I’ve been in a few, one with folio Shakespeare editions — I want to be buried there), but you can download for free a library as vast for free. I have a copy of Amadis the Gaul in my digital library — a book I could neither find nor afford before.
I think most of you missed my real point though, which is how accessible these books are, and how easy to simply download the John Creasey, Peter Cheyney, James Hadley Chase of your choice without having to dig through endless catalogues from all over the English speaking world.
These writers and others are being read and enjoyed by new readers who don’t belong, nor want to belong, to our fraternity — and that was how it all began — not collectors, but ordinary readers looking to escape in a book. Writers whose names spin our dreams, and whom we spent lifetimes tracking down, can be had at Amazon as cheaply as any modern paperback.
That’s why I call it a revolution, because revolutions create fundamental changes in the world, and e-books are quietly doing that just as VOD is doing the same for movies and television.
I bought a copy of Guilty Bystander by Wade Miller for .99 cents in mint condition yesterday and it took five whole seconds to deliver it. We certainly don’t have to choose one or the other, but we do need to embrace rather than bemoan what is already here and evolving from minute to minute.
November 18th, 2013 at 7:50 pm
David,
More than two years ago I got my first Kindle. I loved it. More importantly, with publishers like The Mysterious Press and The Murder Room entering the e-game, books that I like and want to read started to get published as e-books… and slowly, I’ve used e-books more and more.
I think many aspects of this are wonderful. Particularly the rebirth of the novella. Authors will often price them cheap and you get a brief sample of their kind of work. Like it? Then why not try their novels? Don’t like it? Move on to the next one.
To be honest, I can only think of one absolutely irreplaceable thing when it comes to old “book” books. No, not the feel nor the smell nor the texture – I can live without those, it’s the words that count. But what Amazon and Kobo and Co. cannot recreate is the hunt for new books to read. Searching carefully through the shelves, discovering a misfiled book, having your eye caught by the cover of a book you’d never heard of, finding that *one* book you’ve been looking for forever!
Amazon simply cannot recreate that. If I buy one Ross Thomas book on the Kindle, my recommendations will all be other Ross Thomas books. And after a certain point, Amazon will not know what else to recommend — Amazon has lately started advertising Kindle books that I have *already* purchased among my recommendations. For instance, after buying ASK NOT by Max Allan Collins, all my recommendations were Nate Heller novels that I’d already purchased for the Kindle.
Amazon cannot replace the moment where bookhunters talk to each other and might say “You like John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie? Then give Christianna Brand a whirl – the best of both worlds!” And because of its flawed recommendations system, the casual browsing element and the spontaneous discovery are also gone.
But if you know exactly what you’re looking for and what you want, the Kindle is a very useful device. I’ve just noticed that I still have yet to discover a new author I really really like by e-device alone. They’ve all come from other readers telling me to check out so-and-so or this-and-that.
Just my $0.05. (You may have heard that Canada has now gotten rid of its pennies, so I only have nickels lying around.)
November 18th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
Most of my reading is done on an e-reader. Sure, I love books, but I love the act of reading even more. If Ramble House, or any one of a dozen other good e-publishers, can make the classics easier for me to find, so be it.
November 18th, 2013 at 8:46 pm
There is a way to enjoy browsing at Amazon. The recommended for you stuff occasionally helps but rarely. The key is the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought this” hints.
For example Dashiell Hammett’s new book “The Hunter and Other Stories” mentions other writers such as Cornell Woolrich, James Reasoner, Robert J. Randisi, and the book “Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe” an old salute book with Marlowe stories by Robert Crais, Loren D. Estleman, and many others.
#7 Patrick, check out Ross Thomas “Twilight At Mac’s Place.” There you will find100 different books by 20 different authors mentioned in the Customers Who Bought this… line. Yes, the first five pages features Thomas’ books but that leaves 15 more pages (5 titles each as you scroll sideways).
Pick one and you will find there other books recommended by Customers Who Bought that title. Pick one from there…
I find hopping from link to link is as much fun as going through boxes of books at used book stores and book fairs in hopes of finding something.
While it is not the same as glancing at spinner racks or book shelves, it still offers the fun of the hunt and the joy of finding that treasure you never knew you had to have.
November 18th, 2013 at 10:25 pm
Hunting e-books can be rewarding if only because you find what you are looking for more often. No, it doesn’t have the feel of book hunting or the thrill of discovery, but many of us live in places where books are scarce.
You have to remember there are towns that don’t even have a paperback spinner. I grew up in a city of 20,000 people, and I was 22 before they had a bookstore that sold hardcovers.
The nearest actual bookstore, not newsstand, was seventy miles away in Dallas. If not for cheap postage and places like Rue Morgue and later Mysterious Bookstore I would never have had half my collection.
And as Michael says, you can learn to love Amazon — and unlike most places I recall, see what you are buying.
I do regret the great covers of the sixties are often missing, McGinnis, Lesser, Phillips, and so on, but paperbacks have had crummy covers (hardbacks always had mediocre covers) for years now for the most part with design crazy illustration phobic editors with the artistic judgment of near sighted guppys.
But you can find the covers in art and genre history books. It’s the books themselves that are rare. I’ve seen the covers, but too often couldn’t read the books. Go to Amazon and there’s an entire page of Robert Colby. How often did you stumble on those haunting bookshops or catalogue’s — and for that matter Albris, Pandora’s Books, and Amazon books are much easier even for that.
Yesterday I found Gerald Kersh’s Fowler’s End for $8. Do you know how long I hunted that book and never found it under $50? I’m a reader before I’m a collector, and I welcome e-books. I can always hold and smell a real hardcover while I read my Kindle like a comic stuck behind a text book.
November 19th, 2013 at 2:10 pm
Just stop comparing $30 hardcovers to $10 e-book prices–if you’re buying e-books you’re buying online and if you’re looking at hardcover prices online, they’re discounted well off $30.
I, too, don’t like the tendency for some people to want others to pick a side. Let them co-exist. I do have a fear that too many people will say paper books are dead and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In any case, I have a library with several thousand books on the shelves. I can go into that room whenever I want and actually browse; take down a book, scan the pages, move on; this can’t be done with an e-book. It’s not the smell or the feel, it is an actual physical activity that goes along with the sheer physical beauty of the books lined up side by side.
These things that can’t happen with e-books, which are merely computer files. Keep the format, buy them if you choose, but we already know about them, how cheap the can be, and how available they can also be. So what’s your point? You prefer e-books. Other people don’t. If you’re not trying to convince me of something, than I don’t see your point. Nothing new here, people, move along.
November 19th, 2013 at 5:41 pm
Rick, I had a collection of books worth close to $100,000 dollars, and I lost them. It doesn’t have to be the way I lost them, there is also flood, fire, tornado, hurricane, earthquake … and don’t kid yourself, your homeowners insurance doesn’t cover them even if you could replace them. If you got anything it would be ten cents on the dollar — and that would be remarkable luck.
And if you do buy insurance especially for those books the restrictions on their storage and your access to them while charging prohibitive premiums.
I have a huge collection of e-books that take up no more space than my laptop and a back up flash drive.
I think it is wonderful you have that library, and I enjoyed mine the same way you do, but when it was gone I couldn’t replace it, and I couldn’t save it either. I didn’t have time to even sell it.
My point, if you haven’t grasped it, is simply that there is another way to have one of these libraries as extensive as yours, even if you live in an apartment, a dorm, or a rent house. By all means enjoy your library, but you might consider backing it up in e-book form as insurance, you can lose everything you own in a flash to illness, disaster, or financial collapse, and if you think you can’t look at New Orleans, Japan, Moore, or New Jersey after Sandy.
I can lose thes e-books too, but I can replace them and not take forty years to do it.
And frankly there are books available in e-book form you can’t even find for sale.
And quite frankly, people will move along when they are ready to. The purpose of a blog is lively discussion of shared interests and no one of us other than Steve, says how or when that discussion ends.
My point, if you had bothered to read beyond the first few paragraphs, is that this is a fundamental revolution in books as great as the original paperback revolution, more so since this one literally changes how people read. It has already done some good in turning the tide against the illiteracy this country was wallowing in.
Frankly modern mass publishing couldn’t recreate the beauty of those hand written and decorated volumes monks once produced under flickering candle light either. Some-things will always change, but many of those lovely hand made books still exist despite that. No one wants to take away your library or deny your pleasure in it, but there is ‘something new here’ — a way of reading and collecting both more encompassing and more democratic than anything before it.
I don’t care if anyone loves or hates e-books. I do care that people who love books be aware what has happened. I care that books are available to everyone that once only graced the shelves of a few collectors or gathered dust and deteriorated in boxes. I care that I can suggest someone read something by John D. MacDonald and they can find it readily, and for less than $10, and not in a deteriorating condition so it is devalued if taken out of the plastic and read.
Collectors should love this. They can actually read those books now without agonizing that every page they turn lowers the books value. I know many comic book collectors already use the electronic versions that way.
Most people can’t have a physical library of thousands of books. Some of us have or have had wives who unreasonably believe they should be able to reach the toilet without climbing over boxes of paperbacks or mountains of hardcovers.
No dog or cat has ever chewed on a rare e-book. The spine has never come apart in anyone’s hands. No coffee cup has left a ring. No mildew has stained one. No toddler has ripped one to shreds.
Fine you don’t like them. Fine you don’t want to discuss them. But I’ll damn well discuss with anyone what I choose to discuss so long as I do so with Steve’s permission and by his rules, and you are free to do the same. The point of the computer revolution is the ability to do just that — for good or for ill.
You can bemoan it, but I don’t suggest standing in front of it.
November 19th, 2013 at 6:24 pm
David’s right. This section of comments is still open for business, as usual — and for all points of view, as usual.
November 19th, 2013 at 9:38 pm
I did read the whole piece, David. I just thought you told us all about e-books when we already know about e-books; therefore it came off as more of a come-to-Jesus invitation.
It was probably just me.
Isaac Asimov said that he didn’t think e-books would ever take over because they don’t reproduce the fundamental experience of reading a book. Sure, sixty year old books may be crumbling; I have a bunch of them. And I have some that aren’t, and I have even newer books that will be in fine condition on acid free paper for my lifetime, my kids, whomever.
If I did lose my library to natural disaster, then I lose my library to natural disaster. Whether or not e-books exist, or I have purchased e-book replacements, doesn’t change that. And while I find typos in most of the print books I read, I typically find scan-and-publish errors throughout “reputable” e-book publishers. As an aside, I don’t like how publishers charge full price for an e-book when the content is inferior, meaning rife with typos that could be fixed with human intervention. I’d rather have a crappy book than a crappy computer file.
I have two e-book readers, a Sony and a Kindle. I will buy an e-book when I need to find something that I can’t find affordably in paper. Fortunately, that’s not a terribly common situation.
I’m not anti-e-book–I’m a bit anti-proselytizing for them. They have a niche, and they should have a niche, and they shouldn’t go away. Neither should print books. I like the recent stats that show that e-book sales have leveled off and that they are around twenty percent of the current market. That seems like a good ratio to me.
Commuters, people who can’t have libraries, people who want to crank up the font size–e-books are wonderful. But your piece highlights all the good and none of the bad: possibility of damaged e-reader (the selector button on my Kindle failed, for instance), the fragility of the glass when packed in a suitcase or dropped, susceptibility to sand on the beach, their ability to get coated with food or drink, the fact that if I don’t keep my e-readers plugged in, their charges die after two weeks and I can’t use them until I charge them, etc.
The big problem may be piracy, but that may be more of a future concern. It’s happening now, but it will surely increase as e-book popularity does.
I “damn well” wasn’t being snippy. You painted a 100% rosy view of e-books. I thought more balance would have been appropriate. No opinions are going to be changed here but an airing of more of the facts, both good and bad, would be more helpful to an idiot reader like me. But again, not living in an actual cave (I have e-readers!), none of this is new stuff, either your words or mine.
November 19th, 2013 at 11:03 pm
For what it’s worth, which I’m sure is nothing, my cell phone is just that and only that, a cell phone. Computers sure are great, except when they’re not and they stop working. My wireless system is a patchwork system held together, I think, by duct tape and good wishes. If, or rather when it goes down, I may just give up and go back to reading.
November 20th, 2013 at 12:34 am
Rick,
Believe me I know how fragile computers and e-books are, but no more or less so than real books — and much cheaper to replace. No one suggests they are perfect, or less than flawed, but may I ask why you are so passionately against my pointing out their value if you don’t care one way or the other?
My only point is that whether we like it or not this is a fundamental change. It is a very big deal whether you want to deal with the implications or not.
Yes, I made a case for them, because I know as a collector and genre historian how much I would have benefited from them. There was a lot of chaff in my collection I bought on little more than a hope. Some of it proved marvelous and some of it was dreck, but too often the dreck cost more than it should have and even with all my reference works I had to buy them blind. I was a dedicated collector — ask Otto Penzler how much I spent a month on books some time.
None of this is new? Two years ago I lost my pc and be cause of health it took this long for me to acquire another (you don’t read a great deal in a coma either — real or e-books). What I found when I went to recover the e-books that weren’t saved on my backups was that prices were lower (two years ago e-books of bestsellers were the same price of discounted hardcovers — now they are much lower than that) and considerably more was available.
Being reborn at my age gives me a certain advantage, because in two years virtually everything changed. That’s a remarkably short time. Two years ago wifi cost more, and VOD didn’t work half as quickly.
I’m really not proselytizing for e-books, but I am suggesting something we take for granted — as we did the original paperback revolution — may be more fundamental a change than we see with our narrow vision. Try taking a 48 month nap (no, really, don’t) and see how much the world changes — and doesn’t.
What Steve says about his cell phone is the same way most people feel about books. Relatively few invest as much in them as we do. I think we are the lucky few, but that said the rest of the world seems perfectly well off without my obsessions, so I could (just possibly mind you, and it hardly seems likely) be just a tad too involved in books.
I said it was unlikely.
I guess it could be worse — I could collect dolls — talk about obsessed … My collection is a passion, yours is an obsession.
Frankly the wifi here is lousy and I haven’t been able to use my Netflix for two weeks, but then I can remember when I only had two channels and they went off the air at eleven pm.
Everything will always have drawbacks. With e-books come new problems and new reasons to feel frustrated or angered. But I can’t help but find it hopeful that new readers who never read a genre history or heard of Gold Medal are reading Peter Rabe, or Ed Lacy, or whomever and enjoying them in much greater numbers than the hard to find Black Lizard paperbacks or expensive print on demand editions (and thank you everyone who slaves to produce those books, you deserve every dime you can get). I remember bemoaning only two years ago that Donald Hamilton and Matt Helm seemed lost, but go to Amazon, and they aren’t lost now.
At the end of two years,when I was back finally,I had lost all my real books, and everything else, but I had a core collection of my library on a flash drive and four DVDs.
You say if you lose everything then you lose everything, maybe you really are that tough, resilient, and casual about it, but I can tell you it isn’t pleasant to wake up and find your entire life is gone. Small comforts mean a lot when you are in that position. And for that, losing everything was a bit freeing even though it turns out to be nice how much of it I can replace without the original hassle or the need for constantly expanding storage space.
I did not find you ‘snippy,’ I found you suffering from a sad syndrome found too often these days of needing to deny, downplay, and or undercut anyone who dares to have an opinion other than yours. What I found was the same fundamental fear that all attempted bullying reveals, a fear that someone somewhere will disagree with you or dare to think differently — that people will not be dictated to by your view or your ideas. That someone somewhere will dare to not share your view.
I don’t mean to be hateful, but I don’t care if anyone agrees with me about anything. I never have, and hopefully never will. I state my argument, I am willing to be persuaded, and I am willing to listen and grant the valid points you and others made, but basically telling me to shut up in so many words has always been a bad idea.
If I’m wrong I apologize, but why else are you so impassioned about something you repeatedly say is nothing new? You misstated what I said and I dared to reply and restate my argument? Yes, I got more than a little snippy when you essentially told me to shut up because you knew everything. There are other people out there than you and I.
Now this really is my last comment on the subject, so fire away. If anyone has a question I’ll try and answer it, but I’ve made my point as clearly as I can, and if I haven’t done a laundry list of the new technologies drawbacks it is only because I think they are as inconsequential as the drawbacks of any new technology or concept.
Gutenberg’s press was subject to breaking down too. I’ve had cable or satellite since the 60’s and it still can’t stay on the air reliably when it rains. My car doesn’t like to start on cold mornings, the keypad on my remote fails to function no matter how gently I use it, and the plumbing, as any homeowner knows, is about as reliable as your brother in law. But I’m not willing to discard indoor plumbing because it isn’t perfect.
I’m not discarding books either. I love them too much — in fact my Calvinist Scot blood tells me that is a deadly sin in and of itself. So be it.
But if we are going to argue these things let us do it on a higher level and equal footing. I’m sure you know many things I don’t — I read this blog and contribute to it because many of its bloggers do know things I don’t. But don’t expect me to retreat into my corner and whimper because you were so devastating in your argument. Persuade me with your logic and hopefully a bit of humor. Argue passionately, but not hatefully.
And sorry as I am to say it, I have made a living with words one way or another since I was first in print at seventeen. I have more than a fair idea of how to manipulate them.
And frankly, I bite.
November 20th, 2013 at 7:34 am
Wow. David, you’ve made your case eloquently enough. I was just trying to point out your case appears to me to be awfully one-sided and rosy. You sprinkle in too many accusations of me–I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, or to take a stand for or against, or to stand in front of any technological trains. The examples you used against me were only to show that I ride the same trains from time to time. You keep ascribing motivations to me that aren’t there, so any real discussion gets lost in the accusations.
My objection isn’t to e-books or their presence or their availability or any aspect of them. I’m sorry but I did find your piece one-sided–that was my only point and while you acknowledge that in your responses, you take umbrage that I’ve pointed that out. I didn’t think I was being anti- anything other than a unilateral viewpoint.
Shouldn’t have said anything. Some folks are sensitive. E-books are the greatest, no matter what. Long may they rule. Regardless, I’m still buying the Matt Helm mass market reprints from Titan as they come out.
November 20th, 2013 at 11:58 am
I would have to concede that, having lived without it for an early portion of my life, I no longer cannot do without indoor plumbing.
November 20th, 2013 at 12:13 pm
My son still delights in finding friendly trees. Perhaps it’s slightly kinder to our septic system. I grew up with it and am happy to keep it, no matter the damage I may cause to the system itself.
November 20th, 2013 at 11:53 pm
How I wish ebooks had been around when I was a young Marine trying to cram enough books to read during a four week deployment into what little room was left in my seabag…