I used to kind of like author Nicholson Baker. I think the first time I encountered his writing was a long essay in The Atlantic (going on memory here) about his quest to preserve huge collections of old newspapers that libraries were rapidly tossing out. As a guy who used to spend hours in the mid-1980s at the Columbia Journalism School’s library reading editorials from dozens of papers around the country just for kicks, I could relate. Apropos of today’s blog post, I seem to remember him complaining ad nauseam about the evils of microfiche. Later, I read and kind of liked his novel A Box of Matches, about a man waking every morning before dawn and lighting a match.
But then, last year, came his absolutely off-the-rails, downright dangerous mis-history of World War II called Human Smoke. The book has been demolished by any number of historians (for example). Suffice it to say that Baker abused the historical record in a bizarre attempt to blame the war on the Allies, even going so far as to argue that the holocaust would not have happened had Hitler’s enemies (!!) been less bellicose.
Today, Baker’s got a long (long, long, long) essay in The New Yorker titled “Kindle and the Future of Reading.” My alternate title for this 6,210 word missed opportunity is: “A history and uses of the Kindle for people who spent the last two years living in a cave.” When I finally finished reading it, I felt a mild sense of relief. At least it wasn’t any kind of poisonous, demented pseudo history (though his insinuation that Kindle 1 only became popular after Oprah’s endorsement is off-base). But it sure was a missed chance to thoughtfully ponder the future of the book for an audience that would be highly interested in the topic.
Instead, and I’m elaborating on some comments I left on the excellent Teleread blog earlier, Baker’s essay is more of a beautifully-written, long-winded, whiny complaint about shortcomings of the Kindle that have been extremely well-aired by now. The Kindle doesn’t do a good job with color illustrations. It doesn’t include the back list of every great writer of the 20th century. Some people don’t like the button layout. Oy. A few tidbits:
The Kindle Store offers “The Cheese Lover’s Cookbook and Guide,” from Simon & Schuster. “The picture of the Ricotta Pancakes with Banana-Pecan Syrup may just inspire you enough to make it the first recipe you want to try,” one happy Amazon reviewer writes. She’s referring to the recipe in the print edition, the description of which is reused in the Kindle Store—there’s no pancake picture in the Kindle version.
[Later] Despite its smoother design, the Kindle 2 is, some say, harder to read than the Kindle 1. “I immediately noticed that the contrast was worse on the K2 than on my K1,” a reviewer named T. Ford wrote. One Kindler, Elizabeth Glass, began an online petition, asking Amazon to fix the contrast. “Like reading a wet newspaper,” according to petition-signer Louise Potter.
[Even more niggling] Three pieces from the July 8, 2009, print edition of the Times—Adam Nagourney on Sarah Palin’s resignation, Alessandra Stanley on Michael Jackson’s funeral, and David Johnston on the civil rights of detainees—were missing from the Kindle edition, or at least I haven’t managed to find them (they’re available free on the Times Web site); the July 9th Kindle issue lacked the print edition’s reporting on interracial college roommates and the infectivity rates of abortion pills.
Baker spills endless verbiage describing Amazon’s Kindle advertising, the box it came in, the capital-raising history of the company that makes the screen technology, quotes from two-year old negative reviews of the Kindle 1, and on and on. It’s just positively weird that 2 years after the Kindle came out, it’s worth publishing in The New Yorker that there are no page numbers or that the black on gray screen isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Blech, blech and triple blech! It was like some kind of narcissistic spoof of a great New Yorker article.
Not to mention, it’s a supremely lost opportunity to consider the new possibilities of ebooks: the formerly invisible public domain works now available, the indexing and note-taking capabilities, the ways that the addition of simple and free web connectivity enhances reading of historical non-fiction, the opportunities for unknown authors to bypass the whole publishing industry and on and on. Too bad.
Previous coverage:
Despite complaints and DRM, Kindle is a good value (6/30/2009)
Reading Infinite Jest on the Kindle versus dead tree pulp (4/17/2009)
The Kindle is for readers, the Kindle is for readers (6/20/2008)
Ignore that cranky Mossberg and his Kindle whine (11/29/2007)
Ignore the static: Kindle is great for reading (11/24/2007)
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