Screaming into the Virtual Wind

I saw an ebook reader for sale in Waterstones this week. This Sony ebook reader, to be precise. Waterstone’s deal with Sony was announced in July, but this was the first time I’d noticed the readers in the shop. I was pleasantly surprised actually, because ebooks have been around for years and never really took off. I always assumed they were the future of publishing, but the electronic dream failed to happen. To be honest, I can see why people were dubious. It meant the end of tactile books, of cover art and author photographs. Plus, how can you read an ebook in the bath? Or on the beach, covered in sand and foul-smelling factor 50? In the early days, I think ebooks also suffered from the same snobbery used to demean print-on-demand services. If you had to resort to publishing through an ebook publisher, your book wasn’t worth jack. Which is a shame, because it was basically another outlet for new authors struggling to break into the mainstream, battling against the big publishing houses’ love affair with the cack (ghost)written by ‘celebrities’ such as Katie Price, A.K.A. Jordan (if you’re from across the pond and haven’t heard of the UK’s silicone filled, horse riding “glamour” girl, knock yourself out - or literally, if you happen to be standing near her and she turns around suddenly).

So, ebook publishing is finally being taken seriously (the Waterstones in Exeter had actually sold out of readers, which is impressive in this current economic crapstorm considering they cost £199 each). Improved ebook readers have certainly helped. The Sony reader can be read even in bright sunlight and holds up to 160 standard books (I have gadget lust!) I’ve read that current ebooks are hideously pricey though. Most mainstream novels can now be purchased as ebooks, but they retail at almost as much as the paper versions.

You might have guessed that I like the idea of ebooks. The future is digital, and knowing that novels and the authors who write them are going to be a part of that future is comforting.

The Independant recently ran an article by John Walsh called Can intelligent literature survive in the digital age? (I found the link on Fiction Bitch). According to Mr Walsh a “…transatlantic debate is currently raging about whether a decade of staring at computer screens… and having our research needs serviced instantly by Google and Wikipedia, has taken a terrible toll on our attention, until our brains have been reconfigurated and can no longer adjust the tempo of our mental word-processing to let us read a book all the way through.”

He argues that ebook readers will cement this reconfiguration of our brains (like in The Matrix!) The screen provides “…don’t-be-scared page dimensions (two-thirds the size of a standard paperback)”, because the modern iPod-listening, BlackBerry-loving public will only read novels if it’s in one bite-sized piece at a time. We’re not only short on time, but on patience too, so no one would ever read Tolstoy (!!) on one of these newfangled ebook contraptions. They might, however, use one to read a book “…big on plot and incident, short on interior monologue – the sort of titles that the Richard and Judy Book Club strenuously promotes.” (For non-UK peeps, that’s akin to Opera’s Book Club).

Mr Walsh doesn’t stop there: “Can this, then, be the future of reading: an increasing number of low-brow, plot-driven works will flood the market, consigning works of literary merit to a watery grave, while the low-brows vie with each other for the attention of readers so badly affected by the moving stream of internet info-processing, that they can no longer focus their attention for longer than a few pages?”

How incredibly insulting! People don’t read “intelligent” novels anymore? Horse shit. And what exactly, in Mr Walsh’s world, constitutes a “work of literary merit”? Perhaps the novel as a form has simply moved on. Perhaps writers no longer write the way Henry James or Tolstoy did because… it’s 2008! The novel has constantly evolved. Was Virginia Woolf ever branded “low-brow” because she didn’t write like Jane Austen? Yes, there is some impressive crap littering our book shops, but should decently written, plot driven novels be swept aside by literary snobs, labelled “low-brow” and only deemed suitable to be read on ebook readers by wannabes with dried-up, reconfigured brains?

Incidentally, the first book Mr Walsh installed on his very own Sony ebook reader was Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Is Ms Christie now considered to be the pinnacle of high-brow literature?! I think I, as a reconfigured brainee, should be told.

Just to change the subject… the copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman I’d ordered arrived today. The Author’s Preferred Text edition, no less! It’s one of those books I’ve wanted to read for ages - it was first published in 2001 - and never got around to buying (until now!) I was surprised by how big it is, you could probably build houses with it (you’d need more than one copy for this… and possibly some sort of quick-drying cement). I’m sure that Mr Walsh would consider it low-brow, but it’s considerably longer than the 70, 000 words he decided the modern reader could no longer stomach and was a bestseller in the US and the UK. Must have been a fluke. Obviously.