The Power of Books, or Why I Don’t Own a Kindle

I don’t own a Kindle. I don’t want a Kindle. I don’t believe they’re the future of books, and I have no use for one. Before I explain why, though, let me concede that I do understand that they have a few perfectly valid uses.

Recently, while talking about the enormous novel Invisible Man in English III AP, the discussion turned to Ellison’s use of a single word: “opportunity.” While the students and I thumbed through our books, furiously searching for occurrences of the word, searching for a pattern in the text, a girl at the back who had been reading the book on her Kindle raised a hand and said, “I’ve got them all right here. Kindle lets me search the text.” I was dumbfounded. For the purposes of scholarly interaction with a novel, an e-reader could act as an immediately accessible concordance to any text. What a boon!

Similarly, I have an acquaintance who has spent the last few years of her life laboring over her doctoral thesis, and she squeezes in a few minutes of work anywhere and any time she can. The challenging part of that arrangement, of course, is having the thousands of pages of reference materials that she might need at any given moment readily available for her perusal. She explained to me that she has loaded all of those documents into her Kindle, and it is her personal reference library for working when she’s not at home. This seems like a fantastic idea.

Of course, the paragraphs above are about the kinds of books used for research and academia. For many people, though, the “book vs. digital” debate isn’t about research at all; it’s about leisure reading. They wonder whether the Kindle will replace their trusty, well-thumbed copies of their favorite novels.  A relatively small percentage of the books I read are the subjects of academic debate. They’re mostly just for my personal enjoyment. In this context, I just love books…real books. I carry them around, and people ask me what I’m reading. Many interesting conversations have begun this way. I write in the margins, and years later I can see what I was thinking and how I reacted to the events I read. I lend them to friends, and the physical passage of a book from one hand to another carries far more weight than a simple recommendation to download this or that file. I browse book stores for first editions and signed copies of my favorite novels, and my personal library grows constantly. My collection has not only monetary value; it is also a record of ideas with which I’ve interacted, roads I have traveled in my mind. One day, my collection will be passed on to another generation of readers.

Let me relate a couple of anecdotes that illustrate my point.

On the bookshelf at my house, there’s a hardcover copy of a novel called The Monarch of Deadman Bay by Roger Caras. It’s a good book, but it’s not great. It’s the life story of a Kodiak bear. It’s on my shelf today because, for as long as I can remember, it’s always been in my house. When I was a child, there were a few books in our house, but my parents didn’t keep a personal library or anything. The Monarch of Deadman Bay, though, was one of the relatively few “adult” books we had in the house. My father had read it. I don’t know where he got it, and he and I never talked about it, but when I was old enough to handle it (about 13 years, as I recall), I read and enjoyed the book. When I moved out of my parents’ house, I asked them if I could take it with me. I don’t know if they understood why; in fact, I’m quite sure that they had both forgotten they even owned it. Now, it stands on my bookshelf, the only volume in my library that both my father and I have read. I don’t mean that we both read books with the same title; we both read THIS book. My copy of The Monarch of Deadman Bay is a story my father and I have both experienced. We’ve both held those very pages between our fingers and followed the adventures of that Kodiak bear. One day, when my father is gone, The Monarch of Deadman Bay will be one of the clearest symbols of the connection he and I share. It just wouldn’t be the same if he and I had read the same electronic file on a Kindle.

As I said earlier, I collect signed editions of novels I love. Yes, they’re relatively few and far between. Yes, the search for a reasonably priced copy can be a rather long one. None of this deters me, though. Each time I open a signed copy of one of my favorite novels, I know that I’m handling a volume that has also been handled by its creator. My connection to the author and the text takes on a deeper level of meaning. In a few truly fantastic moments, I have had the privilege of meeting some amazing authors and chatting with them while they signed my copies of their books for me. To date, I’ve met Tim O’Brien, Sherman Alexie, Sandra Cisneros, Karl Marlantes, Gary Paulsen, and Tea Obreht. Each of them has signed a book (or two, if I’m lucky) for me. Talking to these authors about their work in person is a kind of interaction, scholarship, and good will unlike any other in the literary world, and it’s all predicated on the idea of book signings. Without books, I seriously doubt authors would hold events where they met with readers to click their Kindles.

Finally, I love having books in my home. Those of you who’ve visited me know that I have two six-foot bookshelves in my living room and an entire wall of books in my foyer that reaches up to the ceiling. To sit on my sofa is to be surrounded by hundreds of books. Guests in my house often get up and pore over the bookshelves, looking for familiar titles or wondering what I’ve been reading. When they find a title they know, we often share wonderful conversations about books we’ve both read. When they see something of interest, I’m happy to lend out a copy so we can talk about it later. As Micki’s kids become increasingly aware of the books on my shelves, I want them to see that books–and by association, knowledge, art, and culture–have value and hold an important place in my heart, my mind, and my home. A collection of files on an e-reader just can’t do that.

So go ahead and use your Kindle, if you like, but please for the love of God, stop asking me why I don’t have one and explaining how it’s just so much more convenient than my “old-fashioned” books. My love of books transcends a love of words and stories. I love the books themselves. They have a value for me that electronic text never can. If you want to talk about this, come on over to my living room, and let’s discuss it amongst the books.

Goodbye, J.D. Salinger

On January 27, J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher In The Rye, died at 91 years of age.

Salinger didn't care for media attention, and this is one of only a small handful of pictures of him publicly available.

When I spoke to my colleagues about Salinger’s death, I noticed a marked divide in reactions. Generally, the men were shocked and saddened (except NewGuy, who’s too young to know any beter), while the women were basically unmoved. I guess I never realized before how specifically Catcher speaks to young men.

I first read the novel when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, and I’ve probably read it half-a-dozen times since then. My first encounter with Catcher changed my life. I’m not resorting to melodrama, here; I’m dead serious. Holden Caulfield was the first character I ever read in whom I saw reflections of myself. I think almost all young men share a similar experience. After all, who among us didn’t feel at some point in our teenage years that the world misunderstood us completely, adults were phoneys, and the course our parents expected us to travel wasn’t leading in a direction we found satisfying? Honestly, Catcher was the first novel I ever read and thought “Man, Mom and Dad would be pissed if they knew I was reading this.” It was subversive. In that moment, I realized that books have the power to change the way we think, change the way we see the world, and in fact change the world. I changed from a kid who read books to a reader. It was a watershed.

Now, sixteen years after I first met Holden, I’m a high school English teacher. Books, especially those that would piss off people who think they’re authority figures (politicians, pastors, traditionalists, hard-core conservatives, hard-core liberals, upper-class corporate slaves, etc.), are one of the cornerstones of my existence. My love of books has made me a thinking person, and although I can’t teach most of the edgy texts I really like in a public high school, I’m finding ways every day to show my students that books literally overflow with ideas if readers are willing to accept them…and ideas change the world.

So. Even though some of my students will never read Catcher In The Rye, at least a few of them will owe their lifelong love of books and ideas and maybe even subversive ideas to me, and, by association to J.D. Salinger. For that, I thank him.

Author John Updike Dead At 76

American author John Updike died on the morning of January 27. As soon as I read the headlines announcing his death, my mind immediately transported me to moments in my life when I encountered Updike’s work. As a freshman in college, I was assigned his short story A&P for an entry-level literature course. I distinctly recall sitting in a dimly-lit back corner of the university library and being totally absorbed in the world of the story, cheering for Sammy as he took a stand against his overbearing boss, only to grieve at its futility moments later. The honesty of the characters’ emotions and the depth to which Updike understands human nature made such a distinct impression on me that my reading of A&P stands out in my mind as one of the defining moments of literary life.

Three years and two colleges farther down my road, summer hung heavily upon southern California, and we students hadn’t much to do between classes. We sat inside the air-conditioned Student Union building, mostly, and wiled away the hours in idle chat. Among the most popular topics of these chats was baseball. As I encouraged everyone within earshot to read Malamud’s The Natural, a friend sauntered into the room, recently liberated from a class in Spanish or psychology or some other undergraduate drudgery, and butted into my monologue. “If you want to read good baseball writing,” he told me, “go find Updike’s Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” A few days later, once again enshrined in a university library, while reading Updike’s account of Ted Williams’ career and final game with the Red Sox, I was struck with awe at the grandeur of The Splendid Splinter. Although I’d never seen Williams play and didn’t consider myself a fan, the power of Updike’s words transported me to a time and place that enveloped me as truly and completely as my own memories.

After my years in university libraries finally paid dividends, I found myself in the lucky position of choosing pieces of literature to teach in a 10th-grade English classroom. As I considered characterization, metaphor, and themes to which teenagers could truly relate, I settled upon Updike’s poem Ex-Basketball Player for inclusion in my curriculum. Every year, I watch as students slowly nod their heads, beginning to grasp the metaphor of Pearl Avenue as Flick Webb’s life, the contrast between five “idiot pumps” on each side of the gas station and the five graceful athletes Flick once called his teammates, Flick’s disillusionment as he stares into the tiny, silent bleachers filled with dimestore candies. Even to the teenaged mind, Updike is good.

Those who are familiar with Updike’s work have undoubtedly noticed that I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of his accomplishments, and I confess that I have no intentions of doing so. These three pieces are all I have read of Updike’s voluminous contribution to American letters, but they are enough to convince me that we have lost a master today.