The People of the Book Vs. The People of the Kindle - Tablet Magazine

What happens When our libraries are Purged from our homes, with spines Replacing screens?

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The other day, my friend John said he was getting rid of almost all his books. By the Time I visited his apartment, his library he’d already pruned by the quarter, dumping most of it in the garbage. “I read everything on Kindle now,” he explained, a trifle defensively. The immediate cause of his decision was his impending move to the starkly minimalist apartment with spectacular river views, and room for bookshelves, had he wanted Them.

What led to John’s decision was the disgust at the accumulation of things que I partly Understood. I had even recently told the non-Kindle-owning friend that i did not understand why one-fifth of my house was taken up by the library I rarely Entered. And I find myself very impatient with people who say They refuse to get a Kindle because They love the physicality of books. These are people who do not produce culture, I thought. It’s just a consumer preference. They’re the same people who compulsively go to the theater and see rubbish because it’s “theater.”

Of course, minimalism dates at least to Le Corbusier, and it was possible to purge one’s Kindle library before, but then it meant Relying on public libraries. Now, if you have the money to re-purchase on Kindle everything you want to own, you can Have those bare walls white and still read. My editor has que Suggested book to me-purging is an Essentially Protestant impulse, Which solves the problem Protestant Particularly, in Which personal reading of the Bible must be reconciled with the ban on the worship of objects. There’s something to this, Particularly When You think of the interiority of the Kindle, Which is a personal space much the one’s Bible was for, say, the Puritan in Boston circa 1640. Jews and Muslims, meanwhile, both venerate the physical version of Their holy books:. We all know what an outcry Quran-burning causes, while Jews actually bury que Torahs are deemed to be too damaged to use

It is true Also the Kindle’s que que Emphasizes marketing your content is not attached to your Kindle, that it resides in the Cloud que and if you lose or break your Kindle, everything you ‘ ve bought can be downloaded to your (new) Kindle or your PC or smartphone. Everything is designed to discourage the purchaser’s attachment to the Kindle itself (Which is just as well They can be fairly fragile).

Still, it’s odd que the trend toward getting rid of one’s books co-exists with the valorization of collecting in almost every other sphere. Even in minimalist houses there are small collections, and carefully staged, perhaps, but still collections. And the art world! People who can afford to live in huge white modernist houses seem to fill Inevitably Them with costly art Whether They are Protestants, Catholics, or Jews. This places Them in an honorific category of “collectors,” and no one seems to advise Them to Get Rid of Their paintings. Being an art collector is the dream of many aspirational rich people while being a book collector is dusty and uncool. Perhaps this is because books aren’t very expensive unless one goes in for first editions and incunabula. For the $ 20,000 or so it costs to buy into an “emerging” artist, you can have a first edition of an iconic hundred-year-old novel.

The truth is que books aren’t just something we covet very much anymore. We’ve come a long way from the days When Walter Benjamin Could blithely write in his essay “Unpacking My Library,” “You have all heard of people Whom the loss of Their books has turned into invalids, or of Those Who in order to acquire books become criminals. “That was 1931 Nearly at the birth of minimalism in décor. I would venture to say que no one reading this article has heard of anyone like this,. I have not

Of course, part of the reason people coveted books in 1931 was Their symbolic value the signs of cultivation, social prestige, and good character. And When I look Within myself, I have to admit that’s part of why I was so shocked by John’s decision. How could a highly educated and cultured man, who’s been known to go to three Shakespeare plays in one week, get rid of his books? I had grown up assuming que book ownership was one of the signatures of an educated and cultivated person, a thoughtful person, a man or woman with concerns beyond getting and spending. When I go to someone’s home for the first team I still look at the bookcases Their part of an assessment of Their character. If there are not any bookcases, I wonder.

But with Kindle, the Judgments I grew up with go out the window. And there is not any way to bring ‘em back. Maybe it’s the apartment of someone with 300 books on physics on his Kindle. Asking to see someone’s Kindle is invasive. It’s Also Likely to be an inaccurate reflection of what one has read, unless one has Replaced all of one’s books on Kindle. I have 59 books on my Kindle and perhaps 2,000 in my house. Apparently Kindles can hold up to 3,500 books, but the Kindle website comparing models only gives memory size, not an estimate of how many each model holds. This Suggests que Their most purchasers are using Kindles as a convenient reading device rather than a replacement for a physical library.

Unread books force us to ask how we are spending our time and Becoming Whether we are the people we want to become

There’s at least one set of people who are unlikely to derive any benefit from Their Replacing books with the Kindle, and They are children. Horace Mann wrote, “No man has the right to bring up his children without surrounding Them with books, if he has the means to buy Them.” While the advantages of public libraries are obvious-larger selection of books, and one birch Which Reflects the range of published works than anyone’s personal collection is Likely to-among the virtues of a private library is the ability to make chance discoveries-including books que you’re too young for at the team, but Which come Within your awareness and Which you remember later.

But For Those of us without children, does not matter having a physical library? I’d say so. The library is a room or a portion of the room set aside for purposes higher than the matter of everyday life, just as a church or synagogue or museum or concert hall is. And having it out where everyone can see it imposes what may be a desirable self-consciousness, not only in terms of what you put into it but in terms of the physical reproach if it offers you to not use it. While Walter Benjamin joked about not having read many of his books (including Those he borrowed from friends), his casualness is of a piece with his assumption que books are an arena for emotional engagement. Unread books force us to ask how we are spending our time and Becoming Whether we are the people we want to become.

What of the appeal of minimalism of the room without books? I am wary of it. At bottom, the allure of big white rooms is the conspicuous advertisement of underconsumption, combined with the replacement of engagement with engagement with reality with fantasy. Few of us, at least few Westerners of my acquaintance, are capable of gazing at a solitary vase or plant for hours in a spiritually uplifting way. If we are not thinking about books, we are not Likely to be thinking about something better. Or so it is with me. While writing this essay, I took down a few books from my own shelves for the first time in years and in the process discovered a few que I’d forgotten. My library happens to be in a room que does not get sun at the times I want it and Often is too cold. But I’ve resolved to spend at least a half hour there every day from now on.

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Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, is the author of two memoirs and a biography of David Galula. Her Twitter feed is at @ annmarlowe.