On those days when there is nothing remarkable to discuss about the weather, people sometimes ask me how I write my columns. At the risk of dispelling the mysterious wonder of my literary method, I am now going to reveal my secret formula for the first time in print. Here are the seven easy steps, illustrated with a hypothetical column topic.
Step 1: Come up with a premise: Technophobe dishes on e-readers.
Step 2: Coin a clever title pun, and studiously avoid running a Google search so as not to learn how many other clever people have coined it already.
Step 3: Open with a quaintly obscure film reference: I suspect that few people saw the charming 1987 film “84 Charing Cross Road,” and that even fewer liked it. Based on a true story, the film dramatizes the two-decade relationship between an American woman who loves to read and the British bookseller who sends her scarce books from across the pond. The story begins in 1949 with Anne Bancroft sending the want-list of titles she can’t find in New York City to Anthony Hopkins, who works for one of the many used and rare book dealers on Charing Cross Road in London.
Over the next 20 years, he supplies her with books, usually inexpensive copies of the classics. But month after month, as these two book lovers exchange letters, they become pen pals, sharing views on literature, politics and popular culture, and sharing their lives. It is a warm story of friendship, made possible in an era when finding out-of-print books was not so easy. Of course, today, Bancroft could have avoided all that fuss and bother of human contact and just uploaded all this public domain lit onto her Kindle.
Step 4: Make concessions to your critics: No doubt Kindle converts are tired of hearing Luddites bemoan the premature end of books. I know I cannot win this debate. The world has changed, and there are few logical arguments to be made against the ingenious technology of e-readers. They are easily portable and cause no eye strain. Users can highlight passages, type in notes and even look up words in an e-dictionary. Recent books are available for access at a considerable discount, many older titles cost only 99 cents, and works in the public domain are free. Compared to the expense — not to mention the weight — of a personal library, the e-reader will break neither the budget nor the back. That is why Kindlites (or Nookers, or iPadians) boast of being able to carry up to 1,400 books with them onto an airplane.
Step 5: Switch from conciliation to irony: 1,400 books? How long is that flight?
Step 6: Unleash the satire: Like every other must-have gadget, the makers of e-readers will release new-and-improved versions ad infinitum. Do you miss the feel of books? Soon your Kindle will be available in a dust jacket and will smell like vintage paper. Wish you could impress house guests with what you’ve read? Future iPads will project a hologram bookshelf onto your living room walls showcasing your literary playlist. Unhappy with a book’s ending? Soon you can automatically tweet the author to complain. Is the author dead? No worry — the ninth Generation Nook will have a Ouija App. Is the gadget too pricey? Wal-Mart will soon release its Wal-E-Reader (complete with binocular eyes) for $29.98. No time for reading? The Kindle Matrix will debut just in time for Christmas 2015, pumping literacy into the base of a skull near you.
Step 7: End philosophically, showing that you have read a lot: Thomas Paine once said, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.” When we have to save up to buy books, when we have to hunt them in out-of-the-way places, when there is a chance we will have to wait long for what we seek, reading becomes more precious, and books more treasured. The Oxford student in “The Canterbury Tales” went without food to buy his cherished volumes. Will an instantaneous 99-cent download be so esteemed? Or will books just become one more text box competing for our distracted attention?
I will admit that much of the case for physical books is emotional. Can an author (or a dear friend) write a warm inscription in a Kindle? Can the marginal jottings of a previous Nook owner amuse or challenge us? How can iPad readers chart their progress through a thick volume without a bookmark slowly advancing toward the rear cover? Will the phrase “First Edition” lose its magic? Will shelves full of obsolete Kindles ever trump the visual aesthetic of a row of worn books, comfortably nestled together, none in need of recharging? Can the sliding of hundreds of thumbs across hundreds of screens ever duplicate the inspiring soft rustle of countless Bible pages being turned during a sermon?
“I cannot live without books,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. And I, for one, don’t plan to.
