Re that last post: I heard them talking about e-books on the radio last weekend and I was trying to imagine what it would be like. I was thinking, well, it might not be too bad, trying not to poo-poo it automatically and left it at that.
Then earlier today I connected it up with what I was writing at the end of the last post. If all books were e-books I wouldn't have an object to be all smarmy and sentimental over. I can't imagine cherishing the particular computer or cell phone that I happened to read an e-book on (unbidden a picture of a person trying to cuddle a computer comes into my mind). There would be nothing tangible to cherish. There's just the air, or the phone lines, or however it works.... But maybe you'd say with a regular book what we cherish is not the object itself, but the world the writer has conjured up, with our cooperation, or that we cherish the writer, and the vision he has shown us, the truths he has helped us see. All that may be true, and there's nothing tangible there, either.
But. I'm a person, I have a body, I move it around in space. I not only think and imagine things, I
also see, touch, hear, taste and smell them. And, actually, the seeing, touching etc. informs what I think. I like my tangible objects. I like my books. I can hold Jane Austen's Persuasion in my hand, feeling the cloth of the binding and the smoothness of the page. I can feel connected to Jane for some mysterious reason, with that book in hand. Those are her very words, her very thoughts expressed in words on a page. That I am holding. In my hands. How could anyone improve on that, on books? A compact, portable object, that I can take with me almost anywhere, that's not at all dependent on technology to read. Just my eyes and my brain. I'm thinking I'll rest my case right there.
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