Back Story: Talkin' Digital

Don't worry, my literary friends; books are not going to disappear from the face of the earth. They will just go the way of the vinyl record and become a curiosity for collectors of archaic paraphernalia.

I've had an eBook reader for over a year. I've probably read a couple dozen books on it, including some big fat ones like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Although, on an eBook reader it makes no difference; 100 pages or a thousand, they are all the same size when you hold them in your hand.

From time to time I ponder the fate of the printed book, usually when one of my Facebook friends laments the digital state of literature, this as they sit in front of a glowing screen, pushing unseen i's and o's into a digital storage device. They love the feel of a book. And, as one who used to publish a small poetry zine, I fully understand. I embrace the new technology - I like carrying around an entire library in my pocket - but not without reservation.

What got me thinking about books and eBooks again was my old friend Ignatius J. Reilly, protagonist of A Confederacy of Dunces. I recently learned from my Facebook friends that a biography of its author, John Kennedy Toole, had just come out. I wanted to read it immediately. So I looked it up on the Internet and downloaded it for a reasonable price (less than half the hardcover price). Ah, instant gratification!

Around the same time, I learned of the passing of Harry Crews, someone I had always wanted to read, but had somehow neglected. However, none of his novels have been published in eBook format. So I ordered the three that the Greene County Public Library had in stock and undertook to read the three hardcover novels and the eBook biography at once. This, of course, highlighted for me some of the differences between books and eBooks.

Since I had only two weeks before the Crews books were due to be returned, I gave heavy preference to them and polished them off and returned them rather quickly. By that time, I was only a few chapters into the biography, Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces by Cory MacLauchlin. But it had been some time since my last reading of Confederacy, and I was beginning to realize that I should probably read it again before I proceeded with the biography. There is a complicated relationship between the protagonist and his mother that seems to be a reflection of the author's real-life story.

Here was the problem: It has been years since I have seen my hardcover edition of Confederacy. My best guess is that it is stored away in a box of books somewhere in my garage. Have you seen my garage? So it was back to the Internet to see if it is out in eBook format - and sure enough it is. So I quickly purchased it and downloaded it. Ah, instant gratification! A note here: Confederacy has been in and out of print since its original publication in 1980. When I wanted to purchase a copy abut 20 years ago, I had to get one from a used book dealer. Now that it's out there in the cloud, it will always be available.

So now I have the novel and the biography of its author stored together, along with the complete works of Mark Twain and Shakespeare, the Bible, Ulysses, Heart of Darkness, Canterbury Tales, and dozens of other great works on a device that is about the size of a comic book. And there is room for plenty more.

Will I ever toss out my old books? Not likely, as I still have about a thousand LP's on a shelf in my bedroom. Do I ever listen to them? Not really, as most of my favorites have been replaced by CDs and then replaced again by MP3s that I listen to on a device that is about the size of my thumb. And when I finally do run across my hardcover edition of A Confederacy of Dunces, I might just read it again for old times sake and then find a place in the house where I can put it on permanent display.