The ‘romantic notion of a book…
With the advent of eReaders and eBooks, the ultimate demise of traditional books has been predicted by geeks and publishing honchos. Lower cost for consumers and producers is a major factor. Storage is touted as another benefit. Libraries and readers can have thousands of “books” at the touch of a finger. Housing and dusting not required.I hope they’re wrong.
Stop Sopa
Publishing is now afflicted with a variety of systems entirely inimical to books and the welfare of readers. Rick Santelli may have started the Tea Party with a viral rant though you might be forgiven for expecting much less of this one. It won’t be televised and won’t alter the political landscape but, for what it’s worth though here is one for the road!
#OccupyDartmouth is perhaps the true Vox Clamantis in Deserto to which we should all listen. #OccupyDartmouth is about to go into its seventh week and everything about it has an air of genteel, if deliberately dilapidated, civility. The signs on the grass are polite and their Tweets are sparse and give no account of their daily experience or routine.
Not only are we falling prey to these idiot devices, an apt (no pun intended) description I came across in an article last week, but we are subjecting our kids to them as well.
If writing becomes nothing but a vehicle for making money and publishing is found wanting in its ability to make that money then publishing becomes a circular firing squad and the community dies. If on the other hand judgment is exercised at all levels and content and meaning come before market and money then we will live in a richer world once again.
Independent thinking, independent understanding, original thought, and personal new horizons paradoxically may well be receding like a final outgoing tide maybe never to return. Or have we reached the tipping point here and further critical thought will encourage a serious backlash against what in the end will have been a colossal distraction? Time to reboot?
The call of #occupyWallStreet is infectious and irresistible, as has been, and is, the message of the #ArabSpring, the #indignados, the #acampados, the #tentcities
It is unfortunate that art is often considered okay for kids to spend time on but as we age we are supposed to pursue more serious occupations.
My desk is a Mnemonic Device in and of itself. But that is lost on those whose idea of a desk is a platform for a computer. Ok, so only I can use it as others merely see this
I was half way through one of two recent Atlantic Monthly articles by the interesting Jonathan Knee when I realized I wasn’t getting the message. Jeff Jarvis’ blog piece on BuzzMachine had led me there.
Life is a puzzlement and like the King, I could sing (if I had the looks and voice of Yul Brynner!) There are times I almost think/I am not sure of what I absolutely know.
Fixit time, like the rain doesn’t seem to go away. Ellen Sousa’s magnum opus The Green Garden is about to go to the printer but we are waiting on William Cullina for his promised introduction and, talking of the Fixit of all Fixits he is busy fixing the last trimmings for a new garden at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden.
Spring and autumn, Spring List and Fall List, Publishers have two seasons not four. Summer and winter are, in a way, seasonal interludes between the other two. Yes books are published every month but the vast majority fall into these two periods.
Brief digital discomfiture with designers and editors under pressure can make one nostalgic for the days of Wraps and Inserts, for those salad days when paste-ups were cumbersome piles of paper hiding that long extinct being The Paste-up Artist
Moving parts is one thing but bricks and mortar are another. Two bookshops are closing in Harvard Square including the once amazing Curious George Store. If it wasn’t true before there must be as many bookshops in Brattleboro, Vermont as in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Green Garden and its cover: Grace won over Green. It is going to be a classic look. I liked the original but perhaps more for the conceit than the result so all’s well, author’s happy, one less moving part to worry about.
Publishing has a thousand moving parts and far more than the day moveable type was invented (1040 AD by Bi Sheng in China) which makes it difficult at times to keep one’s eye on the Big Picture.