Dear Nicholson Baker—Egad!
By Robert Nagle
Nicholson Baker is one of my fave authors. The Mezzanine is one of my all time favorite works (along with U & I). He’s also written a lot of articles about the lore of libraries and card catalogs. He’s a professed Luddite – nothing wrong with that. 
In the current New Yorker issue, he points out the alleged flaws of the Kindle and Sony.
But I get tired of the same old irrelevant criticisms that have nothing to do with ebooks and ebook readers. To wit:
- “No Amazon Kindle version of …. (name fave work). Who cares!
- Inferior presentation of tables/charts/graphics…..Agreed, but that’s a technical problem. It’s because publishers were too lazy and cheap to rethink print books for their ebook editions.
- Screen has a grayish tint. So what!?
Here are the obvious points about ebooks which are totally missed by Nicholson Baker:
- I (and most owners of ebook readers ) still read a majority of books in printed form (especially because many used books cost trivial amounts of money). The reason why “Flaubert’s Parrot” is not available for Kindle is that a print version is still available for 75 cents + shipping. 5-10 years from now when used copies are more scarce (and more expensive), I’m 100% sure that an ebook version of Flaubert’s Parrot will be for sale (priced slightly – or significantly – lower than the used print version).
- Kindle (or Sony, etc) provides a method for you to download public domain titles which were unavailable or extremely hard to locate. I’ve become acquainted with more new authors from the 18th or 19th century because of my ebook reader than as a result of a 4 year college education. All kinds of minor works by well-known authors are ebooks as a result of PG’s scanning.
- Indie authors can publish as ebooks and bypass the middleman. It doesn’t matter if their ebook isn’t listed on Amazon.com as long as it’s listed on smashwords or available through paypal/payloadz. Many new works are never being published as print books at all.
- Free utilities and websites let you convert publicly available journals to a format readable on the ebook. Calibre in particular does lots of magical things; it lets you fetch articles from many well-known journals to read as ebooks).
To summarize: an ebook reader is necessary not to read titles you would have read anyway, but to read titles unavailable by any other means.
A more interesting question is how the e-ink reading experience compares to reading a laptop screen. That’s a debatable question, but in my opinion, the ebook reader still wins.
See also: David Rothman’s piece responding to Baker’s readability criticisms.
July 27th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Reading the article, I’m reminded of the bit from The Matrix wherein the kid explains to Neo that there is no spoon, and that you’re not really bending the spoon but bending yourself.
In the same way, I think a lot of Nicholson Baker’s problems with the Kindle are not with the Kindle qua Kindle, but with himself. He lets the Kindle’s ergonomic glitches distract him from getting caught up in the book. But, as the last paragraph shows, when he’s caught up in the book already the Kindle just “disappears.”
July 27th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I can’t believe the New Yorker allowed 6,000+ words of this dated, tedious tripe into their magazine, sad to say. I used to sort of like Nicholson, particularly his quixotic quest to preserve old newspapers (bet you a coke he has no idea that Google has gone back and scanned all kinds of old newspapers). But he went way, way off the rails with his outrageous “history” of World War II that basically blamed the allies for the war and the the holocaust.
In this particular essay, Nicholson spills endless verbiage on Kindle advertising, the box it comes in, the capital-raising history of the company that makes the screen technology, quotes from two-year old negative reviews of the Kindle 1, and on and on. The history and uses of a Kindle for people living in caves?
It’s just positively weird that 2 years after the Kindle came out, it’s worth publishing in the New Yorker that it doesn’t display color graphics well, there are no page numbers, not every great author’s back list is available and that the black on gray screen isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Blech, blech and triple blech!
Not to mention, a supremely lost opportunity to consider the new possibilities of ebooks: the formerly invisible public domain works now available, the indexing and note-taking capabilities, the ways that the addition of simple and free web connectivity enhances reading of historical non-fiction, the opportunities for unknown authors to bypass the whole publishing industry and on and on.
July 28th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I don’t know how you can dismiss as irrelevant Baker’s point that many books aren’t available for the Kindle. Who cares, you ask? This is a huge source of frustration to many e-book users and would-be users. I also find it interesting how some people are so upset by Baker’s article. He didn’t write it for e-book experts or readers of this website!
July 29th, 2009 at 2:53 am
If given a choice between a print book and ebooks, most people would choose print books (all other things being equal). The examples which Baker used to illustrate lack of ebook availability are easily and cheaply available as print books.
Despite the fact that I think Baker missed the point about several things, he has a knack for identifying trivial details which people care about.
October 30th, 2009 at 5:21 am
In response to Aaron Pressman, I’m glad that the New Yorker continues to allow, indeed encourage, Baker’s 6000+ words. He is a fine writer, even if you disagree with his opinions. He notices the details, the minutiae that colour our lives. Mezzanine, Size of Thoughts, Double Fold – fabulous writing. His New Yorker piece demonstrates his natural curiosity and generosity of spirit. Even with the Kindle, he is enjoying himself by the end.
A luddite? Perhaps, but probably not. Did you not read his words on the iTouch and reading in bed? Thoughtful fellows like Baker will always get a bilious reception from the neophyte blogosphere. I can’t understand it myself – it’s not as if the digerati are under threat from the rise of old tech is it? That’s why Robert Nagle can afford to say “So What?” and “Who cares?”. Well, a few souls out there do seem to care, and good on them for daring to suggest there is more to life than grey on grey.
Personally, I would love to buy an ereader, but not until it can handle all file formats thrown at it.