Turning the page

Interview, Sept, 1998 by Brendan Lemon

AM: Yes, exactly.

BL: In the same way, looking at these electronic books, I am starting to visualize all the other things that could be done with them besides reading Dante.

AM: That's because you already have a history for these things. New technologies don't simply appear somewhere, with no one having thought of them before. I mentioned Borges's prescience about the electronic book, but the idea of a book that will collect all sorts of other books and give us our own private, mini-portable library is very ancient. For example, in some medieval libraries, a poem and a few letters and a book of history and something on philosophy and a theological treatise might all be put together and bound into one book. That's the beginning of this new idea - you don't collect texts in terms of any logical order; you just want to keep this stuff together for reasons of your own. You create your own book. Now we have another, more effective technology doing that by downloading the text, but essentially it's the same idea.

BL: We've been speaking mostly about the new digital books, but I'm also excited by the convenience of consulting books on CD-ROM, which I do now quite a lot.

AM: The CD-ROM encyclopedia is fantastic. I love the fact that I can look up De Gaulle and get his voice at the same time.

BL: I'm envious of children learning to read with the new book formats. There are so many practical advantages. For example, Proust, in his famous essay on his childhood reading, mentions having to turn and blow out his candle at night, so his parents wouldn't catch him reading after lights-out. The Prousts of the future will curl up in their beds with an electronic book and will have an advantage: Instead of extinguishing their candles, all they will have to do is press a button, because electronic books can he back-lit.

AM: That's the sort of thing that happens with my son. He's sixteen years old, and the whole electronic world is so familiar that he no longer really thinks about it. The fear of not having a computer in his room, of not having a PlayStation, of not being able to do his research on a CD-ROM, is inconceivable to him. So even though it may take him a moment to latch onto a digital book, a younger kid, who starts reading that way at the age of four or five, will do exactly what you are saying.

BL: Although I love the feel of cloth- or leather bound books, I am already thinking of all the things I can put in the space where all my books are now. So what might electronic books do to interior design?

AM: It will be a little similar to what happened when the metal and glass of Bauhaus came along. Suddenly you no longer needed a battalion of maids to keep things clean. With books, I suspect there will continue to be those who prefer the luxury of having space for a library.

BL: Even if I can put all my books onto one CD-ROM, I wonder if I'll ever get rid of the cloth volumes near my bed.

AM: This may sound a little artsy-fartsy, but I do think the reader communes with the physical presence of books. I have a theory that the books you pile by your bed you end up reading by osmosis - that there is some exchange that happens after several weeks go by. Somehow you have read the books and you can put them away, start a new pile.