Comments on: Quick Note: Amazing Luddite protest against ebooks

By: Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:08:12 +0000

Book burnings will be a thing of the past. I guess.

By: Steve Jordan

Steve Jordan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:42:59 +0000

Being that dumb, neither group would’ve taken him…

By: Erin

Erin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:28:36 +0000

And yet, I love this sentence about alternative career options: “Had I been told from youth that my literary destination would be some 7 inch plastic gizmo containing my texts shuffling alongside thousands of other “texts” I would have spit in the face of such a profession and become instead a hit man or a rabbi.”

By: Mia Amato

Mia Amato — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:46:36 +0000

Well, that settles it: I am now going as an eBook supporter for Halloween:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/OmniLit/201616810161

The gown is green, of course: all the more to reveal the hideous truth that environmentalism is a tool of the devil!

Mia

By: Robin

Robin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:35:11 +0000

“And its endgame is the disappearance of not just books but of all things human.”

Apparently there were not very many humans on planet earth before the creation of the printing press. And also by that logic I assume Jesus was a monkey?

Besides, I thought it was the MP3 player causing the death of orchestras that was going to be the DEATH OF HUMANITY!

Or wait, didn’t we stop being human with the invention of the automobile?

By: Danny Bloom

Danny Bloom — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:11:15 +0000

And please note: although Teleread credited me above for the link, in fact, I first read the news about this appalling oped piece in NEWSWEEK, in a blog note by Weston Kosova there, staff reporter at Newsweek, who blogged on this Kaufman “scream”, also noting the irony, and also noting that Alan probably lacks a sense of irony on all this at the moment. I think he just got carried away, and remember, Kaufman is the son of Holocaust survivors who grew up in a rather dysfunctional family and while this does not excuse his crazy rant about ebooks, it does help explain his personality. Forgive him, he did not know what he was doing. He meant well, but it came across very very pathetic and poorly worded. But all credit must go to Weston Kosova at Newsweek for being the first to unearth this appalling rant. I just picked it up from Newsweek and left some good comments there too.

By: Septimus Severus

Septimus Severus — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:37:50 +0000

The essay is published in the Evergreen Review. At the bottom of the webpage discussing the history of the magazine there is a single sentence that provides perfect commentary:

The original Evergreen Review ceased publication in 1973, but the magazine was revived in 1998 in an online edition edited by founder Barney Rosset and Astrid Rosset.

The Evergreen Review went to "heaven" in 1998.

By: Steve Jordan

Steve Jordan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:28:21 +0000

I think he’s too angry and bitter to notice…

By: Michael Harrington

Michael Harrington — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:34:10 +0000

The irony is truly remarkable. Kaufman can’t possibly miss it.

By: asphalt

asphalt — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:47:29 +0000

think about the out-of-print books from the 50′s. the ones that weren’t quiiiite popular enough to stay in print, or to be re-printed, but may still be useful — or at least ‘fun’.

with no electronic backup files, those books will be cornflakes in another 25 years — if they aren’t already — and likely gone forever.

By: Bill McHale

Bill McHale — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:32:53 +0000

It is ironic that Kaufman should write so much about his fetish for paper books in an electronic article .

Lets be honest, independent book sellers have been in trouble for a long time in this country. Even now, ebooks make up a small enough portion of the book market (as opposed to say for music or news where electronic media really is significant) that I doubt it is responsible for more than a handful of recent book store closings … and then only as the straw that broke the camel’s back. Why are independent bookstores in trouble? Maybe Amazon? Maybe the economy? Maybe the many other forms of media that the internet has enabled?

I also find it ironic that Kaufman, quotes Farenheit 451 in defense of paper books. In the novel, as the book lovers near the end of the book demonstrate, it is not the medium that is important, but what the medium contains. The book lovers memorize the book and then destroy it. They preserve the book in their minds to ensure its survival. The paper matters far less than what is written on them.

Ultimately, Kaufman has come to view the medium (The paper book) as the end all and be all of what books are about. He would be laughed at if he expressed similar opinions about bound books versus scrolls… indeed, perhaps he should be laughed at here as well.

By: Eric Rosenfield

Eric Rosenfield — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:25:57 +0000

Yeah, ignore the cranks. You can’t fight the future.

By: Greg M.

Greg M. — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:37:51 +0000

It seems like, with a quick search at Amazon, that his books are mostly out of print anyway.

The very fact that he has a blog for writing seems to undercut his gripes. He isn’t even a consistent anti-technologist. Now James Ellroy, the crime writer, at least does it right: he doesn’t own a cell phone or computer, he doesn’t watch TV or go the movies, and writes all his books long hand because he cant type. But I can buy some of James Ellroy’s novels as ebooks, so I’m guessing he isn’t pitching a hissy about how bad ebooks are, unlike Kaufman.

The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book.

Nitpick: shouldn’t that be das Buch? And his other analogies are about as good as his German.

By: Mags

Mags — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:06:41 +0000

Oh dear. He even Godwin’ed.

By: Steve Jordan

Steve Jordan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:45:47 +0000

I plugged the same article into a MobileRead forum for discussion. The comments are already fairly lively. I can only guess Kaufman is afraid of his written legacy somehow disappearing into the ether if it is no longer ink in a volume of paper. A sad conclusion to be sure. Even sadder is his outright condemnation of all things electronic, clearly the icon he holds up as the demon Progress.