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Alan Kaufman and e-books: ‘Book-burning’ comparison revisited
December 2, 2009 | 10:56 am
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By Steven Lyle Jordan
Alan Kaufman has stood up to defend himself. He is the writer who recently savaged e-books as akin to book-burning and Nazism—and who was savaged in turn by the members of the TeleRead and MobileRead communities.
In a statement presented in the same MobileRead thread that discussed his original commentary, Kaufman essentially reiterates his original position, his apparent hatred of technology, his low opinion of modern times (and people), and his belief that transferring our heritage to electronics from paper is part of our inexorable socio-cultural slide directly into Hell.
On the development of e-books, he states:
Many have called this a Gutenberg moment, a global paradigm shift akin to that which occurred with the invention of the printing press and the subsequent transfer of knowledge to the average man.
But this is not a Gutenberg moment: it is a Nuremberg moment–a linguistic and cultural mass murder of the human mind; an economic Krystallnacht against the book, book culture, literacy and human freedom. We are witness to the ghettoization and deportation of our language and literature to the internet,where it will surely perish.
Kaufman’s response was met with the same derision and ridicule by most of MobileRead’s members as his original comments.
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Comments:
Everyone who argues for the preservation of language and literature should avoid the lazy lapses of Godwin’s Law:
In addition to Mr. Kaufman’s hysterical style — which irks me as chalk scratching a blackboard — I disagree with his oversimplified thesis: “Books good, Internet bad.”
To me, ebooks and the Internet are helping to save, promote, expand our understanding of, and popularize the world’s best authors and books.
Kaufman, Alan
See also:
Gorman, Michael
Keen, Andrew
Using e-readers and putting books on the Internet is JUST like sending millions of human beings to a degrading and painful death. Wow! Why didn’t I realize that before! Shame on you, Teleread!
(I hope it was obvious I was kidding – my snark tag got deleted! )
@Katherine: I think we got it!
Sometimes I wonder what Roger Mifflin, the little bookseller from Christopher Morley’s novels Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop would think of the world 90 years later.
It seems quaint to read now how attached he was to classic literature and disdainful of “rubbish” like Nick Carter or Edgar Rice Burroughs. What might he think of Harry Potter? Probably not even worth printing.
But what might he think of e-books? On the one hand, he truly loved books. But on the other, as pointed out above, he didn’t love books indiscriminately but for the knowledge in them. How would he feel to know that knowledge was now so broadly accessible to many millions of people?
(Of course, he’d probably then be heartbroken to learn how few people actually read anymore.)
The real problem is that he just doesn’t know how to write very well. There are a few genuine issues with eBooks and the changes that they herald for publishing, though that’s the price of progress. Instead of writing a reasoned article and demonstrating the ability to think logically, he foams at the mouth with a tirade barely worthy of a ten-year-old.
To be honest, I’m at a loss as to why anyone should care about the opinions of an indescribably minor author who appears to have difficulty putting his thoughts in order. The whole thing smacks of a publicity stunt.
Charles; a publicity stunt presupposes a certain degree of media savvy and self-awareness, neither of which is evident in Mr Kaufman’s diatribe. A simpler explanation might be to assume he actually does believe what he says, which merely requires him to be divorced from the common reality we live in. And that just happens to be a common malady of so-called public figures today.
More colloquially: dude’s clueless, let’s just nod and move on…
Again, Kaufmann ignores the irony of railing against ebooks by posting his diatribes on the internet. A man of true convictions would publish is ideas as an essay in a printed magazine or newspaper. Also, I highly recommend going his books on Amazon and clicking I’d like to read this on Kindle.
When young and without any money to speak of, I stole books I could not afford. It was a risk well worth it, and in retrospect I am not ashamed I did so, well not as much as I should really be to accord with popular prejudice.
I dreamt as a teenager of having my own little library, now reaching my middle fifties I have accumulated quite a few. Back in the early 80′s my companions and I tried to get literature up electronically, we dreamt and breathed this ambition, anticipated the problems and I am proud top say in a crude way outlined a good few of the solutions now in place.
Why?
Because books should not have to be stolen in order to be read and reread, studied and loved for their ideas.
Kaufman’s foolishness is not all that displaced — imagine works DRMed important works designed to be unreadable and existing in no other form — that is cultural book-burning and vandalism.
Imagine a electro-magnetic event that wipes out the world’s electronics, an act of nature rather than war, a strong sun flare, a parsing impulse from an far-way event. That needs some thought, but is not beyond remedy.
But the book-burning already has gone one under Kaufman’s nose — all those works of brilliance out of print and for the vast majority of potential readers permanently out of reach. The internet is pulling these from the commercial bonfires — saving knowledge for the masses and in that light Kaufman stands in the shadows throwing books into the inferno.
Oh, I see. Putting on books on the internet, thus making it easier to read them, is just like burning them, thus making it harder to read them. And literature will perish on the internet, because nobody uses language there.
Wait, what?
This guy is a *writer*? Really?
Seen on YouTube
Burning a copy of “Matches” by Alan Kaufman. This book was burned to protest Mr. Kaufman’s comparison of the rise of ebooks to the holocaust. To make such a comparison is to belittle the horror that was the holocaust.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BchOg94sZ8
I went to the article. It’s a bit heavy but it IS worth getting more than peeved if people buy a download of a book and it gets removed from a device because a company says so. I can see where he’s coming from. I haven’t seen anyone use e-readers though. The only people I know who have them don’t use them barely at all. We’re physical beings. When you have a near-infinite amount to choose from, like everything on Gutenberg.org, it’s almost impossible to pick without jumping around like crazy and never finishing anything. When you have a long bus/train ride and three books to pick from it’s more likely you’ll stick with one and finish it.
I used to have way less money and while all my peers were well into compact discs and even burning compilations I was still only able to make tapes. It is pretty darn annoying to get sneered at because, basically, your are deemed “poor”. And not just being considered poor but the idea that you’re looked down on for “being poor” in our oh-so-enlightened society.
When one is able to have these things, nice WORKING computers and the money to fix or replace them it’s not that hard to forget the people who still *have* to go to the library to use what everyone assumes as so common.
I think that’s really what’s at the heart of what he’s talking about. I don’t really agree with it all but basically: don’t get too cozy- it could all burn up!