New Yorker

Dec 3 2011

Modernism, Liberalism & Tolkien

I posted this on my Tumblr blog but thought it worth reposting here as I find it fascinating.

Alan Jacobs is great blogger. He may not want to embrace that label but his Tumblr blog is full of interesting links, thought-provoking analysis and great quotes.  A great example is his post in response to Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker piece on high fantasy for young adults.

What really struck me was his conclusion on Tolkien and modern liberalism:

Modern liberalism likes to think that all our problems are epistemological: we are afflicted by never knowing with sufficient clarity what we ought to do. Our fictions tend to reflect that assumption. Tolkien, not being a modern liberal, thought it more interesting to explore situations when people know what they need to know but may lack the strength of will to act on that knowledge. He might say, and with some justification, that contemporary literary fiction is not simplistic in regard to such problems but oblivious to them.

What say you? True? Fair?

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Views • 1 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sep 4 2009

NYTBR on The Anthologist

I am not a big poetry person so I was a little worried about reading The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker.  The NYTBR review makes me want to read it however:

And let’s face it, stories involving poets tend to be hokey or, worse, excruciatingly literary. Maybe the spires of libraries rise darkly in the gloaming; maybe bookish amour unfolds amid bosomy fields laden with the fleeting fruits of summer. At best, the author follows the course Stephen King takes in “The Tommyknockers” and skims over his protagonist’s occupation in order to concentrate on the perilous effects of buried alien spacecraft.

Yet somehow Nicholson Baker has written a novel about poetry that’s actually about poetry — and that is also startlingly perceptive and ardent, both as a work of fiction and as a representation of the kind of thinking that poetry readers do.

I also like this quote about The New Yorker and poetry:

The New Yorker is a terrific magazine, but placing a poem there is like finding a hundred bucks in an old coat pocket: it’s great, but you can’t build your world around it. You build your world around what’s there for you on a daily basis, which for poets, famous or otherwise, means literary journals.

So The Anthologist is moved up a few notched on the towering TBR pile!

By Kevin Holtsberry • News • 0 • Tags: , ,

Aug 4 2009

I get it, you hate Amazon & the Kindle. So what?

Let me state right up front that I am biased on this subject.  I own a Kindle (1) and enjoy it. But on the other hand I don’t think I am such a Kindle partisan that I can’t see reasonable criticisms or recognize hype.  There are plenty of both in discussions of the Kindle and ebooks in general.

But I found Nicholson Baker‘s New Yorker essay incredibly tiresome and rather disingenuous.  Baker spends 6,000 words saying what is rather obvious to anyone who has looked into the Kindle: if you read books for their typogrpahy, illustrations or other visual elements – books as physical objects with all that entails – then the Kindle (like most ebook readers) is not for you.  Oh, and lots of books are not available yet.

Clearly, for Baker reading is a very physical and visual activity.  He wants certain things from a book and the Kindle doesn’t give him what he wants.  Fair enough.  I still love a well designed book and certainly find Kindle’s handling of illustrations problematic.

But Baker completely ignores why the vast majority (at least I suspect) of Kindle owners enjoy using it.  Here are a couple of issue the Baker basically misses:

  1. A library on the go.  If you frequently travel and love to read Kindle is a lifesaver.  You can have a library of books while only carrying something the size of a trade paperback.  So many critics seem to miss this very basic point.  Can they not see how handy it is to have a huge selection of books plus magazines and newspapers at your fingertips without lugging them all around with you?  This is not a question of art but one of practicality.
  2. Instant gratification.  Baker mentions this in passing but doesn’t explore it.  It is incredibly convenient to decide you want to read a book and start doing so 60 seconds later.  Why is it so hard to see how awesome this is? Finish the first book in a series and want to start the next?  With Kindle you can do so without even getting up.  It was the Amazon store and the Whispernet that really gave the Kindle the buzz.  Again, not aesthetics but convenience.
  3. Sometimes it is about the words.  The fundamental problem Baker has with the Kindle is that books are clearly more than mere words to him.  He derisively describes Kindle books as “a grouping of words in front of your eyes for your private use with the aid of an electronic display device approved by Amazon.”  Sure, but sometimes that is all I need.  In fiction all I often need is the story.  The way the author creates a world out of words.  I don’t need illustrations or a book cover or a certain typography, font, type of paper, etc.  I just want to read the story.  The same is true of non-fiction.  I just want the information – the argument, or the history, or the descriptions. I have found reading the Kindle a great way to get what I want from certain books without the need for a physical copy to lug around or to take up more space in my house. It is really that simple.

It doesn’t bother me that Baker doesn’t like the Kindle.  And I think he makes a few valid points – even if they are hardly insightful or unique.  What I found rather silly is the verbose and snide way he goes about making these arguments.

Yes, we get it.  Some people hate Amazon.  Yes, the iPhone is superior to every other device. Yes, Kindle is propietary. Yes, the Kindle doesn’t handle graphics very well.  Yes, the Kindle isn’t a work of art.  Yes, yes, yes.  I get it.

My response? So what? That is not why I have one.  I fail to see why it was necessary to pen 6,000 words to rehash this rather tired cultural argument.

I don’t know if the Kindle will revolutionize books but I am happy just to take advantage of the convenience it provides.

Perhaps that is just too mundane for Baker but it works for me.

By Kevin Holtsberry • Views • 1 • Tags: , , , , ,