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| goodreads.com |
A few months back a friend
of mine—a very tech savvy person who goes to a technical college—received an
e-reader for his birthday. He was pretty excited to be in possession of a new gadget.
He told me about all the great books he was going to buy, and how awesome it
would be because it would motivate him to read more. And because he would be
reading more he would be able to converse with me, his token literary friend,
on all things concerning the written word. “Besides,” he remarked with a grin,
“who wants to, like, read a book anyway?”
Although I harangued him
with arguments about the ills of technology (“human attention spans are now
rivaled by a goldfish’s, thanks to Youtube”), I have to concede that my friend
brought up an interesting point. What exactly is the difference between the
experiences of reading a paperback and reading on an e-reader?
Of course, there are obvious differences. E-readers are easier to travel with, you can use them to look up words, you can read them in the dark, etc. I myself have a kindle and have found it useful in many ways. But, what about reading on an e-reader for the sake of reading on an e-reader? Is there something missing when you read on a digital device that is present when you read a book?
Of course, there are obvious differences. E-readers are easier to travel with, you can use them to look up words, you can read them in the dark, etc. I myself have a kindle and have found it useful in many ways. But, what about reading on an e-reader for the sake of reading on an e-reader? Is there something missing when you read on a digital device that is present when you read a book?
There’s one book that I’ve
been reading during the past few weeks that I think illustrates the difference
perfectly—Mark Z. Danielewski’s innovative, experimental novel House of Leaves. Unfortunately for those
of you who have never read the book, giving a synopsis of it is next to
impossible. What can be said about the novel is that it’s largely concerned
with a family that moves into a house which defies the laws of physics—to their
horror, they discover that the inside is bigger than the outside by a quarter
of an inch. This discrepancy alone threatens the lives of the family members as
they struggle to keep from plunging into madness.
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| battyward.blogspot.com |
Along with this main
storyline, there are various fractured narratives weaving throughout the novel,
which are interrupted by referential and autobiographical footnotes. Different
types of typography and colorations are employed in order to represent new
mediums and narratives. At certain points Danielweski elects to type one word
on each page or making a page so text-heavy, I was forced to rotate the book
every which way in order to read lines that were printed upside down. One
chapter has bits of text written as inverted mirror images. Sometimes I could
read thirty pages in five minutes and sometimes it took me five minutes to read
only two. In short, the book isn’t merely read. It is experienced. It’s felt on a psychological and even a physiological
level. The way in which the text is read allows the reader to enter the same
disorientation and claustrophobia the characters feel from living in the house.
We feel as if we become a part of the story.
The point, as obvious and
simple as it may seem, is that books have a physical presence in our lives that
cannot go overlooked. When we see books with their tattered, yellow pages and
wrinkled spines, we don’t merely treat them as relics of the past, but as an
invitation to a new world which we are allowed to visit at any time. When
people see the cover of a book that they love, they are immediately transported
back to the experience of reading that book, whether it was under a tree or
under their covers. Danielewski reminds us that it’s not just possible to
derive meaning from books. It’s also possible to ascribe it as well.
By Brady Detwiler
