Stein v. Magritte

I feel that before delving into this post, I must make an admission: I change my mind quickly and frequently (a woman’s prerogative, is it not?). I’m not talking about life’s most important decisions, it's more akin to that last minute panic when the waiter comes and you suddenly find yourself once again scouring the menu, the words seeming to blur together as a single thought races across your mind: “Oh my God, what if what I THINK I want to order is, IN FACT, the wrong dish for me?”. The perennial victim of ‘food envy’, I tend to change my mind almost as soon as I think I’ve come to a firm decision. One day I wanted to go to school in California—the day I found out UCLA has a Wetzel’s Pretzels on campus—the next I was packed up and shipping up to Boston. At first I was convinced I would be studying abroad in Paris. No, Rome. No, Amsterdam. Maybe London. Then Venice? Oh, and when Venice wasn’t enough, I moved on to Dublin. I didn’t eat cheese or fish for years. Now if you pitched me the idea of a cheese encrusted fish dish, I’d be the first to sample despite my predilection for painful heartburn at the ripe ole’ age of 21.

Given this history of flip-flopping, I should shy away from absolute statements. But a life without absolute statements? What kind of life would that be? Which brings me to my latest not-so-unchanging attitude towards eReaders, eBooks, or what I affectionately thought of as eBlasphemy, or eTechnologyistryingtoruinmylife. I started NYU’s Summer Publishing Program making bold statements about my love of holding that paperback in my hand. I needed to turn pages, make notes, dog-ear chapters and pass them to friends. When considering the future of my reading experience, I couldn’t help but think of my waterlogged copy of Redwall, which I gracefully dropped into a bath in fifth grade. Would a Kindle survive such loving albeit abusive treatment? (Yes, I see the apparent contradiction in those terms. It’s almost like the books are stuck in an abusive relationship with me, which I suppose is not entirely untrue…) I digress. I declared my love for the print version of the written word, and vowed to never use a Kindle or other iDevil’splaythings. Hours later I ate my words as I stared agog at dazzling images of the ipad, the Nook, the Kindle and (taaahh-daahhh!) the futuristic digital paper. “Digital Paper!” I texted my friends immediately following the lecture, “they are making DIGITAL PAPER! THE FUTURE IS NOW!” Needless to say, I not only drank the Kool-aid, I was passing it around.

What makes a book? What makes the experience of reading a paper book, holding it in my hand, that makes me hiss like a protective goose at the mention of a digital replacement? This is where my friends Gertrude Stein and Renee Magritte enter the ring. Surrealist Magritte painted a pipe, then turned around and told us “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe). And I suppose he is right, it’s a painting of a pipe. He got me on that one, that tricky devil. While this may not seem the most provocative statement, its application to the eReader can be. Yes, you can read the book on it, but the ipad is not a book. The Kindle is not a book. The Nook, while you may slip it into a hardcase will not survive a dip into my bath as did my intrepid copy of Redwall. No matter how many “book-like” features these products have, they will never be that book I read as a young girl, tucked in late at night, using clip on book light for no other reason than I could read with the covers pulled over my head like a cave. And just when I’m about to side with Magritte, to pledge my undying love for print, Gertrude gets her word in. That nosy bitch.

A no-nonsense ex-pat, Gertrude Stein is infamous for her bold absolute, (See! They’re not so bad, are they?) “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”. No matter how I may stomp my feet on the ground and sulk, I have to see that she’s got a point. A book will always be a book. Do I really love a book for it’s physical properties? Although I feel like a sullen teenager when I admit this, No. No, I love it for the words. I love it for the crazy instant connection to another person, another world. For the beauty of a well-placed word, for the thought I never conceived of that enters my brain and becomes my own. I read for the author who keeps me up till four, till I get to that part that makes me grin and gasp and frantically kick my bare feet, wrapped in blankets and often sweaty from a long late night of devouring a book whole. And a book, not matter the form, will always be a book.

So who got it right, Gertrude or Magritte? I may never be sure. All I know is that we all win, don’t we?