Friday, December 2, 2011
millionsmillions: Adam Levin’s The Instructions is a big ol’ book, heavy with paste and the cumulative heft of its 1000 pages. And Mark O’Connell had to read it in hard cover. Lucky for us, lugging it around gave Mark the impetus to write “The E-Reader of Sand: The Kindle and the Inner Conflict Between Consumer And Book Lover.” Levin’s novel is an extreme example, but it got me thinking about the unassuageable forces that the book as an object, as a cultural artifact, is up against. The history of what we call progress is a catalogue of ways in which the desire for convenience has trumped almost every other concern. This post is part of our “Best of 2011” series, which highlights exceptional original pieces that have been published on The Millions this year. Can someone summarize this essay for me? Reading all those words is inconvenient.

millionsmillions:

Adam Levin’s The Instructions is a big ol’ book, heavy with paste and the cumulative heft of its 1000 pages. And Mark O’Connell had to read it in hard cover. Lucky for us, lugging it around gave Mark the impetus to write “The E-Reader of Sand: The Kindle and the Inner Conflict Between Consumer And Book Lover.”

Levin’s novel is an extreme example, but it got me thinking about the unassuageable forces that the book as an object, as a cultural artifact, is up against. The history of what we call progress is a catalogue of ways in which the desire for convenience has trumped almost every other concern.

This post is part of our “Best of 2011” series, which highlights exceptional original pieces that have been published on The Millions this year.

Can someone summarize this essay for me? Reading all those words is inconvenient.

Posted at 12:34 PM 7 notes Reblogged from millionsmillions