Do e-books free us from distractions? Responding to Tim Parks

This morning Shelf Awareness serves up this quote of the day, and it stops me.  I think I might just move on, but I can't.

Because Parks' assertion that reading the e-book frees us from "everything extraneous and distracting" ... "to focus on the pleasure of the words themselves" in no way jibes with my experience.  Yes, I have downloaded dozens of books onto my iPad.  Sadly, I've left many of them stranded.  Unable to scribble in the margins, dog-ear the pages, underline emphatically—unable, in other words, to engage in a physical way with the text—I grew distracted, disinterested, bored.  Yes, Michael Ondaatje will always keep me reading.  And so will the work of my friend Kelly Simmons, and the words of Julie Otsuka, Leah Hager Cohen, A.S. King, Timothy Schaffert, Paula Fox, and Justin Torres—though I wish I owned all of that work on paper.  But here on my iPad—stranded, unfinished—sit Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, Andrew Winer's The Marriage Artist, Margaret Drabble's complete short stories, and many other tales. These are, most likely, extremely good books, and yet, I find myself incapable of focusing on them in their e-format.  I need to interact—physically—with the texts before me.  I can't do that, in the ways I'd like to do that, with a screen.

I am also, as a footnote, intrigued by Tim Parks' final lines, when he speaks of moving on from illustrated children's books.  With the rise of the graphic novel and the increasing insertion of images back into teen books (and I suspect we'll see that illustration encroachment continue), I wonder if we have really moved away from illustrated texts.  I wonder, too, if we should. Art is not just for juveniles, after all.

Here is the quote at length, as excerpted by Shelf Awareness.

"The e-book, by eliminating all variations in the appearance and weight of the material object we hold in our hand and by discouraging anything but our focus on where we are in the sequence of words (the page once read disappears, the page to come has yet to appear) would seem to bring us closer than the paper book to the essence of the literary experience. Certainly it offers a more austere, direct engagement with the words appearing before us and disappearing behind us than the traditional paper book offers, giving no fetishistic gratification as we cover our walls with famous names. It is as if one had been freed from everything extraneous and distracting surrounding the text to focus on the pleasure of the words themselves. In this sense the passage from paper to e-book is not unlike the moment when we passed from illustrated children's books to the adult version of the page that is only text. This is a medium for grown-ups."

--Tim Parks in his post headlined "E-books Can't Burn" at the New York Review of Books blog

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The Grief of Others/Leah Hager Cohen: Reflections

There are so many ways to tell a story.  That much is obvious, so fatefully true.  Authors have to decide—over and again, they decide—whose story they are writing, how much to keep on the page, where knowing must cede to suggesting, how time will be cordoned off and bent, how perfectly or imperfectly the tale will end, how many hearts will break.

Yesterday afternoon and early this morning I have been reading Leah Hager Cohen's new novel The Grief of Others (Riverhead).  I have been thinking about structure, detail, illusion, and the lived life that allows this kind of realist fiction to be written.  I have felt, as I always feel when reading any of Cohen's books, a great affinity for this author who puts so much of her heart and seeing into the books she writes.

Grief is jammed with sensual beauty, long, tumbling passages of spectacularly specific insight into not just the who of Cohen's characters—a husband and wife, their two children, a young man, a young woman, and a big loving dog—but the what of their lives.  Ricky, the wife and mother, is a "quant"—a financial engineer.  Husband John, employed by a college, is a stagecrafter, the sort of man who had seduced his wife by giving her access to the magic of theater: "how you'd mix perlite (the tiny white balls in potting soil) with paint in order to bring texture to an interior surface; how you'd spray a little paint on the artificial flora, in order to pull it into the world of the show; how, for a big backdrop, you'd spray fixative on charcoal, then tint it and build up a few layers of paint to give it the depth and richness of an oil painting." Both lose their third child just fifty-seven hours after he is born.

A prologue and five discrete book parts take us into this year of grief, and the trust and distrust that entombs it.  Will Ricky and John's marriage (already unstable, despite much that is beautiful) survive?  What will happen to the ten-year-old daughter, a thoughtful truant, who keeps reenacting the funeral that never was?  What about Paul, the thirteen year old son, mired in middle school bullying?  And what about Jess, John's daughter from another relationship, who shows up with worries all her own?

Cohen builds these characters—their relationships, their failures, their needs—attentively, gracefully, with great knowing.  There's not even the hint of the fraudulent about this fiction.  This is no straightforward tale, but one of deep dives and time bends, and I found it deeply moving.

You will also, I am sure, find Leah Hager Cohen's blog a work of beauty.  I go there from time to time when I am in search of a quiet dwelling place—of words from a deeply thoughtful author who writes not just about her books and their journeys into the world, but about real life as a daughter, girlfriend, and mom.

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Two Heads Together: Announcing a Brand New Book Blog

Earlier this week, during my Facebook travels, I took note of a bit of news—a long-time correspondent-reviewer-friend (Ed) was starting a blog with his beloved (Susan).  Need to check that out, I said to myself, and in this blessed afternoon of quiet (I've been reading Leah Hager Cohen's The Grief of Others and hope to report on that tomorrow), I turned the computer on to see what Ed and Susan have been up to.

Their blog is called Two Heads Together.  I quote its purpose here: "...we're two avid readers who just happen to be librarians.  We deal with books all day long and then go home to read.  Geeks?  Maybe.  Lovers of books?  Definitely.  We've decided to begin this blog because we see so many wonderful books become orphans either because of lack of support from publishers or lack of word of mouth."

It's a lovely idea, I thought—to dedicate a blog to authors and books that might not be getting the Grand Tour treatment.  I was so very moved, then, when I realized that the blog's first post was dedicated to a suite of books by yours truly, and includes a truly kind review of You Are My Only.

Reading this blog post brought to tears to my eyes; it also revived for me a memory:  I was in Atlantic City, a one-night getaway with my husband, when an email came into Blackberry.  It was from a man named Ed, who had been trying valiantly to get a copy of one of my earlier books for review.  I am half blind at this point in my life and typed back what I'm sure was an error-rich message: Send your address; I'll make sure that you get one.  It probably read like this:  tbey sooe xxarrdss! I'll ,sru pfru u git 2.

Ed's been a dear friend in the book journey life ever since.  And Susan, I feel I know you and have always valued you.  Even if you did purportedly steal a copy of Dangerous Neighbors from Ed's own generous hands.

Thank you, both.

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