What concerns me about the coming literary apocalypse that everybody now expects—the full or partial elimination of paper books in favor of digital alternatives—is not chiefly the books themselves but the assortments in which they find themselves. Specifically, I am concerned about what’s going to happen to my own library. For public and academic libraries, however vital, I think I’ll leave the fretting to the experts and hope that a deal can be struck between Google’s armada of scanners and well-meaning librarians. My fear is for the eclectic, personal collections that we bookish people assemble over the course of our lives: our memory theaters.
It is time to defend, tooth and nail, the spirit of our precious bookshelves. I think of the work of historian Frances Yates (which now sits on my shelf), who chronicled the the great “memory theaters” of ancient orators and Renaissance humanists—spaces they would conjure in their minds in order to help them memorize all the precious accoutrements of civilized knowledge. In the age of the book, our memory theaters have become externalized; we have entrusted them to our bookshelves. As I look over my own shelf, I see my life pass before my eyes. The memories grafted onto each volume become stirred and awakened, presenting themselves to ready access. Such libraries are particular to their possessors, the manifest remainder from years of thinking. Without the bookshelf’s landscape to turn to, I don’t know how I would think or write.
Believe me, I’ve tried alternatives. I’ve attempted in several ways to digitize my memory theater, through painstaking and searchable notes on my computer, through blogs, and through online outlets like Google Books and Amazon previews. We will have to find new forms. Technologies are changing, rendering my memory theater obsolete, and I can feel it slipping out of my control. So far, the digital alternatives to a bookshelf fail to serve the necessary needs—the freedom and the eclecticism that make possible an authentic intellectual life. As far as I’m concerned, the Amazon Kindle is demonic: an interface to what amounts to a proprietary library managed by a distant and profit-motivated company that wants to own and monetize my theater. It, and products like it, are an utterly noxious ruse that must be staunchly resisted—not simply because they are electronic but because they are owned. The space of thinking must not be an essentially corporate, homogenous one.
There is, I can recognize, a bit of a tragic character to this dependence on my shelf. Socrates, in fact, warned against trading memory for writing and books, the devotees of which “are not wise, but only appear wise.” What would happen, after all, if my library were destroyed in a fire? Or, for that matter, if all our digital memory-banks were wiped away in a cataclysmic solar storm, as the 2012 enthusiasts warn may await us? For all this worrying, I’m actually quite hopeful about the capacity of human creativity to come up with the means to outsmart homogeneity and all other enemies of imagination. In the meantime, let us be mindful of the little miracles that we have in our bookshelves, the theaters whose inevitable changing will—for some, drastically—change us.
Comments
12 responses to “Don’t Take Away My Memory Theater”
Well put. But how, then, do you feel about iTunes? Do you also eschew the downloading of music as opposed to owning an actual CD? Isn’t the CD just a reproduction of the original? Can’t the same be said about books? I feel that books that are public domain should be offered free of charge, but the monetizing of more recent books doesn’t necessarily have to be evil as long as profits are shared with the proper copyright owners.
If we’re arguing aesthetics, there’s something to be said about the clutter saving kindle. Of course, you lose the ability to show off your big brains to friends who visit your place when you’ve got no books on the shelves. Though they hopefully already know that you’ve read some things. And hopefully you’re not one of those people who intentionally place certain titles in view hoping that people will be impressed by how well-read you are.
I do hate the idea that we’re moving forward to creating a fully digitized world, though. If we’ve learned anything from Sci-Fi movies and stories, it’s that whenever we give too much over to machines we’re asking for trouble.
Thanks for the comment! Again, I’m not opposed to digitizing per se. I’m really excited about the space-saving and searchability of digital libraries. What I’m concerned about is (a) ownership and (b) eclecticism.
iTunes is a tricky example. When you burn a CD to iTunes, the files are still yours. They’re still on your computer, and you can share them freely. But things you buy from the iTunes Store can only be shared so many times. They’re on your computer, but they’re limited. That’s arguably fair too, though it certainly raises some questions. Now, the direction iTunes is going in (as I saw on the news today) is toward the “cloud.” You’ll no longer have the songs on your computer. They’ll be stored remotely, and you can access them and listen to them whenever you want (if you purchase them in some way) over the Internet. Again, potentially fine, but your stuff becomes dependent in a much more serious way on the stability of that cloud and of the continuity of the service that provides it.
It’s not just books and music. Cloud file storage is becoming more and more the norm. All the big companies are investing massively in it. The question of how and to what extent we own our cultural content will have to be address in new ways. And, in turn, our ability to mix and match, to creatively manipulate to and pass on to our grandkids, then becomes very uncertain.
Ah, now I see. So if things continue to go the way of the cloud, we won’t really “own” anything. In thinking about it, it makes me worry about what they might be scheming. On the surface it seems like a great thing – no space issues to worry about with our hard drives and ipods! We then agree to have our library moved to this cloud and all is well until one day they state that we’ll have to pay a subscription fee in order to access that cloud. But that’s our library! And if we refuse to pay? What happens then? Suddenly this cloud seems very ominous.
Exactly. And, not to get too apocalyptic, but: what if free exchange of information suddenly becomes not in the interests of the companies we’ve entrusted it to.
It’s likely that “free” is already a word they’d rather not hear, I think.
Nathan,
This is a WONDERFUL article, both well written and most importantly, a message that needs to be heard. I suggest this be published widly so that we “bookish types” aren’t left with empty shelves and erased memories!
A slow silent social earthquake may have rocked our inner being when recorded music came in. Here in Mexico live music is still common but is gradually being replaced by recorded “big name” bands. Sad. Today when a good live band plays people dance, When the band takes a break and plays loud famous music, dancers stop.
I have been a back-of-the-book indexer for 17 years. When I started, I used actual index cards. As you might imagine, there is much discussion about becoming “information architects” as the physical book disappears. I am in that liminal space where if I could, I would find a new profession where I am not required to discard the idea of the book/page proofs, etc. Unfortunately, I am old, and as I read yesterday on Susie Bright’s blog, where she lamented the end of publishing as we’ve known it, and her work diminishing by 80 percent this year, the idea of “What Color is Your Parachute?” is daunting. As it is, I am trying to migrate from the business book rut I found myself in, and marketing (online, tweeting, etc.) for the first time in a decade. Still buying books, and carving out time to be offline and reading.
I love reading you, and Killing the Buddha. I wish Rachel M. would mention it when she gives Jeff Sharlet’s bio. It is always “The Family” and Harpers. How about da blog. PS., I bought my father “The Family” for Christmas. Hope he enjoys it.
Sarah, thanks so much for the encouraging note! After all these comments, I’m expanding this essay into something much more substantial. It has been a lot of fun. Thanks for your kind words.
Technology will never replace the True Value of actually Holding a Book and Reading
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[…] last year, I published the sketch of an essay here called “Don’t Take Away My Memory Theater.” The feedback that came in the comments from you readers was enough to encourage me to try […]
See the expanded essay published at Open Letters Monthly.