Flexible, Paper-Thin Screens

I’ve been following the development of various e-reader devices and digital edition technology for the past several years. And, despite the significant progress from the relatively simple and limited Kindle (still the best pure book-like reading experience, I’ve seen, with its partially reflective surface) through Apple’s game-changing iPad (with its multifunctional, brilliantly colorful, glowing backlit display), which clearly excels in many other functions, we’re still just in the infancy of e-reader device development.

In only a few more years, the devices and the digital reading experience is likely to be something more like this, I believe. And while it will offer high resolution, brilliant color, unlike today’s computer screens, I think, it will be largely (or wholly) reflective, rather than back-lit, requiring much less battery power and creating an easier experience on the eyes. We’ll see, and most likely sooner rather than later.

Unmaking the Myth of Print ... from Gutenberg On

I just stumbled across Robert Pinsky’s recent New York Times Book Review piece on The Book in the Renaissance by Andrew Pettegree (read it here). It’s an interesting look at Pettegree’s demythologizing of the early years of print (now so revered as the modern iteration wheezes on in the sick ward) in the aftermath of Gutenberg’s revolutionary invention.

Turns out, despite his trailblazing ingenuity, Gutenberg “died bankrupt and disappointed.” Either he hadn’t quite figured out how to monetize his “hi-tech” creation (remember, everything is relative) or it simply took a few decades for the market to catch up to his idea. Apparently, piracy was problem right from the start, too.

And, in further evidence that human nature doesn’t change much, even over half a millennium, the first successful runs on the early printing presses were not what we would later come to know as the classics, but rather Renaissance pulp (albeit religious) and vanity (certificates of papal indulgences).

I doubt I have the time to dedicate to wading through Pettegree’s lauded scholarship, but I did enjoy Pinsky’s enticing summary ... and you might, too.

Retype It

I’ve been reading Jann Wenner’s “oral biography” of Hunter S. Thompson’s life, Gonzo, which Little, Brown put out in 2007. While not drawing much on the Rolling Stone founder’s intimate experience of the Hurricane Hunter from their many years working together (perhaps he couldn’t remember many details given the … ahh … chemistry between the two), the book does contain some interesting anecdotes and reflections from people who knew the Gonzo journalist – going all the way back to his youthful days haunting Louisville’s Cherokee Park.

One of the remembrances that particularly struck me was from Porter Bibb (gotta love these old Southern names), a teenage friend of Thompson’s who recalled how the aspiring writer would methodically retype prose selections from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. While Bibb thought this was silly and pretentious, Thompson reasoned that it was a good way to get a sense of how it felt to write those sublime words.

Now that’s not something that I ever considered doing as a writer, but it makes sense to me. It seems like an effective exercise to get a feel for the particular nuance and flow of a master’s writing – from the writer’s perspective, as opposed to the reader’s. There is something to be said for the forced deceleration of writing out each word, rather than just reading it – seeing those words reveal themselves on the page as a result of the action of your fingers. It’s analogous to a musician tirelessly practicing the riffs of a favorite record – and, in so doing, honing skills and absorbing a style that, ultimately, are transmuted into something more personal and original.

And H.S.T. was certainly an original – in both prose and personality. That said, you can readily see the influences of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his writing – particularly the more (ironically) lucid writing of his heyday.

10 Books

Per the common Facebook note and the typical instructions: Ten books you've read that will always stick with you. First 10 you can recall in no more than 10 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it. Here are mine (in no particular order):

1. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
2. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
3. The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 
4. The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso) by Dante Alighieri
5. Time and the Art of Living by Robert Grudin
6. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
7. Animal Farm by George Orwell
8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. Memories, Dreams and Reflections by Carl Jung
10. Candide by Voltaire

It strikes me that there are no female authors on here (hmmm ...), but for an 11th, I'd probably add Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. For the record, I'm also hard-pressed to not include Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera; The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kozinski; and The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham. I resist opening the Shakespeare can of worms.