A reflection on reading and e-books during coronavirus by Writer in Residence Sean Russell.
On March 21, 2020, I tried to buy a book from Broadway Bookshop in Hackney – The Collected Poems of Allen Ginsberg 1947-1997. I felt that if I were to spend some time in isolation the best companion would be Ginsberg, for some reason or other. Lockdown had not yet begun at this point, but some non-essential businesses were forced to close or partially close. Broadway had decided to remain open, except you had to email ahead your order and pay online before picking the book up at the door to the shop. They were also doing book deliveries to those who had to self-isolate. They didn’t have the book in stock, and I would have to isolate without Ginsberg.
To me, and many others, bookshops are essential. As one would go to a pharmacy for paracetamol if one had a headache, one might also want to buy a book to ease the mental strain of living in this so-called new normal in which we find ourselves drifting anxiously through.
However, on March 23 all non-essential businesses, including bookshops had to close. Something had to give, habits would have to change, mine included.
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I would regard myself as a lover of physical books to the depths of my very soul. I like to collect books, some of which I have no intention of ever reading, others I will read 10 times or more. I like the smell of new books, I like the smell of old books – second-hand books bring me some joys that new could never provide. I like books to line the walls and nooks, and pile high on the floors. It is hard to make a ‘messy’ pile of books, it is always beautiful. There is something to finding a new bookshop that feels like walking into your home that I cannot explain. I never sell my books, I never throw them away. As a writer, I do not dream of my words being on screen but on paper in someone’s hands. Are you really a writer unless it’s on paper somewhere? And yet I have read more digital books since lockdown has begun than ever before.
Why? Well immediacy for one, at some point, early in this strange old lockdown, we were faced with long delivery times, sometimes unknown. On top of that I felt some paranoia about taking in items from the unsanitary outside world into my carefully cultivated germ-free chamber. And there is also a lingering and underlying feeling that in general I should be reading less physical books for environmental reasons (an issue with myriad pros and cons I will no doubt return to at a future time).
Has this changed my reading experience? I don’t think so, in some ways it is more pleasurable, you can read with one hand and highlight sections you like which are organised in a neat little list – although I haven’t yet once looked at this list again. If I didn’t have to buy from Amazon, I often think I’d buy all my novels and non-fiction books on my Kindle, although not art books or suchlike, that somehow defeats the point. I move flat a lot, I go abroad from time to time, heaving around a whole library becomes weary, sometimes it’s nice to read a book without acquiring more stuff. Stuff, stuff, all we have is stuff.
Digital book sales were already on the rise before all this, how many people will think like me and, having decided it was safer and easier to read digital during lockdown, continue that after? After all there are many people without the same qualms with Amazon as I, and then you’re faced with cheap, instantly deliverable books.
What future then? This remains to be seen somewhere out on the horizon. Many lovers of the physical book may have decided to try something new during lockdown and opted for ebooks, many of these will continue to buy at least some of their books digitally. Then which books do you buy digitally and which physical and what will that mean? I don’t believe that physical books will ever go away and their share of the market suggests as such, but our relationship to them may well change. I feel that there will be space only for the prestigious books, the beautiful books on my shelves – the rest may be digital; great writing is great writing, regardless of paper.
That is a strange relationship that I had not thought so much about. Does what I write change if on paper or on screen? My own perception is yes although totally inexplicable, some allusion to a tradition. My heroes all produced books, not blogs. To be a REAL writer you gotta BLEED on the page god damn it – so physical, so grounded. But great writers are all a product of their times, not their heroes’. Perhaps seeking to be in physical magazines, newspapers and hardback books is just a part of what Harold Bloom referred to as The Anxiety of Influence (a book I read in physical form these past weeks).
Audiobooks are also introducing new audiences to reading (is listening to an audiobook reading? If so, what is reading?...). Audibly amongst other services offer the same sanitarily instant service e-books offer, but with the added benefit that you can continue cleaning or doing yoga while you listen.
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There was a subtle sadness when I received the email from Broadway Bookshop that they didn’t have the Ginsberg I was after. And here lies something wholly interesting at least to me, and I hope to you – I did not download the book on my kindle. I did not even think of it. I wanted those words, by that man, on paper, in my hands and on my shelf. I wanted to rustle through its pages, I wanted to write witty remarks in pencil that would make no sense to me in a year’s time. I wanted to write obscene odes on the window of the skull. There’s something about a book that connects you to the writer, something inexplicable. Having a collection of Ginsberg in my room felt somehow like having Ginsberg himself there, and that’s a feeling I’m not sure digital could ever reproduce. Draw your own conclusions, I have mine.
How many readers had similar lockdown experiences to mine I cannot say but I imagine that after all of this the habits of book readers will have changed. The independent stores will struggle more than ever before and there will be less on our streets as Amazon’s insidious hands reach inside our homes and minds and tighten its grip. People will feel that Amazon was there for us when we needed it after all… Digital books will continue their rise, as will audiobooks. But I have no doubt that the physical book will remain, in fact if only beautiful books are bought physically, then we may well see a lot more gorgeously designed books. And anyway, we’re going to have a lot of lockdown-inspired and written masterpieces to read next year. How will you be reading them?