Scattered leaves

Several libraries hold copies of books once owned by Tolkien, often inscribed and in some cases annotated by him. I’ve been fortunate enough to see and handle some of these myself at the Cushing Library at Texas A&M (a topic for another day, but you can read about these books here), but the Bodleian library system has perhaps the largest collection of such copies. Judging from an excavation of their online catalog, the Bodleian and its satellites hold about two dozen books once owned by Tolkien. Three of these have been digitized so that we all read the very copies that once sat on Tolkien’s own bookshelves.

As a public service, I thought I’d share the results of my excavations. I’m not going to the trouble of providing all the individual library and shelving details here, but if you’re in the area and want to find any of these books, you can look them up yourself with SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online).

Although merely owning a book doesn’t always mean one has read it — that is certainly true for me! — the books Tolkien owned do give us some insight into the man’s interests. Perusing the following, there isn’t a whole lot here that is strikingly new, but we see books on Indo-European linguistics; the Germanic languages, including Primitive Germanic, Gothic, Middle Low German, Old Dutch, Old Frisian, Old English, Old Norse; other European languages, including Middle Scots, French, Flemish, Galician, Spanish, Lithuanian; as well as history (the Vikings), legend (northern Germanic heroic sagas), and literature (Caxton).

As I said, there are other libraries with books once owned by Tolkien, and I have been gradually searching these out as time and inspiration strike. Anyone who has links and other information, please feel free to share it in the comments. Or if you’ve written up your own findings somewhere, please let us all know!

I. Books owned by Tolkien (with digital scans)

Bremer, Otto. Ethnographie der germanischen Stämme. Strassburg: Trübner, 1904. Gorgeous calligraphic inscription on the title page: “John Reuel Tolkien | e. coll. exon. | oxon. | mdccccxiv”. That’s 1914 — a very early book in Tolkien’s library. Illegible marginalia on p. 20; possibly another on p. 122. You can see Tolkien’s inscription above.

Persson, Per. Studien zur Lehre: von der Wurzelerweiterung und Wurzelvariation. Upsala: Academiska Boktryckeriet, 1891. Inscribed on the first flyleaf: “J.R.R. Tolkien | 1926”. Illegible marginal note on p. 50; a partially legible note on/in Greek at the top of p. 130 with an x in the left margin; a legible Greek word in the right margin on p. 157; and a final, only partially legible note on the rear endpaper. These appear to be in Tolkien’s hand, but I have examined them only very hastily at this point.

von Richthofen, Karl Freiherrn. Altfriesisches Wörterbuch. Göttingen: Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, 1840. Inscribed on the first flyleaf: “J.R.R. Tolkien”, along with a date that is nearly illegible but looks to me like it might be 1926 or 1928. No inscriptions in the body of the book as far as I could tell on a quick inspection.

II. Books owned by Tolkien (without digital scans)

[No Author Given]. Festschrift für Berthold Delbrück. Special issue of Indogermanische Forschungen, Bd. 31, 1912/13. Strassburg: Verlag von Karl J. Trübner, 1912–1913. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Einenkel, Eugen. Geschichte der Englischen Sprache: II. Historische Syntax. Strassburg: K.J. Trübner, 1916. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Faust. Historia von D. Johann Fausten dem weitbeschreyten zauberer und schwarzkünstler. [Jena]: [E. Diederichs], [1911]. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Feist, Sigmund. Einführung in das Gotische: Texte mit Übersetzungen und Erläuterungen. Leipzig: Teubner, 1922. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Gessler, Jean. Le livre des mestiers de Bruges et ses dérivés: Quatre anciens manuels de conversation. Bruges: [Fondation universitaire de Belgique], 1931. Flemish translation, vocabulary, and French-English parallel-text version of Caxton’s “Ryght good lernyng”. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Heusler, Andreas. Deutsche Versgeschichte: mit Einschluss des altenglischen und altnordischen Stabreimverses. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1925–1929. Inscribed by Tolkien; no further details provided.

Horn, Wilhelm. Beiträge zur germanischen sprachwissenschaft: Festschrift für Otto Behaghel. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1924. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Karsten, T. E. Die Germanen: eine Einführung in die Geschichte ihrer Sprache und Kultur. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1928. Inscribed by Tolkien; no further details provided.

Kauffmann, Friedrich. Deutsche Altertumskunde. München: Beck, 1913–1923. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Kendrick, T. D. A History of the Vikings. London: Methuen, [1930]. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Kretschmer, Paul. Die indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft : eine Einführung für die Schule.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1925. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Leskien, August. Litauisches Lesebuch mit Grammatik und Wörterbuch. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1919. Inscribed by Tolkien; no further details provided.

Mansion, Joseph. Oud-gentsche naamkunde : bijdrage tot de kennis van het oud-nederlandsch. ’s-Gravenhage : M. Nijhoff, 1924. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Nuñez, Marcial Valladares. Diccionario gallego-castellano. Santiago [de Compostela]: Impr. del Seminario Conciliar Central, 1884. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Schneider, Hermann. Germanische Heldensage. Bd. 1. Einleitung: Ursprung und Wesen der Heldensage. Buch 1: Deutsche Heldensage. Bd. 2, Abt. 1: Buch 2: Nordgermanische Heldensage -- Bd. 2, Abt. 2: Buch.3: Englische Heldensage. Festländische Heldensage in nordgermanischer und englischer Überlieferung. Verlorene Heldensage. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1928–34. Each volume has a bookplate, “Presented by the executors of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien”, and is inscribed by Tolkien.

Smith, G. Gregory. Specimens of Middle Scots. Edinburgh; London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1902. Inscribed on the first flyleaf: “John Reuel Tolkien. Exeter Coll. March 1914”. Another book in Tolkien’s library from a very early date!

Stammler, Wolfgang. Mittelniederdeutsches Lesebuch. Hamburg: P. Hartung, 1921. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

Wood, Francis A. Indo-European ax: axi: axu: A study in ablaut and in word formation. Strassburg: K.J. Trubner, 1905. Tolkien’s copy; no further details provided.

III. Tolkien’s own books (given by Tolkien to others)

Tolkien, J.R.R. Tree and Leaf. London: Allen & Unwin, 1964. The Bodleian has two copies of interest, one inscribed by Tolkien to his son, John, in July 1964, and the other inscribed to his wife, Edith (no date given).

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954. Inscribed by Tolkien to his son, John. No date or other information given.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Two Towers. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954. Inscribed “J.F.R. Tolkien from J.R.R.T. Nov. 1954”.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955. Inscribed “J.F.R.T. from J.R.R. Tolkien for Nov. 16 1955”.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit or, There and Back Again. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937. The Bodleian has a second-impression copy inscribed “J.F.R. Tolkien from J.R.R.T.”. The Merton College Library also has a second-impression copy, this one inscribed to “Norman Davis from J.R.R. Tolkien” on the recto of the first flyleaf. This copy contains an inserted card with printed address, “Merton College, Oxford OX1 4JD Telephone no. 49651”, followed by a handwritten note, “Presented to the Library by Professor Norman Davis, Emeritus Fellow of the College, 18th October 1983”.

And finally, one especially interesting copy not owned by Tolkien.

[Unknown]. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925. C.S. Lewis’s personal copy, with detailed glosses throughout and in which he drew and “annotated a knight’s armour as a key to the technical vocabulary used by the poet for the arming of Sir Gawain, as he prepares to set out in search of the mysterious Green Knight (pp. 18–19)”. Recently, this book was displayed as part of the Romance of the Middle Ages exhibit that ran 28 January through 13 May 2012. It was also part of the Bodleian exhibit, “Tolkien: Life and Legend”, in his centenary year, 1992. If you have a copy of the exhibit catalog, you can see Lewis’s illustration of the knight’s armor on p. 39, item 70.

Another new Tolkien collection from McFarland

The books keep rolling off the presses! I’ve just gotten the final table of contents from Brad Eden for his new collection, The Hobbit in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on the Novel’s Influence on the Later Writings. This one isn’t available for sale on Amazon yet, but McFarland has just added it to their own website (here).

This is project I’ve been aware of for some time. Brad sent out of a Call For Chapters in late May, 2013 (one year ago, almost to the day). The idea was to provide

an edited volume discussing research and scholarship on the influence of The Hobbit on the revision and expansion by Tolkien of the larger Middle-earth legendarium. Christopher Tolkien has stated in writing that the writing and publication of The Hobbit in the 1930’s had no influence at all on Tolkien’s ongoing expansion and revisions of his legendarium. Recent scholarship and detailed research has shown, however, that Tolkien was influenced by the plots, characters, and ideas presented in The Hobbit, some of which had an extraordinary effect on subsequent expansions, revisions, and new concepts within his legendarium.

I saw an early table of contents last August, and it looks like all of the chapters represented there have made it into the final book, along with a few additional ones. For a time, I was planning to offer a chapter also, though I had some concerns about the scope of the topic. I was worried the topic just wasn’t that fruitful, at least not if taken narrowly. John Rateliff’s and Verlyn Flieger’s chapters were obviously the kernel of the idea and both clearly have important and compelling things to say on the subject, but beyond that, I didn’t think there were enough explicit threads showing the influence of The Hobbit on the later development of the legendarium to base an entire collection on. And what threads there were had already been largely explored, or so it seemed to me. So I wasn’t sure what I could add on that subject. But Brad suggested that he was open to broader topics, so I proposed something. In the end, though, I wasn’t able to commit the time it would have required this past autumn, in part because of deaths in the family, surgery on one of our dogs, and other irruptions of ‘real life’, as it is called.

Looking at the table of contents now (see below), I still have the same concerns. Don’t get me wrong — all of the chapters sound interesting! It’s just that several of them don’t seem very closely connected to Brad’s stated mission with the collection. But if “a book focusing on how The Hobbit influenced the subsequent development of Tolkien’s legendarium […] was sorely needed” (marketing blurb), then one should expect there to be enough to say about that without venturing off down side alleys, however interesting they might be. But we’ll see. Perhaps some of these chapters will surprise us by revealing unexpected connection and causation.

The cover, shown above, features original artwork by Tom Loback, a well-known artist and enthusiast of Tolkien’s invested languages and scripts. The table of contents, presumably now final, follows below.

---

The Hobbit in Tolkien’s Legendarium:
Essays on the Novel’s Influence on the Later Writings
Edited by Bradford Lee Eden

Introduction / Bradford Lee Eden

THE EVOLUTION OF THE DWARVEN RACE

Anchoring the myth: the impact of The Hobbit on Tolkien’s legendarium / John D. Rateliff

From Nauglath to Durin’s Folk: The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Dwarves / Gerard Hynes

DURIN'S DAY

“It passes our skill in these days”: primary world influences on the evolution of Durin’s Day / Kristine Larsen

A scientific examination of Durin’s Day / Sumner Gary Hunnewell

THEMES

French influences

Tolkien’s French connection / Verlyn Flieger

Northern influences

Tolkien’s Northern fairy-story / Jane Chance

Linguistics

From “The Silmarillion” to The Hobbit and back again: an onomastic foray / Damien Bador

Animal sentience

Civilized goblins and talking animals: how The Hobbit created problems of sentience for Tolkien / Gregory Hartley

Invisibility

Seeing in the dark, seeing by the dark: how Bilbo’s invisibility defined Tolkien’s vision / Michael A. Wodzak

Bilbo as Tolkien personified

A Victorian in Valhalla: Bilbo Baggins as the link between England and Middle-earth / William Christian Klarner

The characters of Beorn and Bombadil

Beorn and Bombadil: mythology, place, and landscape in Middle-earth / Justin T. Noetzel

Pilgrimage

Travel, redemption, and peacemaking: hobbits, dwarves and elves and the transformative power of pilgrimage / Vickie L. Holtz Wodzak

Environmentalism and authorship

A Baggins’ backyard: environmentalism, authorship, and the Elves in Tolkien’s legendarium / David Thiessen

Contemporary interpretations of The Hobbit

Polytemporality and epic characterization in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: reflecting The Lord of the Ring’s [sic] modernism and medievalism / Judy Ann Ford and Robin Anne Reid

The wisdom of the crowd: Internet memes and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey / Michelle Markey Butler

New Book on Tolkien and Modernism

Even though he lived at the right time for it and went through many of the same experiences that formed the crucible of Modernism, Tolkien has not very often been thought to exemplify the movement. Most critics regard him as already a bit old-fashioned even in his own day, more often thought of as a reincarnation of the Beowulf-poet than as a Great War author, for example (though interestingly, Tom Shippey has made both of the preceding arguments). [1] For my part, I see Tolkien as fitting in various ways into both movements — perhaps a bit less obviously as a Modernist, but the case has been made before and need not be rehearsed here. [2]

Now, a new full-length treatment of this question is on the horizon: Theresa Freda Nicolay’s Tolkien and the Modernists (order it here), coming from McFarland this summer (or sooner — I have a review copy in my hands now). I’m only just beginning to dig into it, so this is not the time for a proper review, but I wanted to make readers aware of the new book — particularly those with an interest in Modernism, as well as those who may feel that critical treatments of Tolkien lean disproportionately to Medievalism.

The book is relatively short at 193 pages. It comprises an introduction, seven chapters, a bibliography, and an index. The latter is pretty short (only about two full pages), and exhibits some idiosyncrasies. For example, there are sub-entries under “Tolkien, J.R.R.” for The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, but each of these also has its own entry in the index, repeating all of the page references. The same process is repeated for C.S. Lewis and his works. At least the page references in these duplicate entries match!

The chapters run as follows:

1. Rekindling an Old Light
2. Industrialism, Instrumentality and “antiquity so appealing”
3. The Lord of the Rings: “Insubstantial dream of an escapist”
4. Modernist Disaffection and Tolkienian Faith
5. The World as Wasteland: The Landscapes of Loss
6. The Wasteland Within: Alienation in Tolkien and the Modernists
7. Postmodern Monsters and Providential Plans

Having so far only read the introduction, some of the conclusion in Chapter 7, skimmed a few passages here and there, and examined the bibliography and index, the book looks to be pretty solid at first glance. But — and again speaking only from a first, cursory look — Nicolay seems to have developed her argument largely in a vacuum: though she cites several of the major Tolkien scholars, it looks like her bibliography omits mention most of the critical work on Tolkien and Modernism that comes readily to my mind (e.g., Mortimer’s essay already mentioned [2]; Modern Fiction Studies 50:4 (a special issue devoted entirely to Tolkien); Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers’s Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages; Frank Weinreich and Thomas Honegger’s two volumes of Tolkien and Modernity; Martin Simonson’s The Lord of the Rings and the Western Narrative Tradition; to name a few). I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve read the entire book, but ordinarily, one ought to demonstrate familiarity with and then build on or expand the work already done in the scholarly community.

In any event, an(other) extended treatment of this subject is certainly welcome, and I look forward to reading it straight through. Once I’ve done so, I’ll be back with fuller comments. I’d welcome the same from any of you as well.



[1] See “Tolkien as a Post-War Writer.” Scholarship & Fantasy: Proceedings of the Tolkien Phenomenon (1993), ed. by K. J. Battarbee. Anglicana Turkuensia 12 (1993): 217-36. And “Tolkien and the Beowulf-poet.” Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien. Walking Tree Publishers, 2007.

[2] See, for example, Mortimer, Patchen. “Tolkien and Modernism.” Tolkien Studies 2 (2005): 113–29. Mortimer concludes: “But to be a modernist one does not have to embrace modern era or belong to any specific school. One simply has to faithfully document the modern condition, while operating under certain aesthetic assumptions about the primacy of the artist and the role of language in shaping life. At the very least, Tolkien was, as Flieger terms him, a ‘reluctant modernist,’ […]” (127).

A Description of C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid

I just received a copy in yesterday’s mail and thought I would offer some description of the book as a public service to those considering ordering it (Amazon link immediately following, where it is currently on sale at a 40% discount):

C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile. Edited with an introduction by A.T. Reyes. Foreword by Walter Hooper. Preface by D.O. Ross. New Haven , London: Yale UP, 2011. xxiii + 208 pp. ISBN 9780300167177.

It’s an attractive and well-made book. Hardcover, octavo, black cloth boards, spine stamped in gold. The dust jacket is illustrated on the front with The Feast of Aeneas and Dido, folio 100v of the 5th-century Roman Virgil, MS Vat. Lat. 3867, Vatican Library; on the back with Lewis manuscript translation, Book I, ll. 1–11. Inside, five pages of Lewis’s manuscript are reproduced.

Following is the complete table of contents:

• List of Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Foreword by Walter Hooper
• Preface by D.O. Ross
• Introduction
• C.S. Lewis’s Translation of the Aeneid with the Latin text
• Additional References to the Aeneid
• Notes on the Manuscript
• Some Discrepancies between the Latin and English Texts
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• General Index

The “List of Authors” is one page with biographical blurbs of Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis, A.T. Reyes, D.O. Ross, and Virgil, in that order. There are three maps: 1. Europe and the Mediterranean, 2. Italy , Greece , and Asia Minor, and 3. Area around Rome . The Foreword is 5 pp., the Preface is 7 pp., the Introduction is 33 pp., and all three include footnotes.

The translation is the whole of Book I (758 ll., in Lewis’s rendition), and large portions of Books II and VI (516 and 253 ll., respectively). What is very nice here is that for others of the books of the Aeneid, the editor has brought together various fragments translated by Lewis in others of his works, e.g., A Preface to Paradise Lost, Studies in Words, The Pilgrim’s Regress, The Problem of Pain, and others. The translation is printed on the recto with the Latin on the facing verso. The Latin text is reprinted from Virgil, Volume I. Loeb Classical Library, Volume 63. Trans. H.R. Fairclough, rev. G.P. Goold. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999 [originally 1916].

“Additional References to the Aeneid” offers seven pages of references (not translation) in Lewis’s other writings, arranged by the books of the Aeneid. “Notes on the Manuscript” is a four-page list of changes, cancellations, and other emendations Lewis made to the main manuscript. The “Notes on the Latin Text and Lewis’s Translation” (so called, in spite of the table of contents), a single page, lists departures from standard readings in Lewis’s own reading of the Latin (errors, perhaps, or merely disagreements with the Latin; it’s not clear to me on quick inspection). The remaining items are all short and self-explanatory.

I am planning to run a review, as well as an interview with the editor, in the May issue of Mythprint. It looks like a splendid piece of work with first-rate editorial apparatus. I am looking forward to digging in!

Books versus “books”

There has been a lot of discussion lately on the Mythopoeic Society’s Yahoo group about digital books and e-readers. I am hardly in a position to comment on the relative merits of the different e-reader devices, since I have avoided the whole technology like a knuckle-dragging luddite. I could comment on some of the theoretical benefits of electronic texts, of which there are many, but for what it’s worth, I thought I might take a few moments to share some of my reasons for resisting this whole movement toward electronic books, just to be a countervailing voice. Normally when I do this, there is a technophilic rush to contradict or explain away each point of my argument, and I don’t mind if some of you champions of e-readers do that here and now, but I’m not really making these points to start a debate; rather, just to explain where I am coming from. Having said that, I welcome your comments.

Who owns my books?

When I buy a physical book, it is mine. Not just “mine” in some transitory way, but literally mine (without irony-quotes), for all time, to do with as I like. I can read it a hundred times, lend it, give it away, burn it, use it as a paperweight, keep open a window, whatever. Electronic books are only “mine” as long as the hardware doesn’t malfunction, the terms of agreement do not change, I don’t violate a warranty or license agreement, etc.

Imagine if those of us who have copies of the Ace “pirate” edition of The Lord of the Rings woke up one morning to find that somebody had come into our homes while we slept, removed these books from our bookshelves, and perhaps left a few dollars in their place. This is essentially what happened in 2009 when Amazon removed “unauthorized” copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from Kindles around the world. If that is not ironic — Big Brother reaching down from the cloud and taking something you thought was yours — I don’t know what is. There was a good deal of blowback, and Amazon claims they would not do the same thing in the future — I know that all techologies go through growing pains — but I do not want a retailer ever having access to my books. Why should they? What possible justification is there?

Speaking of 1984, it is not too hard to imagine a cloud-based analog to the memory holes whereby information can be made to disappear. It’s not so hard to imagine a horrifying Orwellian scenario here. It’s bad enough that U.S. intelligence agencies want to be able to examine your library borrowing history; how long until they demand warrants to sneak around in your e-reader too? I won’t digress to paint any further paranoid pictures — though I could — but the bottom line is that I do not want third parties having a back-door into controlling what I can and can’t read on a reader. For all sorts of reasons. What if publishers want to “correct” their texts in real time, updating people’s electronic copies silently and without permission. To allude to another recent development, what if the powers that be eventually decided to reach into people’s e-readers and change nigger to slave in copies of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? With e-readers, there is no reliable fixity of the text. I have a big problem with the very idea!

Once books are mine, whether “unauthorized” or not, I consider them mine. Just because Amazon promises they won’t reach out to a Kindle and remove something doesn’t mean you should believe them. The fact that they can is a problem. Technology wants to be used, or abused; if it’s there, it will be. And with the proliferation of e-book readers, you’d have to secure promises — and trust them — from all the different vendors. Why should this be necessary? I might warm up to e-books if I could believe they were really mine and that once I had purchased them, no one could touch them without literally breaking into my house. And one closing note on the point of ownership. Right now, we buy our books, for once and always; but as more and more people move to e-readers, how long until the model changes, and we are no longer buying books once, but merely renting them or paying a licensing fee each time we want to read them again? Publishers must be salivating at the very idea. I hear that the music industry — the pioneers of digital formats and players — have designs along this very line.

Format wars and the problems of technology

A book is a book — or should be. To read it, you only need eyes (or fingers, if the book is printed in braille). Yes, electronic texts have some advantages over print ones, of which perhaps the biggest is the ability to do powerful searches. But until these vendors can agree on a standard format, instead of fighting over their own proprietary ones — none of which add anything to the “technology” of reading — I am prepared to sit this out and wait. I read PDFs on my computer, and they are very useful. But that’s about as far as I’m prepared to go.

I don’t want to have to worry that the electronic books I might buy will only “work” on this device or that device. If I have purchased a big library of books for a Kindle, then decide I’d rather have a Nook, do I have to buy all those books again? Is it possible to transfer a digital library from one reader to another? I hope it is, but I’d be surprised if the vendors were cooperating. Maybe there are techniques or workarounds to get a digital book from one device to another. Is it easy, quick, painless? Probably not. Certainly not easier than handing a copy of physical book to a friend. And these techniques work only so long as the vendors don’t change their formats and device specifications. People will always find ways around limitations or attempted sandboxing, but if you deal in real books, it’s a moot point. And as avidly as people are trying to hack formats and devices to bypass their digital rights management and other limitations, the various hardware and software vendors are working just as furiously to circumvent that circumvention. It’s a vicious cycle which does nothing but compound the problems of format and technology.

And what about technology? The “technology” of the physical book is millennia old. Even printing with movable type is more than five centuries old (in Europe; movable type was invented in China four centuries earlier still). The “bugs” in the book — scribal error, palimpsests, material durability, legible typefaces, and sometimes even real bugs eating holes in the paper — these have basically been worked out. Computers are only a couple of generations old, and handheld digital devices of the e-reader variety have been around less than a decade. Even setting aside the generally quite poor standards of software development — and believe me, I have had an inside view of this for fifteen years now — one can’t expect anything but bugs. It’s going to be decades before the e-readers are as reliable as, say, an analog television used to be. (I have to say “used to be” because the analog television is now a living fossil, quickly going the way of the rotary dial telephone.)

A few other issues

Since I don’t use e-readers, I can’t answer this, but how long until you start seeing unavoidable commercials when you want to read a book? I have a blu-ray player, and not only do I have to update the firmware constantly even to watch many newer movies (which drives me absolutely up a wall), but the many-tentacled film industry and its technology partners have colluded to force me to watch commercials or movie trailers before I can enjoy the movie. Have you guys noticed this? You usually can’t go straight to the blu-ray menu anymore, and you usually can’t skip a trailer either (sometimes you can fast-forward, sometimes not). We don’t have car and beer commercials at the beginning of ours discs yet, but it can only be a matter of time — and with the firmware model, they can add this into all our existing players any time they like. How long until something like this happens with e-books? Why wouldn’t they force you to see an ad for other books from the same publisher, or whatever, if they could? They have total remote control over your device, don’t they?

I used to think it was impossible to lend electronic books — one of their biggest disadvantages, I always said. Apparently, some of the e-readers (and now libraries) do support book lending, in a limited fashion. That’s an improvement, but traditional books retain a big advantage here. And you still can’t give away or sell a digital book, can you?

If you can read, it’s pretty easy to figure out what to do with a book. But looking at an e-reader, or a compact disc, or a DVD, or a flash drive, how do you know this “is” (or “contains”) a book? Which is more intuitive, this or this? Imagine a couple of people opening a time capsule two hundred years from now. One takes out a physical book, the other a flash drive containing an entire library of important works. Who will be reading first? It’s easy for us to think, oh, all these formats and technologies will still be readily available and comprehensible to our descendents in the centuries and millennia to come. For this, the eight-track tape is a cautionary example; an even more compelling one is the piano roll.

Some might say it’s silly to worry about whether people will be able to read our e-books and use our e-readers centuries from now; people can use them and read them today, and that’s all that should matter. That’s a dangerously myopic view. If e-books actually make physical books so costly that publishers stop producing them, and then e-readers eventually die off too, literacy itself could be threatened. I doubt this will happen in my lifetime, in spite of the rabid trendmongering you hear these days to that effect. But a few generations, or a century from now, could we see a return to the Dark Ages when only the clerics and aristocracy could even read at all?

Books are also generally more durable than digital media. Tapes, discs, magnetic and optical storage technologies all erode over time — rather like those thermal paper receipts that fade into oblivion in a surprisingly short time. Books erode too, but much, much more slowly. We have books that are many centuries old, even ones that haven’t been particularly well taken care of — even ones that have been snatched out of a fire! It’s hard to see how a string of a billion 1’s and 0’s could survive as long. Of course, under today’s patterns of data proliferation, dozens or hundreds or thousands of copies are made, remade, saved, resaved, backed up and restored, over and over — but all that upkeep and maintenance just to preserve those streams of data? A single book, well taken care of, has the potential to outlast all of it.

What about electricity? All you need to read a physical book is a little light — fortunately, we still have the Sun, and luckily, nobody has figured out a way to charge licensing fees for using it. To read an e-book, you need electricity. Your e-reader can store a little of this, but in a protracted power failure, your entire library might as well have vanished in a puff of smoke. If you were stuck on a desert island, which would you rather have, a single physical book or your entire library on an e-reader? And setting aside the possibility of power outages, I just don’t like the fact that e-readers mean consuming more. With e-readers, it is no longer enough to use just a very little of the energy we convert from eating and drinking; now we have to consume electricity too. How much doesn’t really matter, it’s more than physical books require, and there is only so much electricity to go around. I think we should be trying to consume less energy, not more, especially since we are stuck (for the present) burning through a finite supply of fossil fuels. Some people argue that printing books means killing trees. But using e-readers comes to much the same thing, because it takes fossil-fuel energy to manufacture and power them. At least you can recycle the paper in unwanted books; the energy spent on digital “books” is unrecoverably gone forever.

Summing up

There are many benefits to electronic texts, without a doubt. I use them myself all the time. But I prefer physical books, and I have physical copies of 99% of everything I have in electronic format. I never read an electronic book when I have the option of reading a print copy. And until most of the problems and limitations I have discussed above are addressed, I don’t imagine I ever will.