Is Print Dead, Really?

The end of another school break is looming.  Looking back at the week, I realize that I've spent quite a bit of time reading, especially during a short stay in Branson with my sister's family.  I took along a stack of magazines to catch up on, some dating as far back as May, as well as a couple of books.  The magazines were all, in fact, my beloved Newsweek, which recently announced that it would be no longer produce print copies after the end of this year, to my horror.  Truly, I felt as if a good friend were dying.  Though it will live on in digital form, I don't plan on renewing my subscription.  Reading a magazine is meant to be a tactile, mobile experience.  And no, I don't have a laptop or Ipad.  I prefer my reliable desktop.  So goodbye, Newsweek. 

I've heard "Print is dead" as far back as one of my favorite movies, The Big Chill, using the line in the early 80's.  I couldn't understand why anyone would say such a thing then---but I was in the middle of earning a couple of degrees in English at that time.  The politics of media not only were of no interest to me; I didn't in the least understand it all then.  Even now, I'd be hard pressed to articulate the issues.  I just knew that I loved books, as did a fair number of people in the world, so how could print ever be dead?  I just blew it off as some self-important Hollywood posturing.  Today I wonder if they knew how prophetic that line would be.  Thirty years of home technology have made it a virtual certainty.

When e-readers arrived on the scene, I reacted on a gut level....literally.  My stomach would clench up like a street fighter ready to take all comers at the very mention of a Kindle, and I would make the same silly statement each time:  "They'll pry my books from my cold, dead hands!"  Melodramatic much?  Well, yes.  But it was no less heartfelt for being so....cliche.  If anyone was willing to listen, I would try to appeal to the sensory pleasure of reading:  the weight of the book, the smell of the pages, the sound of turning each page in anticipation while reading in my grandmother's lap, or alone in a quiet house, or in front of a fire, or up in my dry, hot summer bedroom in the South Dakota house.  All my life, I've never been far from the comfort of a book I was reading, and the thought of not having one to retreat to is, to say the least, unnerving. 

Yet some of my friends who are devoted bibliophiles have converted to e-readers, up to and including our semi-retired school librarian, who will extol the virtues of books at any time, but who is no snob when it comes to technology, either.  She encouraged me for years to listen to audiobooks on my commute and has been working on my attitude toward e-readers for quite some time now.   She knows my objections....and also where to hit me so it counts, having recently pointed out that I can have thousands of books on a reader, but I can only carry around so many at a time.  Ha:  my rotator-cuff-cranky right shoulder can't manage the giant purses I used to carry around, stuffed with junk and at least one or two books.  Yes, Joan knew that the book-glutton brain I function with would sparkle with excitement at the idea of having any book I wanted on my person at any time. 

Still, I can't see how we benefit as a society without hard copy books.  Even my students know that.  In the last couple of years, it has become apparent that eventually school textbooks are going to be viewed as insupportable and completely cost-ineffective compared to on-line textbooks.  They'll become dinosaurs; it's just a matter of when.  Our administration has been pushing in that direction for a couple of years, and I've voiced my opinion many times about what a bad choice I believe it to be.  This fall, they asked us to review some new free/low-cost on-line books and to feel out how the students viewed the idea.  I didn't even get a chance to bring up the discussion; that very morning in my first class, one girl mentioned off-handedly that she didn't like reading on-line (I think it was regarding a little research project they were doing), and when I asked them about the idea of on-line texts as a follow-up, they practically shouted me down.  According to them, they couldn't see as well on a computer, it was harder to read for a longer period of time, and many of them don't have internet access at home. You can imagine that I was gratified by their response.....especially so, since I found five errors in the very first sample sentence I read in the grammar text, proving another cliched adage:  You get what you pay for. 

With all that said, I must make a confession.  I noted I had issues of Newsweek to read going as far back as May, although in truth, it was just one random copy that somehow got thrown aside and overlooked.  Most were from the last three months, maybe five issues.  With the up-to-the-minute reporting it's known for, you might wonder why, if the mag is so important to me, I had them piled up like that.  Yes, I'm busy, but I do have maybe an hour or so an evening when I could be reading.  Why don't I read them then?  Oh, well....it's because.....I'm usually on the computer, or maybe watching a show I DVRed earlier. 

That's right.  The e-reader snob doesn't read anymore because she's spending her time with technology. 

And the reason I WAS reading this week (though I didn't realize it until later)?  I was away from home....and my computer.....and my DVR.  I fell back on my print habit because I had no technology.

Ironic?  Yes.  But at least I learned the meaning of irony by reading books:  gloriously heavy books full of pages and inky words and that dusty feel of the paper, the smell of libraries and coffee and cigarettes faintly tracing the margins, the crinkling onion skin or sandpapery heavyweight deckle edge replying to our thoughts at each turn of the page.  That's reading; that's a book.