The Islander on Kindle

Is the Amazon Kindle the beginning of the end for traditional books?

Will it change traditional publishing the same way that MP3s changed the music industry, or merely occupy an obscure niche much like the Sony Reader?

And ultimately would this be a good or a bad thing?

It depends on who you are.

Readers, once they actually get to try a Kindle, will probably love it. The Kindle allows you to connect to Amazon's web site and download books for about $10 each. Supposedly the books are easy to read on the matt-white screen, unlike the electronic readers of the past. And the Kindle can store dozens of books, enabling you to keep a virtual library at your fingertips.

If you're a writer without the backing up a big publishing house, like me, this is an earth-shaking development. It allows us to compete with the big houses on price, which has been a major impediment for print-on-demand authors. Instead of selling a book for $25.99 and getting a $1.59 royalty, you can now sell it at the Kindle Store for $9.99 and get a $3.50 royalty.

On the other hand, if you're a publisher, book distributor, bookstore owner, agent, paper salesman, or even a book critic, the Kindle should strike fear into your heart: it could take you out of the business loop, putting your salary into the pockets of authors and Amazon.com, neither of whom may need you anymore.

If and when that happens, readers and Amazon (and not publishers and agents) will decide which books sell and which don't. Advertising budgets, critical reviews, and distribution chains will no longer matter so much; the web will select books that generate interest and spread them virally through reader reviews and targeted recommendations. The web and customers, not a coterie of experts, will decide whether or not a book sells.

Of course, there's enormous risk here. If it turns out to be as easy to pirate Kindle files as MP3 files, then both author and Amazon could join the ranks of endangered publishers. Everything ever written would soon be accessible to everyone, and NO ONE will get paid for anything. Such a scenario would eliminate incentives for authors to write, potentially dealing a death blow not only to the book industry but also to the arts.

It's not pretty to think about.

And there's always the risk of monopoly. Amazon could simply become the most intimidating gatekeeper in the history of publishing, controlling price, availability, and every other aspect of the business. And all bow down to Amazon we must.

But like it or not, the change is here to stay. Yes, the Kindle needs more tweaking, but that's all it will take––tweaking. Paper is no longer necessary––unless you're a technophobe or merely nostalgic. And the publishing world will never be the same.

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My Antonia, Again

Dear Dad,

Well, you are the eternal optimist, finding such an ending copacetic.

Yes, you're right, I think, in saying that Jim and Antonia would have had problems together. But everyone has problems together. They also would have shared a very deep love, something that Jim doesn't have in his life, although we can't be as sure about Antonia.

The book is called My Antonia, and so it's apparent who the hero (or heroine) is, and Antonia remains a powerful figure throughout the tale. My beef is with Jim: in Cather's introduction he is painted as someone whose "ardent and optimistic disposition could not be suppressed by life's disappointments." He appears to be well adjusted and likable. But I think he's a putz. As a narrator he's unreliable. He avoids or is incapable of telling you what he really feels about Antonia; he never admits how much he loves her until he tells her son at the end of the book--cowardly in my view. And it's not exactly clear why he leaves Black Hawk--he says he's bored and finds the town provincial--but is he really running away from Antonia? He exhibits no real passion for Latin or learning or even for seeing the world--he just suddenly goes. And for most of the narration he's waxing eloquent about the prairie and its people, and even after moving to New York his business takes him back to the plains, where he loves to visit with the farmers and reminisce.

I concede your point about the impracticality of the relationship, but I'm still not satisfied with the outcome. It amounts to saying, "Well, one can't expect much better from life." Maybe one can't. I guess that's what makes this book a realistic novel instead of a romance.

But mistakes are still mistakes, no matter how you dress them up, and I still think Jim made a mistake. Maybe he wasn't capable of anything more--maybe he was just too "soft and funny," as Lena called him, to rise to the occasion and press Antonia to marry him. Cather wants to portray their failure as a poignant example of life's "could have beens," but you could equally say that Jim Burden simply didn't deserve Antonia, and I prefer to think the latter.

Charlie

My Antonia--another view

Dear Charlie,

I finished My Antonia and end up disagreeing with your conclusion.

Eighteen years ago I had the same reaction you did, but this time I have the strong opinion that Jim and Antonia marrying each other would have been a disaster. Being a high priced Harvard graduate railroad lawyer, life in the country was out for him. And I can't see her being happy or fitting in in New York City. And I think she's happier than you give her credit for. Her teeth are going but her general health is good; she's still strong and active and loves the farm and a big family seems a must for her. The farm is paid for, the additional quarter is almost so, her husband is not the most ambitious guy in the world but together they run a successful place.

The big mistake Jim made was to marry the wealthy socialite. The boost it gave to his career makes me cynical about a guy that otherwise seemed idealistic and admirable. But they have no children, they each go their separate ways and don't fight or trouble each other.

In sum, the book left me feeling contented with the way things turned out. Wonderful happy memories are their common heritage and I think memories are better for them than a life together would have been. Which leaves me questioning Cather's Latin phrase about the best days being the first to go. Of course they are, but you can't do anything about that and happy memories are probably all any of deserve as we get older. I do wish your Mother were still around.

Anyhow, that's the way the book struck me this time around. Thanks for renewing my interest in it.

Dad

My Antonia

Dear Dad,

Yesterday I finished reading My Antonia by Willa Cather. I had never read Cather because a girl I knew in college once mocked her as having an overly simple, almost nursery-school style. It just goes to show how uninformed opinions can sway you. I found Cather's writing some of the most beautiful I have ever read, writing with a song inside it. And I don't think I have ever read such vivid descriptions of people and places, both of which seem more real to me than most people or places I've known. After the first few pages I found myself saying, "I want to meet this woman and run away with her for the rest of my life." The force of her personality was that overpowering--gentle, smart, worldly, optimistic in the face of disappointment and sadness, and capable of bringing unsurpassed beauty into the world.

But I have to confess that after finishing the book I was in a funk, and I found it hard to explain why. There is something about My Antonia that conjures up your own failures and disappointments in life--all of the "might have beens," the romances you never had, the successes eluded, youth and promise eaten away by the passing of years. The beautiful writing and the believable characters impress it on you in a very personal and heartbreaking way.

Later on, however, I began to get angry with Cather. She tries to paint a brave face on Antonia at the end of the book, but it's clear she has ended up badly, with her teeth falling out, 10 children, and living in borderline poverty. And Jim, the pussy, has led an easy life away from Nebraska, having never pressed Antonia about his deep-seated love for her and abandoning her when she is most in need. Granted it might not have worked anyway--they were different in so many respects, but I blame him for not trying--for letting a passion like that go--that's a sin to my thinking. It reminds me of Zorba saying to the boss, "There is one sin that God will not forgive: If a woman calls a man to her bed, and he will not go, God will not forgive him." Okay--that's Zorba The Unfaithful speaking, but there's a deeper meaning behind his words. If you have a passion, if you love someone, you have an obligation to act on it, to try to make it real. Jim Burden cannot or will not do this. He is timid and weak. He simply leaves Antonia and goes off to study Latin.

I now think this is the point of the book and the reason it affected me so: in spite of their love for each other the two characters are doomed to never be together. Still I want to rebel against it. Jim Burden is one of Christopher Booker's "perpetual boys," incapable of uniting himself with his anima. He hasn't learned his lessons from life, borne out by his failed marriage to the wealthy socialite. This makes My Antonia a kind of dark version of a Voyage and Return story--wherein Jim ventures into the world of the Hired Girls and then returns home, without having grown up or brought back the anima with him. As Booker says, these kinds of stories are usually about troubled, inadequate people, and that certainly describes Jim Burden.

I later read that Cather was a lesbian, and a part of me wants to think she simply wouldn't allow her heroine to be happily and passionately married to a man, but I don't know that I have any evidence for that. Yet I do think that the characters have been set up for failure, having such different backgrounds and with Antonia being four years older than Jim, a yawning divide at that age.

So in the end I was disappointed, and bitterly so, given the book's early promise. And so the book turns out to be much like life--in the beginning anything seems possible, you can hardly wait to turn the pages, but in the end it turns out like everything else--rather mundane and a little sad.

Thus my mood upon finishing My Antonia. The next book I read will be a happier one.

Charlie