Long Live the Physical Book–at least for now
So it would seem that the death of the physical book and the physical bookstore is greatly exaggerated. According to The New York Times, bookstores are having a banner year. In part this is because some of the competition (i.e., Borders) is no longer a factor in brick-and-mortar retailing, a number of popular books (ironically including the biography of Steve Jobs, the very guy who sought to digitize and commodify the object in question) and a desire among consumers in a slowly recovering economy to give gifts that are attractive in a way that bits on a screen don’t quite emulate.
Also, content owners are, as they are prone to do, shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to digital retailing. Despite the fact the e-book readers are more affordable than ever with a growing proliferation of titles in e-book format, pricing strategies are frequently rendering physical books as less expensive than their digital counterparts, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Long live the dog-eared book, if only for another few years.
On another note, and though it has nothing to do with the normal realm of Black Gate matters, I’m sad to note the passing of Christopher Hitchens. Right up to the end, he was one gutsy bastard. Here’s what I presume was his last piece of Vanity Fair.
I second your praise of the dog-eared book. Last year my mother (bless her), bought me an e-reader. Though I use it for easy access to project Gutenberg and other books/magazines available in e-format only, I find I still purchase printed material. I need to the cover art, the yellowed pages, the publication history. Case in point: I just got an original copy of L. Sprague de Camp’s _Lest Darkness Falls_ (Galaxy Publishing, 1949), a kind of pulpy magazine with “acidy” paper and too narrow margins. It’s great! I can’t explain why… but, but it’s great! I know I’m not alone in my irrational enthusiasm for the material, printed word. This isn’t to say I’m not enjoying the plethora of writing available exclusively in electronic venues that would otherwise have not been available. Thanks for the post!
I rather liked Hitchens, though I have more sympathy for the (general) moral principles of Christianity more than I do for its reliance on Christ and its specific concept of God to lend credence to its precepts.
I’d read somewhere that toward his end he recanted, much as I believe Bertrand Russell was supposed to have (my memory fails me re Russell).
Anyone know if Hitchens recanted?
Just read (from the link above) Hitchens truly brave, profound, and touching pre-mortem, while he was in the very throes of his painful demise. Words fail me at this point, and I wonder (as I have often done), what I might say upon my impending demise, should death grant me such an opportunity. Whatever my thoughts may be, I doubt I could state them as eloquently.
I can’t find any legitimate reference to Russell recanting. I think that is probably wishful thinking/rumor spreading on the part of those who disagreed with his views.
I would imagine the same holds true for Hitchens.
Folks who want Hitchens or any other atheist/heretic/non-follower of a particular creed to recant are less concerned about that person’s fate in the undiscovered country than some kind of smug validation of their own beliefs. And which particular God is the individual supposed to recant to? Christian, Hebrew, Hindu, Islam, whatever other flavor there may be? The notion that it’s better to believe in a God than not in the oft chance that there might be one begs the question of which human perception of God, if any, is correct. Hithchen’s response to all this is that he had never come across a God whose attitude he particularly found admirable, whether God existed or not. Hence his antipathy to all religions, at least the organized institutional ones.
Really Soyka? Do you have the power to read minds? No, of course not. You don’t even have the ability to comprehend what most Christians said and wrote about Hitchens. May he RIP.
I don’t have the power to read minds. I do have the power to read.
We’ll leave the notion of comprehension as a differing opinion of what we’ve read.
Cheers.
Neither Russell nor Hitchens recanted. Nor, for that matter, did Charles Darwin, as is sometimes erroneously reported. Anthony Flew, however, did indeed recant.
However, it is extraordinarily stupid and ignorant to claim that religious believers who wish nonbelievers to recant “are less concerned about that person’s fate in the undiscovered country than some kind of smug validation of their own beliefs.”
To state as much is not only demonstrably untrue, it is more reflective of the individual’s personal issues with religion than the observable facts at hand.
I am a Christian, I am a sufficiently well-known critic of Christopher Hitchens that my book leaped to the top ten in the atheism category on Amazon after news of his death was reported, and I exchanged several emails with him over the years. He was not a friend of mine, but neither was he an enemy. I, too, would have preferred to hear he recanted, although I did not imagine for a moment that he ever would have. In any case, his recanting would not have provided any validation for my beliefs, smug or otherwise, any more than my beliefs are validated by the beliefs of the hundreds of millions of people who happen to share them.
And I am not even one of the many millions of Christians who are troubled by the idea that people will one day experiences the consequences they have chosen for themselves. The vast majority of Christians do not wish for anyone to suffer in Hell for precisely the same reason they do not wish them to burn to death in earthly fires. The fact that Soyka fails to recognize this simple human empathy says far more about Soyka than it does about those he falsely impugns on the basis of nothing more than his own imagination.
Read the seventh paragraph of Hitchens’s last Vanity Fair piece for just one example of how some Christians felt about him. Do a Google search of Christian reaction to Hitchens death. Here’s one, cited by Ross Douthat in yesterday’s New York Times: “Who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer was God’s revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him.” I’ll grant that I have no way of knowing how the majority of Christians truly feel, and for all I know the vast majority are as Theo would like to think. On the other hand, neither does Theo have verifiable data if the vast majority share his Christian empathy. He just has faith that it is so. I do not question how Theo in particular feels, or that other Christians profess the same. I do know for a fact that there are people who use their faith (and not only Christians) as a means to sort good guys from bad guys and if you’re not in the club, you’re in hell. The very nature of that belief intellectually subverts the notion of empathy or compassion. And, yes, I do know the argument that says that it is the opposite because of certain knowledge of metaphysical reality. That is not the point. The point it is that there are Christians who have taken smug satisfaction in the death of Hitchens. I concede that I don’t know if they are the vast majority or not (and here I actually hope Theo is right), and that perhaps it was unfair of me to stereotype an entire group on the basis of some. However, the fact that Theo fails to recognize that a highly vocal (perhaps minority) contingent does exist that takes smug satisfaction that Hitchens is getting what he deserves as a non-believer says more about Theo’s wishful thinking that such beliefs are not held within the fold than those who point it out.
Peace.
Read the seventh paragraph of Hitchens’s last Vanity Fair piece for just one example of how some Christians felt about him.
Oh please. Every single individual in the public eye hears from the crazies. And those who are controversial in any way get more than their fair share. I could send you a vast compendium of death wishes sent to me by atheists. That doesn’t mean many, much less most atheists deserve to be judged by the behavior of a few lunatics.
It’s not like it would be hard to find atheists who have taken smug satisfaction in the death of Pope John Paul II, after all.