Kindle, Literature, and New Literatures

The Kindle is poised to change the way we read, not to mention the ways in which authors write and publishers produce books.  In his insightful article, Steven Johnson lays out several realistic possibilities for the future of reading in an age of the Kindle.  He speaks of a world in which Google can search individual pages of books (the technology is essentially there already), chapters will be bought like iTunes songs (recall the death of the album…no reason to buy eleven humdrum songs when you only want the one with bounce), and even an influx in reading of books as they can be bought on whim (under two minutes from impulse to opening line).  Exciting and frightening.  The former because never before has this kind of reading been possible; the latter because there is a physicality that is fading.  But, what does it mean for teaching literature?

I’ve blogged before about the Kindle and reading, suggesting that it might well entice reluctant readers to get into it precisely because it isn’t a weighty book with many many many pages.  It’s just a sleek light device.  Johnson predicts one of my great concerns for the future of reading literature when he writes about what will happen with the Kindle inevitably goes the path of the iPhone and offers more than just reading books and newspapers:

As a result, I fear that one of the great joys of book reading — the total immersion in another world, or in the world of the author’s ideas — will be compromised. We all may read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there.

What will happen to literary imagination when it competes with emails and phone calls?

In his book Private Readings in Public, Denis Sumara talks about the immensely private nature of reading literature.  Wired reading endangers this kind of privacy, which, you could argue, is necessary for the kind of imaginative immersion Johnson mentions.  And what of the labor of turning pages? Or, the feeling of a pen etching into the fiberous surface of the page?

I am certain the reading literature will not be the same from this point forward.  My greater concern, however, is that those of us in English education will just stuff our ears, claim the topic too beneath us to take seriously, and miss shaping the direction of these new literatures.

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