Ah, The Smell
Of A New Book!
In the years since, I have never looked back. Being RAM'd, ROM'd and ISP'd has truly changed my life.
This little weekly missive you are reading in your Texas bayside hometown is also being read by a passel of "e-pals" from Australia to Spain. I can whistle up more news and information with a twitch of my finger than I could even begin to digest in a lifetime. I can send letters, pictures, music, dirty jokes and French postcards to anyone, anywhere, instantly.
Of course, this handy electronic servant has also given me come-ons from "Hot XXX Teen Sex Slaves," "Low APR!" credit-card hucksters, and those infuriating ads for dubious software that pop up disguised as genuine Windows error messages.
Oh, yes -- and eyestrain. Maybe it's just my aging baby-boomer eyes, but I don't have to read more than a few backed-up e-mails before my eyes water and blur, and as I lean back in my chair and try to focus on a crack in the ceiling, I realize that I miss the printed word.
You DO remember the printed word, don't you? Ink letters on paper, bound between covers, and named "Book."
There's just something about taking a book -- a REAL book, with hard covers and heavy-weight paper -- in your hands and slowly sinking down, down, down into the pages.
Let me tell you what I did recently. I read the U.S. Naval Institute's Classics of Naval Literature edition of White-Jacket, a lesser-known work by Herman Melville, of Moby Dick fame.
There is a certain sensual pleasure in reading a superior-quality edition of a book that not even the highest-resolution, flicker-free, flat-screen computer monitor will ever provide: The pillowy "give" of plush rag paper; the tactile feel of letters pressed hard and deep into that fine stock; the sewn-in, silk-ribbon bookmark.
You have to look long and hard these days to find that kind of quality, but when you do, reading takes on a whole new dimension.
You open the book, and it creaks as the stiff, sewn binding flexes for the first time.
Ah, and the smell -- you may speak wistfully of the smell of a new Lexus, but I'll take the heady aroma of premium-quality paper, top-shelf black ink and binder's glue that comes wafting up from that freshly-opened book.
But enough of sitting here on the lot; let's take her out for a spin. The words, incused deeply into that luxurious rag paper, caress the eyes, seduce the mind, come-hither the reader into a vivid mental cinema of ships, seas, characters, storms, and faraway tropic ports of call. Eyestrain? Never. You could read on and on forever in these pages; they are publishing's answer to "fine Corinthian leather."
And at the turn of every page -- a reverent, deliberate step; you'd never just "flip over" to the next page -- is always that slight stiffness, just enough to remind you that, no matter how many people have actually read White-Jacket since Melville wrote it, you are breaking new ground here, your eyes are the very first to see each page of this particular volume since it left the press.
Tired? On the 'Net, I would probably just log off and pick it up tomorrow wherever the cursor blinks.
How crass, how unappreciative, to take a fine work of American literature and shut it down with the peremptory click of a mouse button.
No, I allow myself a big yawn and a stretch -- then gently, reverently, take up that blue silk marker they've thoughtfully sewn in the binding, lay it across the page, and close Mr. Melville, not with a "slam!" but slowly, deliberately, bidding a quiet "good-night" to a close friend with whom I'll pick up the conversation tomorrow, just where we left off.
