[unable to retrieve full-text content]Key West, Florida: Bed and Breakfast Inns That Reinvigorate. Posted by admin on February 23rd, 2012. Is the duration Realistically used Here's Making an effort Few playing? Unfortunately, The particular disturbance and difficulties of i'm …
shia labeouf gurkha fubar safari superman euro 2012 craiglist
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Reuters – Microsoft has asked EU antitrust regulators to intervene in a patent dispute with Google and Motorola Mobility as it stepped up its battle against the Internet search giant.
The updated family home child care licensing rules take effect March 31, 2012. The Department of Early Learning (DEL) has been gathering questions from licensed providers and put them into a new “frequently asked questions” document that is on our website.
The family home rules are the result of an extensive, four-year?negotiated rulemaking process between DEL, the SEIU 925 and others. The negotiated rulemaking team reviewed the existing family home rules, reviewed national research around child care safety and health, and made recommendations to DEL.
The rules do several things, including increasing education and training standards for providers and staff;?enhancing standards around playground safety, food service, cribs, emergency preparedness, nurture and guidance, and screen time; and?requiring?a higher level of communication with parents around child development.
Learn more about the rules and watch the video of a December 2011 training webinar?online.
Do you have questions about the updated rules? Email them to rules@del.wa.gov.
Source: http://delconnect.blogspot.com/2012/02/frequently-asked-questions-about-family.html
israel running scared lithuania blue blood diamond sylvester stallone iceland
[unable to retrieve full-text content]
AP – After more than 12 hours of talks, the countries that use the euro reached an agreement early Tuesday to hand Greece euro130 billion ($170 billion) in additional bailout loans to save it from a potentially disastrous default next month.
akira miami heat lebron james mike miller wipeout crossfire mitsubishi
?
?
?
?
?
Check out the ?Hope Standard? spotlight on the RJT presentation that took place last weekend, in partnership with Pacific Sport Fraser Valley, and Gymnastics BC.
CLICK HERE to read the article!
Be the first to like this post.
bahamas erin brockovich serbia huguette clark fleet week bosnia supernova
ATLANTA (AP) ? A federal advisory panel wants all U.S. adults to get vaccinated against whooping cough.
The panel voted Wednesday to expand its recommendation to include all those 65 and older who haven’t gotten a whooping cough shot as an adult.
Children have been vaccinated against whooping cough since the 1940s, but a vaccine for adolescents and adults was not licensed until 2005.
Since then, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has gradually added groups of adults to its recommendations, including 2010 advice that it be given to elderly people who spend a lot of time around infants.
Wednesday’s recommendation means now all adults should get at least one dose.
“They’ve been moving up to this in baby steps,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccines expert.
Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a highly contagious bacterial disease that in rare cases can be fatal. It leads to severe coughing that causes children to make a distinctive whooping sound as they gasp for breath.
Recommendations from the panel are usually adopted by the government, which sends the guidance out to doctors.
Contributing to the push to vaccinate more adults was a California whooping cough epidemic in 2010 that infected 9,000. Ten babies died after exposure to infected adults or older children.
There’s little data on how many elderly people have gotten the vaccine. Only about 8 percent of adults under 65 have been vaccinated, but about 70 percent of adolescents have.
Health officials believe whooping cough is underreported in older adults, perhaps because in older people the illness can be hard to distinguish from other coughing ailments.
A goal of the recommendation is to prevent teens and adults from spreading the disease to infants, although there’s not good evidence this “herd immunity” approach has worked so far. Vaccination for children is included in a series of shots, beginning at 2 months.
The adult vaccine combines protection against tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough. One version of the vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, was licensed for use in the elderly last year. The committee said another version, made by Sanofi Pasteur, can also be given. Both cost about $35 a dose.
The shot is as safe as a regular tetanus booster. Estimates range widely for how effective the vaccine is at preventing whooping cough in older adults, or how much its protection wanes years afterward.
___
Online:
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/ACIP/
.
Associated Press
wen fia sound cloud dragons angry birds game minecraft friends
[unable to retrieve full-text content]
AP – Michigan has become squirm central for Republican presidential candidates who are trying to explain their opposition to the auto bailout before the big primary in the home of automakers. Their tale is terribly tangled, and President Barack Obama isn’t telling it straight either.
mega millions winning numbers dallas morning news pepsi channel 9 news border morse code oprah winfrey show
[unable to retrieve full-text content]The structured settlement payment might either be done by the company itself or, the company might invest the settlement amount in an Annuity plan with some financial structured settlement companies (such as an insurance …
Source: http://beginjob.com/finance/structured-settlements-or-lump-sum.html
chicago weather detroit tigers mega millions winning numbers dallas morning news pepsi channel 9 news border
?
Is this industry ready to talk about its authors yet? Ready or not, you?re invited to start chatting it up.
On Friday at 4p Eastern (1p Pacific, 2100 GMT), I?ll be joined by Dan Blank of We Grow Media in co-guest-hosting the weekly #FollowReader Twitter chat, at the invitation of Kat Meyer, co-chair with Joe Wikert of the O?Reilly Media Tools of Change Conference (ToC) just held in New York last week.
Our theme will be the deliberately wide-open question ?How are authors faring in the new world of publishing??
Finally found the opening.
?
Understand, this is not a gripe-?n’-snipe fest, nor a Kumbaya campfire about the glory o? story. No, this is business, exploratory business, and it?s open to anybody who has a stake in publishing. I hope you?ll consider coming by and hashtagging with us.
Here?s one thing I want to know: Can real sense ever be made of the digital disruption of publishing ? and our possible future of mother-ship retailers hovering in cyberspace over flocks of woolgathering independents in pastures below ? if the core industry?s relationship with writers isn?t addressed?
During discussions of the contretemps between Amazon and the Independent Publishers Group (more on that below), I?ve been reminded by our colleague, Andrew Rhomberg in London, of the phrase ?creative destruction? from economic theory.
If anyone can manage creative destruction, shouldn?t it be literature people? Wouldn?t it be smart to take advantage of the fact that the wheels have fallen off the publishing wagon? As new models and vehicles are tried and tested, why not embrace this question of the industry?s Upstairs, Downstairs dependence on a frequently alienated and mistrustful class of source workers?
?
Rich Adin, in The Failure of the Gatekeepers at An American Editor, writes this week:
The?function?of nourishing new writers, has been falling by the wayside in the last decade. Financially, traditional publishers are struggling?the competition has turned fierce. ? Fewer blockbusters are being published so there are fewer blockbusters available to generate the kind of income needed to nourish non-blockbuster authors. And authors are increasingly going their own way because they get to keep more of the money and don?t need to worry about publisher rejection.
As I wrote in last week?s Ether, I left ToC sharply concerned that the very best discussions about the industry?s future are going on largely without the authors, the people who might form an unprecedented robust and innovative part of the answer to publishing?s dilemmas if they had the chance to engage in the convo.
In a coincidence of timing, writing community specialist and University of Cincinnati professor Jane Friedman, who hosts the Ether here at her site, posted her excellent warning, Authors: Don?t Pay Money for BEA Book Promotion, just as I?d been reading an arresting series of comments on a blog post titled Who Controls Your Amazon eBook Price?
I?ve seen, first-hand, what Friedman is warning writers about. I?ve had self-published authors approach me at BEA, asking me to take a copy of their book to review ? because even in the best spot on the best shelves in the outback of BEA?s perimeter, nobody ?can ignore 10,000 other things happening at the same time,? as Friedman puts it. Your book may as well lie under the brightly-colored carpet of one of the Big Six pavilions.
#publishingeuphemisms “the novel never quite reached the huge potential of its promise” = your pitch letter was better than the book
?
And in Jim C. Hines? piece on Amazon ebook pricing, you meet an author who writes fantasy, both in traditional and self-publishing circumstances ? the ?hybrid? publishing approach.
What Hines describes is a relatively mundane but annoying glitch at Amazon. The price of a self-published ebook title selling for $2.99 at other outlets was reduced inexplicably by Amazon for some time to 99 cents, although no rival site was underselling it.
A couple of principles are involved here:
(1) Amazon?s contract apparently allows the company ? to quote Hines on the Kindle Direct Publishing terms ? ?sole and complete discretion to set the retail price at which your Digital Books are sold through the Program.?
And (2) the famous 70-percent royalty an author is paid in this setting by Amazon seems to be figured on the actual price of the sale (in this case, 99 cents) rather than the author?s list price ($2.99), despite the fact that the author didn?t know about or OK the discount that doesn?t seem to have been in response to any competitive price pressures.
Hines explains that KDP responded promptly to him and, in fact, restored the list price he had set, once he pointed out to them that there was no low-ball seller requiring the 99-cents sale price. However, he writes:
Self-publishing puts you in charge of every aspect of your career. Meaning when Amazon messed with one of my books, it was on me to challenge them and get it fixed. They did restore the price, as I said, but what exactly would I do if they said ?Deal with it.? Sue them?
There was a problem connecting to Twitter.
?
My purpose in bringing this to you is not to focus on Amazon?s terms and conditions with self-publishers. I?m more interested in what I see in reading through the 54 comments lodged in a couple of days? time on Hines? post.
Here are authors, some angry and bewildered, some savvy and sardonic, some probing and earnest, some urbane and philosophical, some represented by agents, some not, some traditionally published, some not, but all of them engaged, either questioning Hines further to follow his arguments, or offering guidance, or worrying aloud for their own publishing situations.? Some phrases:
?they are the best game in town for selling my backlist. Still, with terms such as these I start to twitch when some authors sing their praises with such enthusiastic fervor?
?I?d like to expand on your statement about anyone thinking Amazon is in it for authors being a fool?
?They fixed the price. They have not fixed the royalties, and according to their terms of service, they don?t have to?
?I think we authors should advocate (and I have) that Amazon give us more control over our promotional pricing, so that this happens less often. Kobo is infuriatingly slow to change?
?While this sucks, I see the same thing in traditional publishing contracts all the time?.
?Actually, regular contracts ARE better because the publisher is constrained from changing the rules as it goes along?
?Do you have a publishing contract that actually specifies the price your book will be sold for? Because I?ve been around awhile and I?ve never seen such a thing?
?It?s a competitive environment, and if you believe otherwise you have spent too much time on Joe Konrath?s blog. Amazon, however, controls 70% of the ebook market?
?Jim do you know if other self-publishing platforms (Smashwords, Lulu, etc.) have had the same issues?
?I?m working on my first novel and self publishing was the route?
?I have published 15 books through traditional publishers. Never once was I asked what price I wanted to set for my books?
It takes a lot of time to wade through the whole raft of comments. But taken as a whole, they offer a striking, alarming overview of how profound is the confusion among writers, including authors published many times over, about (a) where they stand in the industry, (b) what the new ?freedom? of digital publishing really means for them,? and (c) how the core industry is debating the business? future.
I?m afraid I seem to be on an Arthur Miller jag of late. At some point ?attention must finally be paid? to this Internet-swollen army of talent. So come talk with us Friday afternoon. #FollowReader.
Don?t make me send the sheepdogs out to round you up.
I’ve said it before: it appears Jan/Feb is when SHIT GOES DOWN, apparently, in publishing.
?
Amazon: Speaking softly in sticky times
?It?s a gutsy move and we?ll see who blinks first, but I applaud Mark (Suchomel) and wish him and IPG?s clients luck because this is only the first of many of these battles that distributors and those who sell direct will face on this front.
Following Michael Cader?s write Amazon Removes Kindle Versions of IPG Books After Distributor Declines to Change Selling Terms at Publishers Weekly ? and Laura Hazard Owen?s extensive update at paidContent, Update: Amazon Yanks 5,000 Kindle Titles In Fight Over Terms ? Don Linn quietly opens the tackle box at Bait ?n? Beer to reel in some context on what he gauges ?a significant move by both parties.?
In simplified terms, what has happened is that the Independent Publishers Group?s (IDP), which reps some 200 smaller publishers to Amazon, didn?t like renewal terms Amazon has asked for on ebook pricing. IDP president Mark Suchomel has decided to say no to those terms. ?Amazon, in turn, has removed IDP client-publishers? ebooks (not print, just ebooks) from its online store.
Linn?s post, You Had Me at ?No,? is worded in a way I hope you?ll allow to throw some balance into your thoughts about the situation. More and more, we need level heads on the field of Amazonia. Industry hysteria misleads the amateurs and exhausts the pros. Here is Linn:
Those of you who?ve been reading this blog for a bit know I?m no Amazon hater and in fact I?ve been a booster some of the time. But ALL of the time, I?ve said if you don?t like how they compete, then change the game. Mark Suchomel, who?s a friend, has decided to do that by refusing to be forced into new terms that he knows will ultimately make it difficult for him to maintain his business. He also apparently has the support of his publisher clients, which is huge. Amazon can hardly say it is selling ?any book you want in print or digital format? if they don?t carry digital titles from IPG?s 200+ clients.
For his part, Suchomel writes in a memo to the client-publishers ? included in Owen?s report ? several very clear requests for how customers can be directed to outlets still selling the ebooks in question. Among them, he asks publishers to inform consumers: ?This book is available in print or electronic edition at your local independent bookshop,? www.BarnesandNoble.com, www.indiebound.org, iTunes, Kobo, and elsewhere. It is not currently available in a Kindle edition.?
Because IDP?s print editions are still sold by Amazon, we can assume that the publishers served by IDP can ill afford to have those print sales lost in the anger of an ebook standoff. And so Sumochel goes on in smartly measured tones:
Remember that Amazon continues to be an important account that sells a lot of units. This is a business decision on Amazon?s part, and hopefully they will soon decide to reverse it and buy at our standard terms.
And for his part, Linn helps us all see that this is not just a staring match over ebook pricing. It gets us into an arena of distributor resistance. Some key values beyond just the price of ebooks are at stake. As Linn writes:
Distributors play an important role in maintaining the vitality of smaller, independent presses and their disintermediation would be an unfortunate event in the lives of those presses (who seldom publish books about Snooki or Justin Bieber).
More than I want to know.
?
Amazon: Readers don?t shop the spine
If big authors jump ship to Amazon or elsewhere, readers will follow them. If the Big Six collapse entirely, most readers will not care, provided they can still find decent books to read. So publishers: it?s time to embrace technology, put your customers first, and entirely revamp the logistical architecture of the industry, or Amazon?s publishing arm will do it for you (and nobody wants that).
As the power of Amazon comes into deeper focus in incidents like the IDP disagreement above, the consumerist basis for that strength can never be overstated.
Nico Vreeland is here in a post that Paul Biba put up at Teleread. Despite the bark of its headline, It?s time to start blaming publishers for the troubles of the publishing industry Vreeland is getting at something too fundamentally correct to overlook:? As with television networks, recording labels, and potato-chip manufacturers, the public?s loyalty is not to the corporation behind a show, an artist, or a Dorito. The public follows the actor, the singer, the flavor.
@ Interesting. Sounds like Amazon wants to remove another middleman; makes sense, actually.
?
In a responding post from one ?Joanna,? a Canadian ? Is Amazon evil, or are they just really good at business? ? there?s a 1-Click understanding of why Amazon holds the power it holds today. She sees not ?predatory? or ?monopolistic,? but smart:
Amazon is not evil. They have just figured out what the customers want better than anybody else has so far, and they are giving it to them. Vreeland points out, correctly, that customers don?t buy ?Random House books? or ?Penguin Books.? They buy Stephen King books or James Patterson books or whomever?The way to beat Amazon is not to complain about how evil they are. It?s to build a better website. If you want to compete, compete! Build a better website. Nobody is stopping you.
These two posts capture how the fray of the day might look to an MOS, the ?man on the Street? interviewed by the media after the bomb goes off. The MOS is the one who?s going to tell us in a deeply Southern dialect, ?It sounded like a freight train went through here? right after something in pinstripes goes off the higher ledge.
These posts are reminders of how much fire big publishers are playing with if they yell, ?Seattle did it!? However you may see the rise of Amazon, James Patterson, by any other imprint, would sell as sweet.
IPG: “If anyone from AMZN calls you, please let them know that you are distributed by & contractually tied to IPG” http://t.co/t7Axe0za
?
?
Because libraries are, at most 5% of a publisher?s business and far less of the ebook business, and because the market is changing so rapidly and because every retailer except Amazon can be said to be struggling to carve out a sustainable position in the global ebook marketplace, there are many legitimate reasons for the biggest publishers to take a wait-and-see attitude about libraries and ebooks.
Coming at a good time, Mike Shatzkin?s Libraries and publishers don?t have symmetrical interest in a conversation helps remind us that whatever the lay of the playing field, the stakes in the ongoing confrontation between libraries and publishers are not even.
Of course, libraries view this differently because the big books from the big publishers are a lot more than 5% of their patrons? interest. This is an imbalance that would explain the difference in attitude of the parties, for anybody who cares to accept the reality of it.
Shatzkin gets very quickly in this essay to an even more defining statement, not easy for many to read, maybe, but important to consider:
We already face the possibility that we?re headed for a single retailer for ebooks and print online called Amazon. Every other channel to the consumer, libraries and retailers both (whether they know it or not) are ultimately fighting for their digital lives.
Going on to get at some specific points of tension with Amazon, Shatzkin stays close to his underlying message, and its a good one. ?These aren?t moral decisions? being made in various offices of publishing from New York To Seattle, he writes, ?they?re commercial ones (even when they?re being made by not-for-profit entities).?
I always expect an entity to act in its own self-interest, particularly when survival could be involved. (And Amazon, trading at 135 times earnings and facing the likelihood that their sales tax advantage in the United States is on the verge of being eliminated, is entitled to think that way too.) I think we should all understand that intelligent people on all sides feel that they are fighting for their survival. That includes Amazon, the publishers, the competing retailers, and the libraries. Our problem is that the interests don?t align and what I think people sometimes have trouble accepting is that it is possible they never will.
My Kindle Touch has arrived. So far it has been abducted by about 14 coworkers, all of whom seem to want to fondle it. #publishingfetishes
?
I haven?t seen librarians so upset about anything since the Patriot Act?(Publishers) say that lack of ?friction? really changes the business model. And right now there is no uniformity across the publishing industry as a business model.
That?s WCAI Senior Reporter Sean Corcoran (working on series of reports about libraries for WCAI and WGBH) on The Takeaway with John Hockenberry.
A slide from Barbara Genco’s ToC presentaion.
Of course, in her keynote address at ToC last week, Barbara A. Genco of the Library Journal resoundingly rejected the ?friction? argument: ?Friction is fiction.? At about 7.5 minutes into the video of her talk at ToC, Genco explains that the publishers use the ?friction? argument to say that over-the-air transmission of ebooks is ?too easy,? creating an uncontrolled distribution model.
Now, Corcoran and Jill Erickson, a librarian at the Falmouth, Massachusetts, Public Library, are heard in this audio clip, Library Access to E-books Worries Publishers, with Erickson describing some perfectly verifiable friction, the frustration of library patrons and librarians with publishers:
Look at yesterday?s New York Times bestsellers. Top 10 fiction hardcover bestsellers. Of those 10, five we can?t buy (as ebooks). Four we can buy. And one we can buy but we can only have 26 circulations, which is crazy?It?s very hard to explain why we don?t have Stephen King?s new book as an ebook, because people want it as an ebook.
?
DO post your Twitter handle somewhere prominent on your home page if you tweet. Don?t just use one of those birdy icons. Make sure you put your whole @twittername up there. I spend way too much time using Twitter?s iffy search engine (why is it so useless?) trying to find the handle for somebody I?m quoting or want to reach. If it?s right up there on your blog home page, people are much more likely to be able to tweet you or follow.
Nobody knows the trouble a busy tweeterina has seen when it comes to trying to find people?s Twitter handles. St. Anne R. Allen clearly had what remains of my sanity in mind when she wrote How to Blog Part V: 12 Dos and Don?ts for Author-Bloggers.
I mean, do you want your stuff tweeted? If not, don?t worry. Make it utterly impossible to (a) guess or (b) find your Twitter handle.
But if you?d like me and other social mediators to schlepp your deathless prose around le tweeterie, you really must put your Twitter handle ? the @twittername ? out there front and center. Not a link to your page on Twitter (though it?s fine to make your @twittername? a hotlink). Don?t make me or Lady Anne waste time clicking through to Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey and Noah Glass? and Evan Williams? ?house to find your @twittername and properly credit you with your own work. (And I?m sure Santa Anna is talking now to that comely quartet right now about their funny search engine.).
For now, Allen has more good advice on her list, including this wise note I?ve never come across before:
DON?T die intestate. No matter how young and healthy and immortal you feel?Make sure somebody besides you has the passwords to your blog so if anything dire should happen, they can attend to it and/or take it down?You could get into a parasailing accident while you?re on that vacation in Mazatlan. Or get stuck without power for 2 weeks in darkest Connecticut. Be attacked by angry bees.?You don?t want your blog hanging unattended in cyberspace as it collects Ukrainian porn and fake Viagra ads.
What?s wrong with Ukrainian porn?
#publishingeuphemisms “though, at times, an exhilarating read, I found the tone of the novel to be uneven” = hysterical nonsense
?
The book was written in 72 hours, and built on the powerful Vook platform in 36 hours, and distributed globally in 24 hours. 7 days after Lin?s game-winning three-pointer that made even non-sports fans grin, this book was polished and released.
That particular Lin-grin is on the face of Movable Type Management chief Jason Ashlock as he writes a post, Linsanity: The Improbable Rise of Jeremy Lin, about author Alan Goldsher?s Vook shot of the same title.
That 15,000-word monograph is, we learn from GalleyCat?s Jason Boog, just one of seven (7) Jeremy Lin Books for Your Kindle.
Surely, the most inspiriting title among them is The Zen of Jeremy Lin: 17 Nuggets of Wisdom from Confucius to Jeremy Lin about Basketball and Life.
And while you?re studying the wisdom of the young zen master, you?ll be edified to know from AP Sports, I?m sure, that Hachette has thrown Timothy Dalrymple onto the court, to lavish a glacial three months on something called ?Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity,? due in stores in May.
That one might be copy-edited.
?
?
Seeking to advance the narrative that the Nook Tablet is a true multimedia tablet and not just a big expensive e-reader, Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch said in an investor call today that apps are the company?s fastest-growing content area, and ?within apps it?s entertainment, movies, Netflix, games, kids.?
From deep inside darkest Confused eBook Sales Land, our intrepid Laura Hazard (good name for the job) Owen reports to us at paidContent on the rather bizarre moves that Barnes & Noble?s Monsieur Lynch is making these days to try to get a Nook into every garage. Her story, headlined with an understated Apps Are ?Huge? For Barnes & Noble, lowers the entertainment boom on our literary heads, children, helmets on: ?Angry Birds is still the company?s most-downloaded app, while Netflix ?toggles between #2 and #3.??
But take heart, maybe it?s not all going to the gamers. Yet. Owen?s story goes on, with quotes from Lynch:
Lynch said that customers who buy Nooks also spend more on print books, echoing the sentiment expressed by B&N?s Jim Hilt at Digital Book World last month. ?They not only buy the hardware, accessories, warranties and, more meaningfully from a margin standpoint, the digital content,? he said, ?but they also continue to buy phsyical books. The idea that people who are digital readers just stop buying physical books is?not true.? This contradicts recent Bowker research suggesting that the majority of e-book ?power buyers? switch to digital books exclusively within a year.
I wrote on my calendar for March 2nd “don’t schedule anything” but I have no idea why!
?
In its recently filed answer,Open Road neither denies nor admits that its digital version of Wolves competes directly with the sale of the book in paper form. As I wrote previously, while the grant of primary rights did not mention eBook rights, a court might find it unfair for Ms. George to collect royalties from HarperCollins, while, at the same, time enjoying a royalty stream for the same work from Open Road. There is, however, scant law on the enforceability of non-compete clauses found in publishing contracts.
Lloyd J. Jassin of Copylaw publishes and comments on the response of Open Road Media to HarperCollins? lawsuit over the right to publish Jean Craighead George?s book Julie of the Wolves in ebook format.
What?s next?? Briefs will be prepared and a?parade of industry experts will be asked to submit expert affidavits in support of either HarperCollins or Open Road, stating under ?penalty of perjury,? that the ability to read text on a screen [did] [didn't] date back to 1971 (or earlier).
?
Article Sommelier here with a pairing representative of many pieces we?re seeing these days. They reflect the recent Franzenian trend for established literary writers to pan e-literature and cling to their papier like overwrought community theater actors who can?t learn their lines and drop their scripts.
Alternate subhead for this section: Hey, do you think that Internet thing is going to last?
First,?Nathan Bransford ?s nod to the issue. Here?s a line from our earnest friend?s hand-wringer Why Are So Many Literary Writers Technophobic? In it, Bransford includes Jennifer Egan?s apparent unease about things-tech. It?s on display in Dan Rosemblum?s coverage at Capital of Egan?s talk at Columbia University, The last thing on Jennifer Egan?s mind is the needs of e-readers (although she does say that if HBO can do ?something great? with her A Visit From the Goon Squad).
An exasperated Bransford writes:
Doesn?t it seem like there?s some nexus between literary writers and technophobia? Are literary writers more likely to fear our coming robot overlords and proudly choose an old cell phone accordingly (if they have one at all)? Do they know something we don?t?
I doubt they know anything we don?t. They?re just nostalgia-heads. And they?re not happy with electric waffle irons, either.
Which is why I?m grateful for a comparatively eloquent opinion in The New York Review of Books from Tim Parks, E-books Can?t Burn.
The e-book, by eliminating all variations in the appearance and weight of the material object we hold in our hand and by discouraging anything but our focus on where we are in the sequence of words (the page once read disappears, the page to come has yet to appear) would seem to bring us closer than the paper book to the essence of the literary experience?In this sense the passage from paper to e-book is not unlike the moment when we passed from illustrated children?s books to the adult version of the page that is only text. This is a medium for grown-ups.
And while Parks is gracious enough to shrug amiably at the end ? ?it becomes harder and harder to see why the literati are not giving the phenomenon a more generous welcome? ? one fears that he has answered the question with his own reference to maturity.
I can?t help but return to Henry Miller?s The Cosmological Eye (curses, no Kindle edition yet) for a kind of textual outburst:
You want to communicate. All right, communicate! Use any and every means.
Can?t we just let the Franzenians and Eganites prattle along while we get on with things? Who cares if some of our literary fictionists ?are stuck in the muddle of older technology? What shall we do? Back the car over all those e-readers and just stop this digital nonsense?
I?m not tossing out my Albert Camus books just because they?re on paper, don?t be ridiculous. But I am duplicating that collection as fast as editions become available for my Kindle Fire. I want Camus closer to me than paper. My mind hums only a? pixel?s breadth from his in e-life.
Here?s a bit from near the end of his life, a passage in the cahiers of Camus, who could take Franzen and Egan with The Plague tied behind his back. The translation is Ryan Bloom?s:
These twenty days of racing through Greece, I contemplate them now from Athens before my departure, and they seem to me like a lone and lengthy source of light that I will be able to keep at the center of my life. For me, Greece is no more than a long glittering day extended over voyages, and also like an enormous island covered with red flowers and mutilated gods endlessly afloat on a sea of light, beneath a crystalline sky. To retain this light, to return, to no longer give in to the darkness of days?
You just read that digitally. Online. What were you saying about paper?
?
Porter Anderson is a Fellow with the National Critics Institute, and a producer and consultant formerly with the United Nations World Food Programme in Rome and INDEX: Design to Improve Life?in Copenhagen. As a journalist, he has worked with media including three networks of CNN, The Village Voice, and D Magazine. He reviews literary fiction, is a regular contributor to Writer Unboxed, and is based in Tampa.?
?
benjamin netanyahu liger line rider caylee anthony news channel 4 storm chasers map of the united states
