The Breakfast Table

The Perennial E-Book Revolution

Dear Cynthia–

I see that the Washington Post today ran one of those boneheaded stories on the coming revolution in electronic books. The piece–by Linton Weeks–is the second of a three-part series, which I find hard to fathom, since today’s installment seems to fulfill all the requirements of the genre:

1. Open with some cute writing about how gosh-darn hard it is to use an old-fashioned book. “They get dusty and musty and make strong men sneeze,” Weeks writes. What was Gutenberg thinking?

2. Remind folks–presumably just before they put an acetylene torch to their bookcase–that, hey, books have been around for 500 years, and some people still like ‘em. “Books,” Weeks observes, “hold a special place in the hearts and heads of educated folks.”

3. Quote Sven Birkerts.

4. Report on some new whiz-bang technology, in this case the Microsoft Reader. (Does Janet Reno know about this?)

5. Note that some respectable-sounding organization–in this case the Association of American Publishers–predicts that e-books will catch on big-time within five years.

The reason I call such stories boneheaded is that I’ve been reading them for a good 10 years now, and the basic elements of them never change–even the five-year time frame. I wrote one of these myself circa 1993. And yes, someday the principal distribution model for books, magazines, and newspapers will be electronic. Indeed, at least on the margins it’s already beginning to happen–just ask the circulation manager of any newspaper. But I don’t want to read a Stephen King novel on my PalmPilot (I can just about make out my to-do list). And I sure don’t want to read any more stories on the rise of the e-book that sound like they could have been written at any point during the last decade.

And now for something completely different. I had only caught Herb Caen toward the end of his long life and career, reading a handful of his columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and reaching the instantaneous judgment that he was terribly overrated. Friends I respect tell me I’m wrong. Now comes further proof that I was too hasty: a report in the Web publication APBNews.com that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI considered Caen to be “a liar, no good, and a gossip monger, who constantly ridicules the United States Government,” a communist sympathizer, a “nit-wit columnist,” and a “key-hole journalist.” Obviously anyone who could inspire such outrage among Hoover’s corrupt minions had talents and qualities I had not previously suspected. All hail Herb.

Good story in this week’s Editor & Publisher about the New York Times’ failure to follow up on revelations in the Los Angeles Times concerning the safety of the diabetes drug Rezulin, and the abdication by the Food and Drug Administration of its traditional oversight role. It turns out that, earlier this year, the LA Times’ Pulitzer-winning media critic, David Shaw, had written a major, and deeply negative, retrospective on NY Times science reporter Gina Kolata’s now-infamous 1998 cancer-cure story, which may be a contributing factor in the NY-LA feud. The E&P story also includes a delightful nugget in which NY Times reporter Denise Grady hangs up on E&P’s Alicia Mundy–pretty unusual fare in what’s typically a rather tame trade magazine.

I haven’t had too many reporters hang up on me, but I’ve had plenty refuse to talk. Why is it that people who make their living getting other people to talk are so reluctant to defend their own work?

Keep on talking,
Dan