What’s at stake here is not so much the physical / digital book divide, but culture and human psychology: what digital books will do to culture that is expressed through the written word and its environs.  Birkets’ view seems to be based on a pessimistic view of readers – that they would willingly give up their human need for deep context for the sake of convenience.  But I can’t help feeling that the human need for deep context is deep itself.  There may be a period of time when people do give up that context for convenience’s sake.  However, I think that the need for it will start to reassert itself – you don’t miss the water until your well runs dry, but when it does you don’t just sit and die of thirst, you dig a new one.

A comparison might help to explain my optimism.  When we first moved to a village near Frome, Somerset, in the early 1980s, it was a bit of a desert – a supermarket had opened up in the centre of town, which had put family butchers and small shops out of business.  Everyone wanted in on this new phenomenon of cheap convenience, but over time it just wasn’t enough.  The town now has two family butchers, a fruit & veg shop, a weekly farmer’s market, a bustling café and a fantastic delicatessen amongst many other things.  Most of these are luxuries – particularly the café and delicatessen – and Frome is by no means poor compared to other towns.  But I think people eventually felt the emptiness of a shop dedicated purely to cheapness and convenience – people’s needs to feel part of a community, to know that more of their money was going into the local economy, to be offered something new by a shopkeeper, reasserted themselves.

Reading is definitely going to change, and there are lots of issues to contend with – many of which are talked about on the excellent if:book, the blog of the Institute for the Future of the Book.  Some are very basic – the Kindle, for example, only has a black and white screen, so can’t show anything with colour pictures.  However, I recently surprised myself by reading an entire 400-page book on my iPhone on the train from Edinburgh to London (the fantastic Your Name Here available for a suggested $8 as a PDF from Helen DeWitt’s site) and didn’t feel frustrated by the small screen or having to cover part of the text with my finger to scroll.  The current form of deep context will perhaps disappear – but, particularly given the possibilities for audio, video and image opened up by the internet, I’m confident that something else will develop to take its place.

Other interesting sites:

My Own Private Alexandria
textsound
Project Gutenberg
Stanza for iPhone
Readability

Splash image by Nic McPhee

Exhibition at Paradise Row, 2nd May – 8th June 2008

This is money… this is greed… this is power… This is… In the Blackout… the blue petals of Forget-me-nots sit, a pretty, ghostly, presence on the surface of the canvas and behind an image of… what? Of, this… of pure desire, ordered, corralled into regularised working hours, into electronic information – light no less – that fills the hungry, unblinking computer screens that chart, with ruthless relentlessness, the fluctuating prices of every commodity in the world… This is… Christmas Bollocks…  particles of carbon…. an element born late in the history of the universe… born in the heart of a dying star… once coal black, now, compressed by weight, heat and time, they are transmuted into sharp, clear crystals that glint from behind a reflective screen of glass in which Christmas lights glitter in dark moments… This is… Leeds Market… Edwardian iron structures that soar upwards, conspiring to capture space from the sky in order to frame the daily rituals of production, display and consumption… This is… Coming with her Husband… two luxury crustaceans, two limpid, languid langoustines, replete with lemon wedges… temptingly thrust towards you…

Description property of Paradise Row…

‘If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto.’

Paradise Row is proud to present The Money Plot a new exhibition by Russian born, London based artist Margarita Gluzberg. Comprising of paintings, drawings and a display of an eclectic range of books, printed matter and other ephemera, the show draws on autobiographical material from Gluzberg’s Soviet childhood, historical images of the English industrial North, the glittering contemporary shop facades of Bond Street and iconic pictures of trading floors, to piece together a bio-fictional history of consumption and its effects. 

The works plot a serendipitous course through an imagined, personal history of the birth of modern consumer society. No clear thesis is presented, no blueprint for resistance drawn up, instead Gluzberg offers an empathic, response to the vast, vital energies of capital flows that animate our world.

The title of the show is taken from an appendix of Balzac’s novel La Cousine Bette. The work’s editors decided that in order to understand the complex network of the characters‚ relationships and intrigues in the book, the reader must be provided with a synopsis they termed The Money Plot – a breakdown of debts, financial dependencies and connections between the protagonists. The Money Plot lies behind all human relationships. 

This is the Money Plot.

Margarita Gluzberg – The Money Plot

2nd May – 8th June 2008 | Wednesday to Sunday, 12 noon – 6pm

Private View : Thursday May 1st 2008, 7 – 9pm

Paradise Row, St. Matthew’s Hall, 2 Wood Close, London E2 6ET

Telephone : 020 7613 3311

Map : www.paradiserow.com/contact

Website : www.paradiserow.com

Margarita’s page on LoveHowlMuse : www.lovehowlmuse.com/margarita_gluzberg