There is something special about pen and paper, and type on high-quality paper, what is more deeply satisfying than reading words in a clean font on finely made paper when the writing is carefully crafted – indeed lovingly crafted – and why this especial joy has captured the best of our minds.
Words on screens don’t touch us in the same way. It is, for want of a better way to describe it, why one sees the religious faithful among us reading and praying from books, or portions of the Bible, the Torah, the Book of Common Prayer (check out this wonderful essay about the BCP by James Wood, which was recently in the New Yorker http://nyr.kr/QWjfp7,) in the most private conversation with their personal God and NOT from the screen of an iPhone or a Kindle or a Nook or a tablet. Or why the sensitive secular among us wouldn’t think of reading if it means abandoning our totems: our bound books by Herman Melville, David Foster Wallace and Mary Morris.
All of which is to say that not a single one of a dozen people we heard read at the Melville’s Moby-Dick Reading Marathon on Saturday (Nov. 17) chose to read their portion of the legendary tale (a taste of mine, from Chapter 73, “Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him:” From Stubb: “Look here, Beelzebub, you don’t do it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord I’ll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan, and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail will come short off at the stump- do you see; and then, I rather guess when he finds himself docked in that queer fashion, he’ll sneak off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tail between his legs”) from anything but a bound book, meaning one with black type on medium- to top-grade paper (although it wouldn’t have surprised me if someone among the one hundred and sixty readers who this past weekend joined in the Moby-Dick marathon read from a small type, worn paper classic for sentimental reasons, because reading a good story is one of the most intimate acts – and a computer is anything but intimate.)
Running for Your Life: What About Those Five-Finger Shoes
