No, your eyes do not deceive you. Werner Herzog.

via Ebert

The archive contains manuscript materials for Wallace’s books, stories and essays; research materials; Wallace’s college and graduate school writings; juvenilia, including poems, stories and letters; teaching materials and books.

Lots of scanned images.

It’s a good day.

I thoroughly enjoyed his insights. I’m on the edge of my seat, here, imagining how Mod’s concept of vertical chapters might be realized.

But I couldn’t help but be vexed by an offhanded remark he makes in his introduction:

As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over?

We’re losing the throwaway paperback.
The airport paperback.
The beachside paperback.

We’re losing the dredge of the publishing world: disposable books. The book printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity. The book produced to be consumed once and then tossed. The book you bin when you’re moving and you need to clean out the closet.

These are the first books to go. And I say it again, good riddance.

Anyone who buys books will probably understand what he’s talking about. Even while running your eyes over the shelves at a bookstore, it’s not impossible to fantasize about which books you’d proudly keep on your bookshelf when you’re finished and which ones you’d probably resell on Amazon¹—the fact that you haven’t actually read any of the books you’re judging notwithstanding.

Of course, physical dimensions are a helpful guide; he doesn’t explicitly write it, but the throwaway/airport/beach paperback is often a mass market paperback. In case you’re not familiar with the terminology, close your eyes and visualize a novel from any one of the genres—romance, science fiction, fantasy—that have always been relegated to the critical ghetto. Note the diminutive 4×7 cover, the thick binding, the cheap paper. It’s an unmistakable image.

Despite the fact that I’m just as priggishly dismissive of such books as the next guy,² I can’t help but disagree with Mod’s assertion that they are expendable.

As is the case with TV, it’s the tremendous profits from the popular stuff that subsidizes the high-investment/low-return niche stuff. To lose mass market paperbacks—worthless or not—is to lose a large chunk of revenue. Which translates into a loss for all professional publishers and writers and a grievous blow for the ones with limited commercial appeal.

Though Mod’s publishing credentials are infinitely more impressive than my own (as in, he has actually published books), I worry that he’s mistaking ‘foundation’ for ‘dead weight’.

With large publishers scrambling to rebuild the bottom line, would it really be a stretch to imagine that a printed version of Infinite Jest—the weird, sprawling, annotated, 1104-page masterpiece—would never see the light of day? Or that a person would need to barter a kidney to get his or her hands on one?

There’s simply no telling whether an ebook model would suit the mass market format. Though Apple and Amazon will have no trouble matching the basement-level pricing scheme, one cannot look past the fact that getting them into the casual consumer’s hands will first require getting a $250+ device into the casual consumer’s hands.

It seems to me that the path of least resistance (and thus the most likely next step) will be the opposite of what Mod suggests—to send the niche publications to the ereaders and continue to sell the mass-market stuff for as long as the demand holds out.

The shortcomings of such a reality are apparent. Compiling a worthy bookshelf is, to the devoted aesthete, one of the unmatchable joys of life. Physical books can be lent to friends and colleagues, or dog-eared, or forgotten in airplane seat-backs. Losing these small things will be a bitter pill to swallow.³

There’s no questioning that the iPad will do for boutique publishers roughly what the Internet did for graphic designers and software engineers. Which is to say, in a decade, small publishers might find their thoughts drifting to how they ever got along without it. That’s the core of Mod’s essay, and I can only echo his hopes that it will become a reality.

But because the niche typically encounters tremendous resistance when it tries to cannibalize the mainstream—for the mainstream would probably rather just stop reading than read more challenging things, if forced to choose between the two—it seems a little shortsighted to cheer the possibility of a large-publisher apocalypse between then and now. There are few who would profit from it.

1. Or box up and abandon on the front steps of the library on a dark and stormy night
2. Disclosure: I recently bought the mass market version of Carl Sagan’s excellent Cosmos.
3. Though I suppose it would be somewhat less so if it were coupled with some sort of receptacle system—perhaps a network of drop boxes in public spaces, wherein readers could leave their ‘disposable’ books to be repulped and recycled

via TMN

1. In essence, kind of a manifesto of what made him one of the most promising politicians of our era.

1. There’s a caveat re these last two: Nobody gets Monkey Island unless 50,000 bundles get sold, and the figure for RapidWeaver is even higher than that. So get cracking!

Communications bunker with 8,800 sq. ft. of nuclear hardened underground floor-space. 13.1 acres m/l. 177 ft. tower with income potential. Structure is clean and ready for immediate use with some new paint and tile work

Tough economic times, I know. But what do you say about investing in a Cold War-era bunker? Yeah. Me too.

via Tyler Cowen

via

CALCUTTA, India — When a drought-stricken farmer began digging for water, little did he know he’d tap into one of the most powerful forces in the universe!

I’ve dreamed of this day: here’s the entire archive of Weekly World News, courtesy of Google Books.

via Coudal

In the throes of an economic downturn, with unemployment rates mounting, the very idea of a robot chef might seem indulgent at best — at worst, downright offensive.

On the subject of designing lovable robots to prepare our food.

The Guardian got 29 professional writers¹ to offer some ‘tips for successful authorship‘.

via The Book Bench

1. Including Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Frantzen, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood and other favorites.

Speedpaint

Does it get any cooler than that? I submit that it does not. I mean, are you even registering Anonym’s preference for the third person singular pronoun?

via Tyler Cowen

Protected by jagged reefs, rough seas and a reputation for shooting outsiders with arrows, there have been relatively few serious attempts to contact the Sentinalese. Those that have been made have failed; even gifts and peaceful offerings left onshore by anthropologists and Indian government officials have been answered with a hail of arrows.

Some information about the ‘stone age people‘ of North Sentinel Island.