I was giddy at the idea of an e-reader – all those stories dozing behind the sleek screen of that slender tablet. Books on demand. Books that won’t tear or wrinkle. Books whose spines don’t split, whose pages never fall out in chunks as if the story has developed mange. Endless variety, and virtually nothing to carry.
For an obsessive, lifelong reader, it seemed like the answer to everything. So when I received a Kindle for Christmas, I was thrilled. I immediately began downloading stuff I’d been meaning for ages to get my hands on. Christopher Hitchens’ musings on death as his approached; a posthumous collection by Kurt Vonnegut; that devastating, hilarious essay by David Foster Wallace about the surreality of life on a cruise ship; everything David Rakoff ever penned (what’s with me and doomed men, anyway?).
Oh, I read and read. And for a while, I did love my Kindle. I was infatuated. He was so pretty, so glib, so light, so quick with the words — the infinite, beautiful words. He even defined the ones I didn’t know. Just press the word, and up bounced its explanation. Miraculous.
But soon I started to notice things.
When I would try to lie on my side, for instance, he would flip the text, toggling it so that I could no longer read. He was only trying to help, but it annoyed me.