Electronic Book Burning? Not in my country.

Alan Kaufman's accusation (appearing in the October,2009 online issue of Evergreen) that E-books and other new technologies have been quietly carrying out a final solution against traditional books has generated some buzz on the internet recently. Yes. Kaufman is very specific in his language. He describes "a silent corporate Krystallnacht decimating the world of literacy."

He hits all of the horrifying and expected notes of the apocalypse of the printed page:

1. Corporations control what people read on their Kindles. The New York Times reported July 19, 2009, that Amazon.com remotely removed certain books from Kindles everywhere. Apparently ignorant of the irony, Amazon.com removed copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm". The Times story reported that Amazon.com indicated there was some conflict of rights that forced them to "recall" those editions and maybe that's true. Nevertheless, the action sent chills across the publishing world straight to defenders of free press and free speech: Corporations can and will control what we read on our electronic book readers.

2. Google wants to digitize and thereby control the world's books. The BBC reported September 3, 2009, on an agreement between the internet giant and the US Author's Guild and The Association of American Publishers to allow Google to scan books - some still under copyright protection - for the stated purpose of creating a searchable database of literature. Many observers fear that allowing this to happen will grant Google an unassailable monopoly on the world's publishing industry and by extension, the Marketplace of Ideas. The story noted the argument by some that Google should be allowed to proceed simply because they can:

"Google deserves to benefit from having taken the risk of digitizing books when the project's legal status was uncertain and that Google, unlike Microsoft and Yahoo!, has invested millions of dollars in the project and is committed to pushing forward."

3. Ray Bradbury's grim noir, "Fahrenheit 451", depicts a world in which books are burned and life is cheap (see my comments elsewhere in this blog). In Bradbury's dark world, the job of a fireman is to find and burn houses where contraband books are found; there is an endless, abstract war being fought somewhere; and people seek escape through drugs and devices that resemble our own flat screen TVs and IPods.

4. Heinrich Heine's prophetic words: "Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too." Heine, a German Jewish poet (1797-1856), wrote those words, according to Wikipedia, in a poem about the buring of the Koran during the Spanish Inquisition.

These points have horrifying implications. Corporations DO want to control what we read; what we think; what we buy. AND they will if we let them.

However, I find Kaufman's rhetoric deeply troubling: "The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book." Equating the Holocaust with capitalist advantage and progress of technology is demeaning to Jews and a disingenuous analogy. I should say here that Kaufman is a Jew. So am I, by the way. Corporations don't seek out and burn books because they are books. Not in my country they don't - not while I live.

Yes. I do agree with him that for the giant corporations that publishing now represents, books ARE little more than a vehicle to generate capital. Corporations burn books because they are inconvenient; because they may lose money; because they may cause people to think for themselves. Corporations, as any good stock holder will tell you, have only one moral imperative: To generate capital by any reasonable or legal means as spelled out in their corporate charter; to serve the interests of the stock holders. By that definition, a book is no more than the proverbial pound of paper - and it burns at exactly 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

Or pound of flesh, as Heine would have it. In my country, we live and die by the Bill of Rights - Freedom of religion, free expression, free press, free association, etc. We viscerally defend these protections against government infringement. Indeed, perhaps it is time to extend these protections against corporate infringement as well.

I suspect that Kaufman missed the key message in Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451". It is the same mistake that I suspect many of my students made when I taught that book as a high school English teacher - and in that mistake lies a kernel of hope.

That is this: Heine's quote is NOT an accurate representation of the theme of Bradbury's book.

The accurate theme in Bradbury's book is this: Governments or corporations burn will books - and by extension, people - because people let them. If people are indifferent or apathetic to what happens around them, governments and corporations will do as they please. You want to save a book? Pick up a pen - write to someone with your complaints. Buy a book. OR dare I even suggest it: READ a book?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Maybe we should rename the :"Bill of Rights". Let's call it "The Bill of Responsibilities." Because if we don't defend the vision of the world that we want to live in, someone else will impose THEIR version of the world on us.