We could talk about how the “Aughts” brought us, largely, fake nonfiction and Roberto Bolaño. We could talk about the explosion in popularity enjoyed by Haruki Murakami and Thomas L. Friedman. We could talk about Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, and other luminaries who defined the decade in literature.
But we could also talk about the decade in books⎯defined by publications such as McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, which changed its physical form for each issue, and GOAT, TASCHEN’s giant photographic ode to Muhammad Ali, which is one of the biggest, heaviest, and most expensive books in the history of publishing. These examples are to say: in the first tenth of the 21st Century, publishing has undergone an extensive facelift, if not also a value shift. The beauty and presence of books has become radically elevated, despite the decade’s threat (or, some would argue, promise) of digitalization.
Twenty-seven days into the new decade, Apple announced the release of the iPad⎯the newest, sleekest digital-reading gadget. The Amazon Kindle had been released just over two years before, which was not a failure, but not a viral success, either. Most readers agreed that there was just something missing when you held it, the feeling of holding something aesthetically pleasing in your hands. So the maker of chic computers and cell phones stepped in⎯and we have yet to see how fully the iPad can or will eclipse the book in its use. In the months separating the release of the Kindle from the debut of the iPad, McSweeney’s has gone digital, offering an iPhone application with downloadable content to be read onscreen. The new literary journal Electric Literature makes itself available in multiple digital formats: eBook, Kindle, and iPhone. Some predict that this digitization of literature will render books almost completely obsolete, while others completely deny its potential power. But there is a middle ground here that hasn’t been explored, a whisper of a renaissance that’s not commanding the attention it should.
The middle ground lies in the realm of good design⎯that elusive quality that makes you reach your hand out for something, perhaps without knowing immediately why⎯and there will be a growing cleavage between utilitarian books (textbooks, books used for quick research or classroom assignments) and elective books (everything else). Websites such as Faceout Books and Book Cover Archive evidence the publishing industry’s growing investment in graphic design⎯for paperbacks and even classics, not just for first or collector’s editions. Take, for example, Penguin Books’ Great Ideas series, which attempts to re-popularize such landmark titles as The Art of War and The Social Contract with attractively designed, affordable editions. Take also Melville House’s Art of the Novella series, which is a minimalist approach to lesser known titles by celebrated authors such as Marcel Proust and Leo Tolstoy. NPR San Francisco said of this series, “The Art of the Novella series is sort of an anti-Kindle. What these singular, distinctive titles celebrate is book-ness. They’re slim enough to be portable but showy enough to be conspicuously consumed—tiny little objects that demand to be loved for the commodities they are.”
Such praise, in its nostalgia, indicates that digital readers are in fact inspiring a counterrevolution in the publishing industry that will better the book, and very possibly attract more readers. New, hip editions will very potentially attract more (and more diverse) readers to the minor works of Flaubert or Melville, or to Søren Åbye Kierkegård’s meditations on God. They’ll also draw a wider audience to new writers being published in book form. They’ll demonstrate that in an increasingly dehumanized world, material comes to be invested with more meaning. Books on the shelf have a weight to them⎯literally⎯that something downloaded for a glowing screen doesn’t have. The book transcends the realm of the product in favor of that of the art object. The trend re-enforces Black Clock’s continuing mission to produce a magazine that not only publishes work by exciting writers, but that does so in a physical form that is unique and⎯in a very powerful sense⎯relevant to readers.
So perhaps this decade will be ruled by the iPad. But, perhaps more likely, this decade will be ruled by the book, newly incarnated⎯and if the books of the 2010s reverse the old trope “don’t judge a book by its cover,” then so be it.
by Mallory Farrugia
a writer and freelance editor living in Venice, CA
image of The Crystal Ball by John William Waterhouse
