The Missing Clues

Say you're on an airplane, and you're seated next to a yummy-looking guy reading "Beavis & Butthead's Greatest Pranks."  Uh-oh.  Not exactly catnip.  Maybe even grounds for forking out the extra bucks for a first class upgrade.  But if you see him holding something chatty like Outliers in his cute tanned but clean, strong yet fine-boned and ring-free hands, you start thinking he could be The One.  And it's so easy to say,  "So what do you think about ...?"   or  "Have you gotten to the part about .....?"

The books we carry, the music we collect, the DVDs lining our shelves, define us and brand us in ways plain to see.  Or at least they used to.  But if the brawny Brad Pitt lookalike is reading a Kindle, what's a girl to do?  No clues to decipher.  No sparks to kindle (!) the flames of fantasy.  No easy conversation starters.

My sister says "just ask him what's on his Kindle."    "Okay, but what if the answer is Leather & Submission, or Floral Arrangement Weekly?"    "Well, now you know."   "But I want to know before I ask!"

James Wolcott writes in this month's Vanity Fair about how Kindles and iPods eliminate the outer clues we use to illuminate our private selves and to judge those of others.  As he puts it in the most wonderful way:  you see the book "Neverland being held like a hymnal, the acclaimed novel by Joseph O'Neill that you keep meaning to read and never will, and here it is, being read with such care by someone so cute.  If only you could strike up a chat, the two of you might stroll off like French lovers thrown together by capricious fate, scampering to take cover from the christening rain."

I want to scamper off with someone who can write like that.

And it's not just books.  It is music as well, and the iPod is the reason we have lost not just the outward signs (you fall in love with his early jazz albums), but the juicy tidbits and heartaches, the lore and personality behind the music.  So, Deuce and I were bouncing along to a Darius Rucker song.   Deuce wondered if Darius had written this song, and I had to say (trying not to smirk) it's too bad we don't have album covers anymore.  Then we'd know such things as who wrote it, who was playing the guitar, and Darius' thoughts on the song.  Oh yeah, and the lyrics and maybe some killer artwork to boot.

With the iPod, all this is lost.  Sure I can get the song on iTunes for 99 cents, but all I know is Darius sings the song.  And there's this little bitty bar graph that shows whether a bunch of other people like it too.  And then iTunes tells me if I like this, I'll probably like George Strait too.

I already know I love George Strait.  Big deal.  I already know I love Eric Clapton, but imagine if all I knew about Layla was that it was by Derek and the Dominoes.  Giant gaps in knowledge loom there.  Vast chasms.  Is the guitar player on Darius Rucker's song a latter day Dwayne Allman?  Is someone from the fringe (say, my hometown) now in the center?  I don't know.

But back to the Kindle.  I'm thinking about the bookshelves at the summer cottage.  They are lined with bestsellers and popular fiction from summers past, enjoyed and discarded each year by peripatetic cousins and friends.  They leave behind their castoffs for those who follow, leading them to hours with unpredictable literary choices as their toes dig into the sand.

Like layers of rocky sediment holding clues to civilizations past, our summer books march from Valley of the Dolls to The Shack.  From Michener to Clancy to Grisham.  They include substance -- Wouk's War and Remembrance -- and fluff -- Erma Bombeck's If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?    (That is one of the funniest books ever written, and one of my grandmother's favorites.)  

The Time Travellers Wife will join them this year, but what about next summer?  Will the collection stagnate like old yogurt?  Will new visitors just show up for a long weekend, toting along their Kindles so they can read the New York Times and check Facebook?

Who has time for books anyway?  People don't seem to have time to read books.  And they don't seem big on coversation either.  They plug in their earphones, check their blackberries, and ignore the dinosaurs among them who want to chat.   As in, talk.  In person.

To read James Wolcott's terrific essay, click here.