Kaufman links e-book trend to bookburning, Nazis

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

>>>>>>Your history has condemned you to see ghosts everywhere.

I relish this statement of yours and choose to respond only to it because at its essence is precisely one of the problems with our culture. Per this, the Holocaust is my history but not your history. The suffering of others does not pertain to you.

But my history is going to become your history.

And when it does, you'll remember that a couple of nutty writers, like that Jewish guy Alan Kaufman and that Native American Sherman Alexie, tried to warn you.

Because our histories are your histories: you just don't know it yet. And that is the lesson, I guess, that you will have to learn, unfortunately, in a manner that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

Bon chance!

Mr Kaufman,

Please don't try to read meanings into my words that aren't there. By "your" history I obviously meant the persecution of the members of your family. That is your personal history. Of course, it is just as relevant to me and everyone else. What I meant is that personal experiences have affected (and, as I see it, somewhat distorted) your point of view so that you do see ghosts even where there are none.

Yes, we must beware. Yes, we must make sure that such things will never ever happen again. But your campaign against electronic books does not help to ensure this. Especially when you present it in such a way. It is good to see that you have toned down your comments and we can discuss your concerns in a rational manner. We do share your fear of totalitarianism, however, we are convinced that technology is more of a tool to ensure freedom of speech and thought than a tool of oppression. Here we are, people from all parts of the world, communicating with the help of technology. This technology enables you to easily reach us all. Some people are trying to abuse the information they have about us (mostly for commercial purposes, nowadays), but nobody can ever have full control over technology and the internet. They cannot prevent us from sharing our views, our ideas. It is impossible to totally smother freedom because of technology.

[taglines]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

And I'm equally confident that history will not remember either of you, at all.

aredeegee, i think Sherman Alexie will make the cut. He is an important Native American writer.

[But you are right about Alan, he won't be remembered at all. Accept for this insane thread and his even more insane commentary in Evergreen.]

[taglines]

Wait, i was wrong, Kaufman will be remembered by history. His papers have now been acquired by a top university library collection:

http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2010/jul/kaufman072409.html

Press Release: [July 24, 2009] --The University of Delaware Library has acquired the papers of poet, memoirist, novelist, and painter Alan Kaufman, who is associated with the Spoken Word movement and the exploration of Jewish identity through contemporary alternative culture.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Death of PUBLISHING. Not of BOOKS.
Books are not the paper they're printed on... if they were, copyright law would be nearly meaningless; we'd have no rules against derivatives, unauthorized audio or digital versions.

Actually, (and I'm surprised to say this) I disagree. Death of old-school, mass-produced, paper publishing, yes. Death of publishing in toto, no. We're still going to need some form of editorial, marketing and fulfillment staff; however, it will be oriented more and more towards the digital book marketplace.

Derek

[taglines]

I first read about Mr Kaufman's very inelegant diatribe against ebooks, with all the strange Holocaust/Nazi imagery, via a Newsweek magazine blog in October and passed the link on to Steve Jordan at MobileRead here where he threaded it in....and I was so appalled in mid October at Mr Kaufman's bizarre Nazi/Holocaust imagery that I took the liberty....just as a thought experiment...... to gently REWRITE and EDIT his commentary to make it more palatable and therefore perhaps to allow readers to get through it and acutally read it better and maybe see the points he was trying to make. Some of his points are worth considering.

I sent th revised text to Alan and he got angry. Very angry. I told him that I fully and deeply respected his life and ideas as the son of Holocaust survivors, but that his use of such imagery in an article about paper books versus e-books was completely bonkers and beyond the pale and was turning readers off to his argument.

I told him that all I did was to take out all the Nazi / Holocaust imagery from his commentary and let the argument stand or fall on the basis of his views on paper culture verus screen culture. But he did not like my modus operandi. He told me in no uncertain terms:

"Sir, by rewriting and editing my original text, you exemplify the sort of hi-tech totalitarian that I write about. By what right do you pass my essay through your own private censorship bureau and then present it for all the world to see with the "distasteful" parts edited out?

" With the shallow piety typical of your kind, you think it justifiable to exercize censorship in defense of what you deem inappropriate: i.e.--my referencing of the Holocaust. But it was precisely this sort of justification that Nazis offered for their own brands of censorship. And once you have taken upon yuurself the right to unitaliterally violate my text, and present it as you wish, you have crossed a line to that region where it then becomes, by your lights, as you deem fit, since you are the standard bearer of your own self-invented morality -- a morality that you more or less maker up as you go along -- to next violate another aspect of human rights beyond freedom of expresion. "

".....in performing this desecration of my text, this escoriation of its central thesis, you have proven yourself to be already in the avant garde of the hi-tech barbarians all marching in lock-step into the electronic Orwellian future. "

"I demand, in the name of Freedom of Expression, that you remove, immediately, this raped version of my text ...."

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

So here's a challenge for Mr. Kaufman. How does your description of the supposed eBook reader match up with me


Dear Xenophon,

I are speaking about a sweeping change that is, as we seek clarification, decimating the world of books and book culture. How any one individual stands in relation to it is, of course, not something that I can answer. How could I? Isn't that something that one must postulate to oneself, and then test to see if true. It's solrt of like the Diamon ring/Sierra Leonne paradigm.
How is someone in New Jersey, innocently buying a diamond ring for their beloved, in any way alligning with monsters who hack off children's arms in Sierra Leoone? How is someone who has decided to aquire a reader participating in the destruction of one of the principle legs on which our civilization stands: books and bookstores? And how would that, in turn, lead to the sort of totalitarian condition that I forsee? These are questions that I had hoped people might ask themselves. But apparantly, these are questions that few can bear to consider. Better to either call me a 'dumb-ass' or else, as you do, itemize all the things that you don't do, and wonder: what's this nut talking about? So, too, in any totalitarian situation, there are very few who can be singled out as filling the bill of participant in oppression. People only fit as tiny chips in the board of this particular scenario.How is one tiny chip to blame for all this? Well, you know: it reminds me of the film Shoah, Claude Lanzman's 9 hour documentary about the Holocaist. He interviews those who made the railway schedules, those who drove the trains. None of them, in and of themselves, seemed evil. They were just average citizens,
performing small acts each day. Their objectives were not to kill anyone. One
made train schedules. The other drove trains back and forth. They weren't even Nazis. Yet, by such small acts they contributed to genocide.

Now, what I am speaking about is not yet genocide. BUT: it is an important station in the road to totalitarianism that in turn could lead to more horror.
What matter how all this occurs, either by way of brownshirt, KGB or corporate moves. All end up in the same result: the shutting down of bookstores, the death of books, the death of privacy, the oipening of ourselves to totalitarian monitoring, the reliquishing of our freedom.

So many have sought to explain away the Orwell incident with Kindle. They've pointed to the legal issues, etc. Virtually everyone has miissed the
main points: that it happened at all and that the books deleted from Kindle were 1984 and Animal Farm.

They can't see the forest for the trees. You too are not able to see the forest for the trees. The trees are that device in your hand. To see the forest, please walk around your city or town and note these things.
The number of bookstores that have closed. The fact that everywhere you look people are hunched frowning over screens. That people are talking to others on cell phones while ignoring those around them. That people are whipping out devices to check their messages constantly.

Take it all in and ask yourself: what's going on here? Where is everyone? Why are so many human beings spending all their time on these machines? What is this? How did life come to be this way?

What does this all mean?

Perhaps there's some truth to the fact that these machines increasingly are controlling us, rather than the other way around. And that increasingly we are dissapearing through the screens into some non-existent illusion in which
our sense of humanity erodes and weakens.

And lastly, ask yourself: what right do these people at Amazon and Google have to come in as they have and decimate one of the most precious areas of human life: the book and book culture? And wonder: isn't that in fact the
very FIRST place that totalitarian systems seek to gain a foothold, and then complete control? Wasn't that true of the Church? Wasn't it true of National Socialism? Isn't it true of Communism?

Npw, it has become true of Hi-Tech. Hi-Tech may not even be aware that the ultimate endgame is totalitarianism. But that dosen't matter. The moment they mobilize totalitarian effots, like now, in their effort to eliminate and control the book, they stand alligned with the worst evils on earth.

And we must ask ourselves, each one, in the name of human freedom, where we stand in relation to that.

Sincerely,
Alan


http://evergreenreview.com/120/elect...k-burning.html

Alan,

Haven't you figured it out yet? The decline of mass-produced paper books is going to happen. But, if you look at the history of story-telling, the history of mass-marketed books is a mere flash in the rear-view mirror. We've always had storytellers and we always will. But you first have to understand that for much of our various cultural histories, the concept of a large number of books that just *anyone* could buy, read, keep, re-read, throw away was simply not believable.

Why? Because for so much of that time, books were hideously expensive to create and far too delicate for the average person to waste time protecting. Yes, as we spread out from our various cultural homelands, certain religious, legal, technical and fiction works went forth as well, but not with most people in any large numbers. Further, prior to, approximately, post-WWI, most average working class families in the US and Europe just didn't have the time or money to waste on such trivialities. The rise of those same corporate societies also gave rise to the concept of leisure time and hobbies for the masses.

These will be around now for as long as we do not degenerate back to a non-industrial, non-technological society - such as a fully-agrarian one. Subsistence farming is back- and soul-breaking. Chew on that while you rant about current society.

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

>>>>>>Your history has condemned you to see ghosts everywhere.

I relish this statement of yours and choose to respond only to it because at its essence is precisely one of the problems with our culture. Per this, the Holocaust is my history but not your history. The suffering of others does not pertain to you.

But my history is going to become your history.

And when it does, you'll remember that a couple of nutty writers, like that Jewish guy Alan Kaufman and that Native American Sherman Alexie, tried to warn you.

Because our histories are your histories: you just don't know it yet. And that is the lesson, I guess, that you will have to learn, unfortunately, in a manner that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

Bon chance!

Do you really wish to prevent this from happening? Then by everything that is great and good, stand up against those who would destroy the Bill of Rights. Buy a handgun, shotgun and assault rifle and learn to use them! Join JFPO (JPFO?) and promote individual armament! Learn why the 9th and 10th Amendments supercede and nullify every single government program and agency founded by President Franklin D. Rooseveldt.

And for crying out loud, learn how to write a comprehensible document!

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by taglines

I first read about Mr Kaufman's very inelegant diatribe against ebooks, with all the strange Holocaust/Nazi imagery, via a Newsweek magazine blog in October and passed the link on to Steve Jordan at MobileRead here where he threaded it in....and I was so appalled in mid October at Mr Kaufman's bizarre Nazi/Holocaust imagery that I took the liberty....just as a thought experiment...... to gently REWRITE and EDIT his commentary to make it more palatable and therefore perhaps to allow readers to get through it and acutally read it better and maybe see the points he was trying to make. Some of his points are worth considering.

I sent th revised text to Alan and he got angry. Very angry. I told him that I fully and deeply respected his life and ideas as the son of Holocaust survivors, but that his use of such imagery in an article about paper books versus e-books was completely bonkers and beyond the pale and was turning readers off to his argument.

I told him that all I did was to take out all the Nazi / Holocaust imagery from his commentary and let the argument stand or fall on the basis of his views on paper culture verus screen culture. But he did not like my modus operandi. He told me in no uncertain terms:

Tagline,

To be honest, I"d be upset if someone chose to edit and redact one of my screeds to make it more 'palatable'. So on that point alone, I can fully agree with Alan. (Wow! I'm agreeing with Alan Kaufman!?!)

But with the rest, I have no problem because I think that removing the Nazi/Holocaust element *does* reduce the argument to a more, hmmm... precise discussion between the inherent value of paper vs. ebooks.

I rather wish Alan had chosen this approach rather than hypering off into a rant on totalitarianism whereby he labelled us all proto-Nazis.

Derek

[taglines]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Tagline,

To be honest, I"d be upset if someone chose to edit and redact one of my screeds to make it more 'palatable'. So on that point alone, I can fully agree with Alan. (Wow! I'm agreeing with Alan Kaufman!?!)

But with the rest, I have no problem because I think that removing the Nazi/Holocaust element *does* reduce the argument to a more, hmmm... precise discussion between the inherent value of paper vs. ebooks.

I rather wish Alan had chosen this approach rather than hypering off into a rant on totalitarianism whereby he labelled us all proto-Nazis.

Derek

Hi Derek,

I only did it to make a point, and to make the point to Alan first of all, and of course I will take it down as soon as Alan writes back to me.

As I said, I only redacted his screed as a thought experiment to see what the screed might look like, how it might read, if all the Nazi/Holocaust imagery was taken out. Just as a thought exercise. Not for real publication anywhere with his name attached.

I sent the next text to him by email and hoped for a response, but so far nada. I will of course take redacted text down soon.

The only person who saw it was Alan, because I sent it to him. I wanted to show him how it might read better if he toned things down a bit and took out the Nazi stuff.

But I am glad you agree with me re: "I have no problem because I think that removing the Nazi/Holocaust element *does* reduce the argument to a more, hmmm... precise discussion between the inherent value of paper vs. ebooks.
....I rather wish Alan had chosen this approach rather than hypering off into a rant on totalitarianism whereby he labelled us all proto-Nazis."

[Alan Kaufman]

“Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.”

William S. Burroughs

[Moejoe]

And I too Mr. Kaufman spent a great deal of my youth and childhood in the warm confines of local libraries. I too have had friends and relatives die of drugs and other horrible things. I have been witness to suicides and stabbings, gunshots and gang fights. And in all those times it was the words, not the package that meant anything to me. It wasn't the ratty, falling-apart detective novel my grandfather gave me, but the act of giving, the words contained within that kept me reading well after my bedtime as a child. It wasn't the paper and the hard binding of Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat" that made me look at my own impoverishment differently, but the words, the words. Always the words.

You want to defend the physical book, go ahead, but you're defending the dead. It's as dead as parchment and quills. It's as dead as the typewriter and the ribbon. As dead as the notions of Fascism and book burning.

No book will ever be burned again. No story will ever go untold. No poet will ever be unpublished. Every man, woman and child will be a library unto themselves.

[taglines]

Alan, now THAT was well-written and well-said. Really. When you write in the present tense of today, 2009, instead of going back to the Nazi era of the 1930s/1940s, you make sense, and your arguments for what is dear to you are much more readable this way. Hopefully, in all this mess, you learned something, too -- about how to communicate, without bringing up your Holocaust survivor past. That was then. This is now. You write well when you want to. G-d bless you, sir!

[taglines]

and Moejoe, very very well said:

''No book will ever be burned again. No story will ever go untold. No poet will ever be unpublished. Every man, woman and child will be a library unto themselves.''

That is visionary and worth wide readership. Everyone will become a library unto themselves. I love it. Well well said.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Alan Kaufman

Dear Derek and others here on Mobile Read,
I'm afraid this must be my goodbye as I'm actually been neglecting the responses to my piece in Huff Post in order to spend time answering your replies. I must dialogue with them now.

I must say that this has been a very interesting experience for me and to a great degree, a failiure. I have not pursuaded anyone. In fact, I may have driven some of you even harder into your corners. I am surprised at the resilience of your positions. You are true believers.

I've gained a broad impression that many of you feel strongly that hi-tech plays, in some fashion, a key role in your life. A great number of you do not seem to care much about what is happening to the book (no, not the downloadable file of text that you read and which I will not dignify with the title of 'book' because it is not a book) or book culture or authors who make their living by the printed word. Not a few among you have expressed at best indifference and sometimes even eagerness to see the book perish alltogether so that you can get on with this wonderful book-free future world that you envision.

So be it. The lines are clearly drawn. I will fight on behalf of the book, bookstores, libraries (of books) and for a world in which children sit in chairs with a bound paper book on their lap, no machines nearby to distract, and read.

Such a place was the Library in the Bronx where I grew up, a place where people were shot (my friends Spider and Chief) or stabbed (my couson Harvey) or intentionally run over (Bobby) or fell in front of subways stoned on cleaning fluid (Rickey Carbona) or died iin their mother's bathrub with a needle in the arm (my cousin Ivy) or ended their lives in Sing Sing (my cousin Dennis) or Rikers Island Prison (yet another cousin, Harvey).

In this world of my childhood where I didn't know from one day to the next if there would be food or if I'd even make it throug a day alive, I went, from ages 10-17 to the local library and sat quietly in a hardback chair, safely esconsed among the bookspines imprinted --as though writ in some glorious ink from smelted gems --with the names of authors, Hemmingway, Mary Shelly, Faulkner, McCullers, Virginia Woolf, Tolstoy, Austen, James Baldwin, Dickinson, and I read, hour upon hour. When I looked up there were reassuring matronly librarians pushing carts of books around: the only visual and emotional sense of safetty that I ever knew. They were relief and safety from the streets outside. I sat among the librarians with their armsfull of books as though they wrere each a mother to me, and felt nurtured by them. safe and protected by their armsfull of books, their quiet poised dignity and clear respect for the books. They made me feel that life was given meaning through these bpoks.

At 5PM, when the library closed, I left with a sense of peace and returned through the streets of screaming sirens, broken glass and roving gangs. It was the only peace I knew. And under my arms,as though carrying away with me this wonderful sense of safety, imagination and decency, I bore home books that I'd checked out. I carried them almost as shields against the dangers liurking all around me.

At home, where I was beaten, and screamed at and mocked around the clock, where there was often nothing or little to eat, I read for solace. I read through tears. I held the books close to me. I slept with them under the covers with me. I touched their pages with hope and wonder. I prayed that someday maybe I could produce books with my names inscribed on them, writ in letters of golden light.

And t I have grown up to see books bear my name. I have kept my promise to the little boy I was. Whether or not I am remembered hardly matters. I have keptmy promise to that kid. And it is, in a manner of speaking, on his behalf, and on behalf of all children who have nowhere but among books to retreat from their rotten lives that I now do battle, to keep such places as bookstores and libraries as the safe havens of sanity that they continue to be for countless others, and most of all, to protect the physical book which is so much more than merely the text it contains but is, to the mind of a child, a shield of the imagination and a prize to be dreamed of and gained despite the hopelessness all around them.

John Locke wrote: "New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."

I harbor no ill will for anything that was said here. I wish you all welll and bid you goodbye,

Sincerely,
Alan Kaufman
http://www.pen.org/MemberProfile.php/prmProfileID/19319
http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2010/jul/kaufman072409.html

Y'know, that was a *touching* story.

[dramatic pause]

Alrighty then. Moving on. So friggin' what. Lot's of us have had rotten childhoods. Many of us have lost friends (even before reaching legal maturity) to accidents, random violence, drug abuse and the like. And yes, many of us *loved* our public libraries. I know I did, and I didn't have half the childhood trauma you experienced. Of course, these days, when I need a time-out from the stresses of the world, I retreat to my man-cave and read. (Okay, in fairness of full disclosure, I also do lots of lurking and posting to my favorite online discussion forums.)

I *am* glad that reading gave you as much a break from the pains you endured as it did me. However. Isn't it about time to realize that reading, especially when it transports you to another time, another place, another world, *IS* the goal, not sitting in darkened rooms fondling hard and soft covers whilst cackling madly? Yes, paper books, especially if they are acid-free paper bound in leather, smell *wonderful*, but that is a secondary feature. It is the ability to sweep one away to magical realms and wondrous adventures, to catapult us into dramatic events and deep romances - that, and that alone is the province of books, whether they be bound in paper or stored as electrons.

Yes, go away and bother the poor 'useful idiots' over at HuffPo. I am glad that they will suffer for your vision, but I am saddened that you still don't *get* the real value of books, whatever their format.

Derek

[lene1949]

I haven't gotten involved in this thread until now...

I love books... I've always wanted to dedicate a whole room to a library... Unfortunately it was never possible, due to other commitments. I used libraries and had lots of book shelves with paperbacks which were falling apart due to reading them too many times.

Then I found electronic books, which meant I could read books, without the book self storage... I could read each book as many time as I liked, without it breaking apart.

When I was young I had a lot of classical music on vinyl.. When we moved to Australia we had to leave them all behind, including all our hardback books...

I would love to follow the tradition of having all my music on vinyl... Unfortunately that is not feasible... We have moved on, and everything is now available on DVD or CD...

Our paper books deteriorated as did our Vinyl records. The last paper book I read had loose pages (I had read it too many times) and unfortunately now it's in the bin...

I still have a paper book library of some of the best books ever published... i prefer to read them on my e-reader, so they can stay nice.


Regarding your writing...

It's obvious that most of your posts have been done to service quite a few forums... Like... made in Word or equivalent , because they're difficult to read - There's no paragraphs as such, line breaks where there shouldn't be, and the whole thing is basically a mess... BUT... you're an Author, so you know how to write...

The ones you've done specifically for this forum I HAVE read...

Most of it sounds like [no word available] - English is my second language.