This Is Not the End of the Book: A Conversation by Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco (review)

The past ten years have perhaps been the most transformational ones in the history of the book since the invention of the printing press. eBooks (electronic books) have eclipsed pBooks (printed books) in both sales and popularity; some libraries are now “bookless”; and bookstores are becoming just about as common today as liveries. The single major reason for these changes is the rapid assent of the eBook.¹

In 1998, Umberto Eco complained in an afterword to a landmark collection of essays on the future of the book, that “[a]fter having spent no more than twelve hours at a computer console, my eyes are like two tennis balls, and I feel the need to sit comfortably down in an armchair and read a newspaper, or maybe a good poem” (Eco 300). Just fifteen years later, not only are computer consoles becoming antiques, but so too are printed newspapers—and the ones that have survived and thrive do the majority of their business online.

The future of the book radically changed not with the invention of the microcomputer, but with the introduction and development of the eReader. Specifically, the history of the book changed on November 19, 2007, the day the first “Kindle Readers” were released by Amazon—and sold out in four and a half hours. For it was on this date that many of the major arguments in favor of pBooks over eBooks went out the window.

For one thing, reading material on a Kindle for twelve hours did not leave your eyes like “two tennis balls.” While their screens were not as good as the next generation of eReaders such as the iPad, reading eBooks on them left your eyes in no better or worse shape than reading pBooks for twelve hours straight. Their screens were nothing like the “twitchy” little screens found on the computer consoles of the 1980s and 90s, but rather very reader-friendly technologies. In fact, eReaders unlike pBooks allow everything from font size and type to screen contrast and resolution to be adjusted to best meet the individual needs of the reader.

But better screens and different fonts are not the only reason for the rise in popularity of eBooks and eReaders. Portable eReaders now allow one to read wherever one wants, rather than read where one’s computer happens to be. One of the best arguments against eBooks was that you could not take them to the beach or curl up in bed with them. Not only can you do this now, but you can also annotate the books you read on your eReader, share favorite passages in them with others, and even determine the analytics of your reading habits.

Nonetheless, a fancy eReader without the eBooks you want is about as useful as a radio that doesn’t get National Public Radio. While it has taken a few years, eBook availability now rivals pBook availability, particularly for new books. Furthermore, many older titles are now available through open access projects such as Google Books. Given all of these developments in the technology of books, book culture is in a period of radical change and transition. Whereas in 1998, Eco could say, “It seems to me that computers are diffusing a new form of literacy but are incapable of satisfying all the intellectual needs they are stimulating” (Eco 300), the same thing cannot be said today. So, where then does he stand on the future of the book fifteen years later? Sadly, in my estimation, at much the same place he did fifteen years ago.

Originally published in 2009 in French by Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle as “Ne pensez pas vous débarrasser des livres,” Jean-Claude...