When the revolution comes, I shall whine about it

Should I ever begin writing such lugubriously nostalgic columns as today's Richard Cohen pro-"book", anti-technology screed in today's Post --  "The book has been around for a very long time (Google the exact number of years, please), and I love it so." --  feel free to take me around back and whack me upside the head with a Kindle. Cohen concludes:

Feeling oddly guilty, I bought a Kindle myself. Someday soon, I'm going to see how it works. I hesitate because I know it represents the beginning of the end -- books as books, bookstores, book lovers and, inescapably, the brilliant Frederic Manning, resurrected by a bookseller only to be eventually reinterred as too obscure to be Kindled.

Dude, I fiercely love my own book collection as well -- ask anyone who's ever seen the look of fear crawl across my face when they ask to "borrow" one of my favorites, just before I launch into an explanation of why you must never, never, ever fold a corner to mark your place. But the idea that obscurity and quality will disappear in the face of Amazon's digital literary empire is just foolish. I had the urge to buy some Gogol the other day, because I haven't read Dead Souls since college and I think its worth revisiting, so I fired up my Kindle and immediately ran into a problem: There were too many choices available. Now I have to go do some additional research on translation quality before actually making the purchase.

In the near future, sometime next week is likely, everyone will be published -- there's no longer such a thing as "too obscure." People like Cohen can whine all they want about their fear of a digital future, but if they spend their time doing that instead of reading and sharing the books they love, then they'll likely miss all those moments of brilliance that could be flashing across their screens.

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