Brian H sent me a thing about E book publishing - said he had gotten obsessed - that we needed to talk about it. Brian is great when he gets obsessed - he explodes with enthusiasm and energy. He cannot be contained in ordinary space.
I said sure.
Here's the link he sent...
I sent Brian's link to Bill M - who like me does traditional books via LuLu. Bill riffed on Brian's material. And he dropped off one of his exquisitely carved little stories.
Here's Bill's link...
Two things.
Like Bill I have no e-book experience. But like him. I do have lot of experience writing and reading stuff that appears on computer screens. I have found that long, linear material - content that builds on itself doesn't read well from computer screens. Don't ask me why - everybody knows it. Maybe paper lets you flip back and forth, move in and out - continually orienting yourself, building a context for facts, ideas. All I know is that if the ideas are really complex, tricky - if the story is more than a few paragraphs I have to print it.
But some material works just fine - mostly short pieces whose context is immediate, not requiring thought but reaction. Bill's latest little story "Breakfast at The Orange Bowl" works. Some of my recent stuff - maybe "Lovely" might also fit this moldless mold. Certainly Richard Brautigan's little sketches in Trout Fishing in America work. Start anywhere and the words still hang together. The meaning - the message is like a hologram - embedded everywhere requiring only the reader's perspective to pop alive. This material is legitimate. Literary tweets. Haikuish writing for the fragmented reader - and fragmented writer (what I am doing here I guess).
But - and this is my second thing - would Brautigan find an audience in the world of online publishing? In this DIY (Do It Yourself) world not only is the writer his or her own publisher the reader is his or her own critic. The writer might be able to get anything published but the reader - due to the sheer volume of content available - doesn't always know where to find stuff worth reading.
That's the great thing about a real book store. Grab a cup of coffee, scan stuff that looks good, maybe catch the roaming eye of a literary lady in the next aisle over - "Hrumph I say you look a little young for Brautigan " (old man's grin/leer intrudes) "did your folks have copies lying around the house?"
Maybe that will be the next Big App - the Critic Bot. Software that roams the web looking for good stuff - maybe material satisfying some objective quality criteria - at least the latest reliable buzz offered by an algorithmically defined cool inner circle.
"Hey did you read E Book Riffs?"
"Context Asides"
(Less quickly)
A lot of this is about context.
Knowing Context
Knowing your context is knowing who you are, where you are - how what you are doing fits into the total of what is to be done - how ideas being presented fit into the total of other ideas. Without context you are lost, isolated - estranged. To be totally devoid of context is to be insane.
Online Help
Context has always been a big deal for those who write online help. What do you display when the user asks for help? "Context Sensitive Help" displays information about the current context of the system - what's being displayed, what's going on - maybe the field where the cursor is now located. Other forms of online help simply launch a new window in which is displayed on online book with information about the system. The online book will likely have an interactive table of contents, maybe a glossary. Related topics connected by hyper links. The online book will probably be designed to so that context of information being displayed is is clearly indicated through tabs, folders, topic headings - so the user doesn't get lost in the online book.
GPS Story
Last winter I used a new GPS unit to navigate my way though rural Ga (with a side trip to Al) then across Fl down to Miami. I was by myself and figured that it would be easier listening to directions spoken by the GPS than it would be to navigate a map and drive.
At one point I found myself in S. Ga on a two lane black-top road in the middle of pastures, fields, cows and the occasional out building and farm house. The GPS knew where I was, but I didn't. Zooming the display in and out did not seem to help. All I knew was that I was in S. Ga headed for N. Fl. I had no sense of context. I was not lost but I was lost.
Map Story
Later in the summer of last year I took another trip - this time to the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with my friend in his BMW Z4 convertible. Instead of a GPS we used maps to navigate, deliberately choosing the most out of the way back roads we could find. One of us drove and the the other navigated - often never taking his hand off the map residing in his lap. Not once on this 4,800 mile trip did I feel lost, with no sense of context - no matter how backward the road or how far off the beaten path we traveled. At any time the navigator could see our road, find nearby intersections, locate alternate roads, towns, provinces, states - countries. All it took was a shift in focus - a shift in the perception of our context.
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