Saturday 28 February 2015

...of e-readers

I cannot stand the countryside. That's why I go there every weekend. So as to read and have a heart attack in enemy territory, in dark and lugubrious silence. As I gave up having a good night's sleep long ago, I get out of bed in the pitch dark of the back of beyond and automatically dive into the thickest of my weekend doorstops. I sink onto the sofa, wrap my legs in a blanket, and read. My habitual technique is quite simple: I stack the pile of sheets on my paunch, and as I read I transfer them one by one to my chest. The increasing pressure on my ribcage gives an accurate reading of how much work I have done. For the first twenty pages I read with great attention, as slowly as I can make myself read, then I speed up gently, allowing my professional experience and what I know of the author and the book's concept to take over - imagination does the rest. This is my semi-somnolent reading style, which constitutes my deepest mode of engagement with a text. It's the perfect time for working on authors that the firm has published for many years - solid old troopers who need nothing more than a tuck or a nip.
The tablet is on my paunch. I hold it in both hands. There is a page open on the screen. I've matched the font size to the strength of my half-moons. The reader is cold to the touch. It'll take a minute for my hands to warm it up. My reading lamp makes an unpleasant glare in one corner of the screen. I switch it off. Now the only light comes from the text. That's a plus. If I look at myself in the mirror, with the tablet under my chin, I look like a ghost. I am the ghost of readers past.
With a flick of a finger I turn pages that don't fall on my pile. They depart body and soul to some imaginary place I can hardly imagine. My chest is anxious and gives me no guide to how far I've got. There's no noise of turning pages to break the silence of the house. I miss the slight breeze I used to feel on my neck from each page as it fell. I am hot. The light from the page absorbs my eyes. I've suddenly lost a character and I have to go back. My useless pencil is still behind my ear (I'm a bookie reader) and I'm puzzled as to how I'm going to keep track of typos. I'm really put off by the idea of summoning up a keyboard the way the intern showed me and barging into the text. I've always been a man of margins and lead pencils. I want to be erasable. For a second I rest the reader on my chest and close my eyes. I'm waiting for the screen to go to sleep so I can too, just for fifteen minutes, until dawn comes.

[Dear Reader, Fournel, P.]

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