R.I.P.
This is great stuff! I feel richer for knowing this. I feel that my work is connected across centuries to these men.
So I have a modest proposal that will both help the environment and honor the world of the book-as-art: Have publishers use alternative delivery systems for functional books. Functional books are not works of art. They do not endure. Users – which, for these books is a better descriptor than readers – can download the material to the device of their choice, thus saving paper, trees, oil, etc.
As for the anti-books: Don’t publish them at all. Okay, so that’s not exactly a modest proposal. But so many of these books are so entirely brainless, soulless and artless, such bald-faced efforts at marketing and branding that I’m willing to tweak the First Amendment a bit and ban them. That would leave only the real books – perhaps 10,000 a year rather than 170,000. This would preserve and honor the world of the real book while yielding a much more delicate – and defensible – carbon footprint.