Vote of Confidence

It's no secret that the printed book is under siege, that newspapers and magazines are ceasing publication or becoming online only, that information delivery is being revolutionized before our (increasingly blurry) eyes. Any doubts the Kindle may have left behind, the iPad is dispelling.

Which made reading the following all the more delightful: "The book is like the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be bettered," according to author Umberto Eco in a new book about the book called (appropriately and straightforwardly) This is Not the End of the Book.

The book, which was reviewed today by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, is essentially a conversation between Eco and French screenwriter and bibliophile Jean-Claude Carriere. The Internet gives us "gross information, with almost no sense of order or hierarchy," Carriere says. "As soon as you click on the next page you forget what you've just read," Eco says.

And I thought it was just me. I flipped through Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending the other day and could summon almost no memory of reading it, despite the fact that I definitely did read it earlier this year — though, it must be noted, on a Kindle.

I've written about this before, and probably will again (and again and again). But reading this review (and, I hope soon, the book itself) made me feel less alone in my Luddite ways. Maybe the codex isn't really in danger. Maybe the book really will survive. Wouldn't that be nice?