Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

As has been previously reported here and here (with Galleycat’s Ron Hogan intelligently explaining that spam is hardly the answer), it looks like the San Diego Union Tribune is going to cut back/streamline its book review section. To exactly what extent the section will be reduced or redefined has not yet been announced, but San Diego literary agent Sandy Dijkstra isn’t letting the lack of details slow her down. Instead of waiting to hear about the Union Tribune’s plans for its book review, Dijkstra has already started forwarding around an e-mail asking people to take, uh, action:

Some of you may recall that some years ago, we faced a similar crisis of losing our Book Review. At that time, we circulated a “chain letter with a civic purpose”, describing the San Diego reading community via stats and then, presenting a threat: IF the Book Review were not restored, we, the readers, writers, booksellers and publishers of San Diego, would evoke the spirit of Fahrenheit 451 and descend upon the offices of the San Diego Union-Tribune, bearing a coffin filled with the books of the many authors whose works would no longer be reviewed. We would then stage a READ-IN until we got news that our needs would be addressed. This threat, together with a deluge of chain letters hitting Mrs. Copley, forced the paper to restore the Review.

This is all incredibly silly, and will likely hurt the book review more than help. Because to portray books that don’t get reviewed as “dead” is not only lame (and wrong) in terms of a book’s worth, but it’s also terribly disrespectful to things which actually are actually, sadly dead. Dijkstra’s campaign, along with the pitchfork-wielding efforts of others (key words in above are “threat” and “force”), has really nothing to do with the true nature of books or the discovery of reading. Instead, what Dijkstra is really mourning is a literary status quo that she seems desperate to not let slip away.