On Prospect's blog this week, I have a rant about books that hate themselves:
Welcome to a new genre: the book that is embarrassed it’s a book. That hates the fact it’s made of dull, dowdy old print and paper and is full of stinky old writing, that wishes more than anything it was a sleek, sexy tumblr blog or Twitter stream.
Daniel Pink’s Drive is one of 2010’s most high-profile non-fiction books. It has a timely thesis: that people are primarily motivated to work hard and achieve great things not by money, but by their own passion for what they do. It’s a good point, worth making. But I found Drive infuriating. This had nothing to do with its argument, or with Pink’s writing, which is fluent and lucid. Actually, it’s Drive that has the problem with itself, not me.
I don't get the death-of-the-book argument which seems to obsess the chattering classes at present. Despite the introduction of replacement technologies some centuries ago, we still carve or inscribe on stone, pewter, brass and glass (tombstones, the names on new buildings, blue plaques, wedding gifts, awards) and we still even write on scrolls of (what appear to be) parchment or vellum (university charters, honorary degrees). Books aren't going anywhere fast.
Posted by: peter | March 29, 2010 at 12:29 PM