An Open Letter to Roger Ebert (With Love)

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I write to you today, not out of any desire to express my longtime admiration of your writing, my agreement with you on any particular opinion of film, or even my complete awe at your bravery in the face of cancer, though all of these are true and could inspire my writing through several pages. No, instead, I am writing to you about books.

Let me first introduce myself so you know the background from which I can speak. I am a longtime book lover, much like you. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA. I have been a bookstore manager for over fifteen years, but recently decided to go to graduate school to become a high school English and Social Studies teacher.

I can’t help but have noticed your jabs at eBooks on Twitter, since I am one of your over 200,000 followers. Let’s just barely touch on the irony of making jokes about eBook technology on Twitter, then move on directly to the romantic notions of books. Don’t get me wrong; I have them too. At one time, before I had to move to a smaller apartment and make budget cuts for school, I had upwards of over 2,000 books. There are still those books that I couldn’t possibly put in storage, or much less part with, including a signed leatherbound edition of the complete works of Arthur Miller, a signed limited edition copy of Don DeLillo’s Underworld, a first edition copy of Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenter, and a first of Graham Greene’s The Comedians, among many others dear to my heart.

I can remember where I obtained nearly every book in my collection. I can remember when I read them. I thrill at the smell, the touch and yes, the weight of printed books. But, I think romantic notions of books only go so far. I had the same romantic notions, as well as many of my friends, about vinyl records. We decried the arrival of the CD and the cassette, the loss, or at least the shrinking, of album cover art. We feared the gains of digital technology that would wipe out the warm sound of a needle on plastic. But, vinyl still thrives, albeit specialized to what I would like to think of as “the good stuff.” You can get Arcade Fire, Spoon, and yes, even Miles Davis and John Coltrane on vinyl to this day in reissues of a better quality than the original releases. What you can’t find is Justin Bieber or the Jonas Brothers on vinyl, which I’m thankful about in the saving of resources. Vinyl is now relegated to a certain market, and consumers have created that market.

This brings me to environmental concerns. Yes, I am disappointed that more people aren’t reading books. I agree that more can be done in that fight. Yet, as I know your tastes run to the sublime, I know you’d agree with me that the vast majority of books printed in this country are rubbish. I certainly don’t advocate censorship, but when people are more often buying the more popular, lower quality books digitally, isn’t that a win-win? We save on natural resources for every average reader that switches to eBooks. And let’s face it, they’re not the ones cherishing that trip to the Tattered Cover, Powell’s, or Shakespeare & Co. The same thing has happened with vinyl, and it should be lauded. Eventually, maybe only the books of David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, Aimee Bender and George Saunders will be available in print. I'd have no problem with losing print editions of Dan Brown, Glenn Beck and the latest Star Wars novel.

Finally, as a hopeful teacher candidate, I feel compelled to support the idea of eBooks in education. Schools are facing budget crises in nearly every state in this country. Textbook prices are skyrocketing, and students’ bookbags are becoming anvils strapped to their backs. When teachers assign the books they’d like to see inspire their students, and see that eBooks are not only a viable option in a budgetary sense, but also smart in a grander scheme of educational goals and initiatives (with a variety of tools available to the student through these devices), the romantic notion of books has to take a back seat. Students can fit thousands of books on a Kindle, and even more on an iPad, meaning that they could potentially keep the device through their entire pre-college education, and not have to ‘sell back’ any of those books, keeping them for repeated readings or reference throughout. It used to sadden me, as a student store supervisor at UCLA, to have to go through the book buyback sessions, trying desperately to convince students to keep their copy of Under Western Eyes, or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as they’d only get fifty cents from the sale. Heck, I even offered a few students fifty cents out of my own pocket to keep the book they were trying to sell. With eBooks, this is not necessary.

Ultimately, the romantic notion of books might not be the deciding factor in what inspires the next Raymond Carver, William Faulkner, Margaret Atwood, or Toni Morrison, just to name a few. In the end, I think we have to trust that text is text, and that great writing will shine through, whether on a printed page or a 6” x 4” screen. As a book lover, I can appreciate the jabs, but I was just hoping that you were seeing another side to this. The funny thing about this?...I don’t even own an eBook reader. Once I am placed in a high school, it will definitely be something in which I’ll invest. Be well.

Sincerely, a fan,

Terrance Terich