Not surprisingly, Jonathan Franzen is not a fan of the new technology craze in the publishing industry. Franzen spoke recently at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Columbia, and weighed in on his perception of ebooks vs. traditional printed literature.
“The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it’s pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model,” Franzen said, during a press conference at the Festival in which he spoke about a number of different topics including President Obama, the financial system and the lack of Religion in his work and he also had plenty to say about the future of the book.
“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring.”
Jonathan Franzen has a forthcoming book of essays “Farther Away” coming out in April. The title piece is his reflections on the suicide of his best friend and writer David Foster Wallace, who would have celebrated his 50th birthday yesterday.
