Philip Roth once bemoaned the scarcity of American readers interested in truly serious literature.
I don’t remember what statistic he came up with–just that it might have been not much more than small-town-sized. E-book technology, of course, could help more of the right books reach more of the right readers.
Readable sample chapter
So can brilliant writing that is just plain good reading. And such is the case with Roth’s The Plot against America, a sample chapter of which I’ve just downloaded from National Public Radio–after taking in Robert Siegel’s audio interview with him, via a link on the same page. In the book Roth imagines what his life would have been like if Charles Lindbergh had won the presidency, kept us out of World War II, and have done a lower-key Third Reich Act at home.
The Plot looks fine when converted to Mobipocket. Unfortunately, however, I won’t be reading the rest of the book soon that way because of my problems with ephemeral formats locked up with proprietary DRM–I want to be able to own my books for real. Mobipocket won’t give me guaranteed future access to “protected” books. So I’ll just buy the hardback.
No Plot at online stores
Beyond that, I have not been able to find an e-book version at Amazon.com, ebooks.com, Fictionwise, eBook Express, and the Houghton Mifflin site, all of which I searched out of mere curiosity.
Too bad. So far the Plot impresses me as just the kind of literature with an international appeal–not to mention its social value!–that should be all over the Net and ownable forever. If nothing else, the timing of the book’s appearance is superb. The Plot appeared near the start of the Jewish New Year and reminds us of what life might have been like for Jews and the rest of us–I’m Jewish, albeit non-observant–if the darker side of Lindy had prevailed.
OpenReader will provide many satisfactions at the technical level, but at the gut level, nothing would please me more than to see OR help literature like The Plot endure. We can be thankful that this is only a novel, that Philip Roth survived World War II and went on to write his masterpieces. But suppose that e-books become the norm; and let’s say that for want of stable formats and reliable archiving in the library tradition, his novels vanish. How ironic that stubborn techies and short-sighted business people fond of proprietary formats might unwittingly obliterate the works of Jewish novelists–after the Nazis failed.
Lindbergh as remembered by his admirers: An online bio from the Lindbergh Foundation.
(Tweaked and updated with tags on March 16, 2006.)
