Books Win

I went to a round table discussion last night about the Internet and the future of publishing. One of the main questions is online publication killing print. It seems I’ve heard this all my life; nobody reads anymore.
The idea that books, I mean pages between too covers, will ever die out, is absurd to me. I myself am a case in point.
I started reading comic books, Superman and Archie. I still remember my earliest notions of lust directed toward Betty and Veronica. Then came Mad Magazine and Weird Tales and the like. Finally by first real book, The Illustrated Man.
The problem was, I was a working class kid. Reading was all well and good, but eventually you had to go to work.
“Okay, come on, now,” my dad said. “Put down that nonsense.”
Then there was grade school. “In the third grade I wrote a poem for a class assignment. I remember in it I took exception to that poem about little boys being made out of snail and puppy dog tails. My beef was yes, but so much more. Apparently my teacher was quite charmed with it.
One day in class she mentioned in class how one of the poems our classmates wrote was very good and she decided to blind side me by having me read it in front of class. Shy kid that I was, this was horrifying. I read it to the twitters of my friends. Mind you this was the fifties and they all razzed me for the nice little faggy poem I wrote. I don’t remember the teacher ever encouraging me to write another.
About that time my spelling abilities went the way of the dinosaurs and from then through high school failed attempts at spelling were all that was brought to the attention of the class by my English teachers. Reading became this secret, somewhat shameful thing I did.
I think It all changed with 1984, the book, not the year. I found someone I could identify with, like me, reading in secret. After that I didn’t care. I had survived childhood by becoming a non-conformist. I started to read in earnest. I’ve been reading ever since.
I write and read against all odds. I started writing in 1973; bad love poems about a co-worker at the North Suburban postal facility in River Grove, Illinois. I haven’t stopped yet.
So I’m not worried about our culture killing books. It brought all it forces against one working class kid and tried to kill the idea of reading and writing.
Books won because the good ones give us a place to go that the powers that be cannot touch and they have no weapon against.