Watch out, America!

Had breakfast at Joe Brown's with Mark Marchus, the most interesting man I know these days, who manages to charge my battery whenever I visit with him. And today M had news: he broke down and bought a Kindle!

This may prove to be a pretty significant step in his creative life. He's working on a couple books but where he may find a special niche is in the area pretty unique to Kindle publishing, the short form of articles and essays. The audience who needs to hear what he has to say has little patience for "the long argument" but I think M could communicate his ideas and world view in short pieces, put on K for 99 cents, $1.49, whatever, and the search bots would find them, and readers in time would find them, and at the very least some important writing would be available and not stuck in his drawer somewhere.

This whole new digital world has barely started. It has negative impacts, to be sure (what I worry about most is the degradation and loss of reflection, contemplation, brooding, in the culture), but also positive ones, and high on the list is making non-commercial, non-mainstream writing readily available. This has not happened before in the history of the world. Maybe it could even lead somewhere.

So I look forward to seeing what M does on the creative end with his new Kindle.

This afternoon I can return to the novel polish.