Unlike the curmudgeonly, deliberately confrontational and fogeyish Luddite
Stewart Lee, I am a massive fan of technology and change. Whilst I love the aesthetics of holding a book in my hand, I am suspicious of those who think that that is the only way to do things because that is how it was when they grew up. I imagine when books became predominant there were those who yearned for an oral story telling tradition and refused to have their words transcribed or when papyrus was discovered someone was saying that he would continue to only work in stone because that felt like the right way to do things. So I love e-books just as much as paper books, in fact maybe a little bit more. It's not what you read things on, the important thing is that you're reading and just as my first iPod got me into listening to music (something that I had never been interested in before), I think the chances are that ebooks will get people reading more. Not only can I now carry a thousand books with me at any one time, and carry on reading one on the tube even if I have been dumb enough to forget to bring it with me (because they're all on my phone too), but I think it will also make it easier for people to get their work published because it will be simple enough to publish it themselves. People might not make as much money as they once did and there will be a lot of shit out there, but just as podcasts have meant the removal of that annoying of committee of people who have to green light a project, ebooks mean works can be produced that have no commercial value or that a publisher might not be interested in.
But also soon enough I will be able to download any book or article ever written and read it immediately wherever I am. I don't propose the destruction of paper books (though I think there will come a time quite soon when due to their financial and environmental cost they will not be printed in any great numbers if at all) but there are so many positives to ebooks that I am glad they are here (and not just because I predicted the whole phenomenon to Stewart Lee in 1990, when he still didn't like the idea and was fannying on about the aesthetics of turning pages and breaking spines, like the massive twat that he is). It's good that even though we are no longer a double act we continue to maintain the pose of being opposites. And I love the fact that nearly everyone who reads Stew's article will have done so on line (or even in mini quotes on Twitter) and that in fact his latest (and extremely excellent) book, with its extensive footnotes, actually works better as an ebook than a paper book.
I think many fans of books might not like ebooks because they don't get to show off on the train with what tome they're pretending to read. Whilst I like them because it means I can read Jeremy Kyle's autobiography and no one will know.
It'd fun seeing my own generation turning into reactionaries though, just like our parents who poo-pooed the music or TV shows or cartoon books we liked as kids. It's only fair that we should do the same so our kids can have a sense of superiority over us (and they will be just as correct as we were - old people are jerks).
All media can spread information in a good and bad way and ebooks and Twitter certainly have their downsides, but it's better that the information is available and increasingly easy to access. It's all just communication and communication is mainly a good thing. Historically, I think, the more we have communicated the more the stupid and offensive ideas have been exposed and the closer we get to truth.
But I mainly like ebooks today because even though I am in the middle of nowhere with no access to any shops I was able to download Tina Fey's new book in minutes and read it in a day. That is simply fucking magic.
If anyone needed any proof that women are funny then Tina Fey is it and her book had me laughing out loud three times in the first five minutes of reading it. But really if you need any proof that women are funny then you just have to actually have met some women. This lazy stereotype has been annoying me more and more recently, not just because there are plenty of funny stand ups on the circuit who don't just talk about periods and hating men (if you just bothered to go and see some comedy) but because it is spoken as if it is fact so often and parroted by others that it almost becomes true. Every time I tweet about it you can be guaranteed that someone will come back with the same trite shit and it's not dissimilar at all to the way that people spoke about the blacks and gays (and also women) in the 1970s. Tina Fey has much to say on this matter and it's smart and true. On Twitter today someone said that there might be funny female stand ups, but the ones who get on to TV let the side down by being really bad. Again I don't think this is true. Or at least it is not any more true that of male stand ups. There are hundreds of awful male stand ups who do much more hack material than women and they are rarely picked up on it. There aren't that many good comedians. As the excellent Jamie Kilstein observed, "Let's all calm down and agree that most comedians in general are terrible." Very true.
Tina Fey is effortlessly amusing and the book is enjoyable and interesting. It's not perfect by any means. She is a bit self-conscious and not one for much revelation and some of the chapters feel like filler. I would have preferred it to be more autobiographical and to lose the listy bits (though they are still funny) and I suspect she wrote it fairly quickly (given how much else she has going on in here life). But there's still lots of interesting discussion and I kept laughing and chortling all afternoon. Like most comedian's autobiographies it made it appear that the route to success all came about through luck and in massive leaps forward very quickly, but I think that's maybe where success comes from.
Anyway, fuck it, give it a read. In whatever format you can. If you want to get someone to transmit it to you via semaphore that's OK with me. It's what is written that is important, not the way it is transmitted. Though it's annoying that you can't pass on ebooks to your friends once you've read them. And also as was pointed out on Twitter you can't rip them up in front of the author's astonished face. Which is one of the better things about the printed version of S Lee's book.
And look at me. I managed to find the mother of all high-backed armchairs here at the health farm. I might have to try and steal it and take it home. Though it's going to be hard to get in my car.
