I love Amazon. I love that before I leave for a trip, I can click onto Amazon and quickly order the exact books I’ll need to sustain me on my journey. I love that Amazon lets you listen to CD’s before you buy them. And I have greatly enjoyed the recommendations that Amazon has made for me based on my previous orders.

Plus, I own a kindle. It wasn’t so much a holiday gift as my dad handing it to me and saying, “I can’t figure out how to use this shit. If you want it, take it.” I myself have not yet figured out how to use said shit, but I will soon enough, as I did the i-pod once all my favorite record stores went out of business.

What troubles me about Amazon, however, far outweighs the few pleasures I derive from it. For one thing, before Amazon existed, I never found going to a bookstore to be an inconvenience. That it may now be perceived as such seems little more than manufactured need, kind of like my favorite face cream upgrading to an allegedly better (and more expensive) formula when the first one seemed to be just fine.

Perhaps more importantly, I wonder what will happen to our neighborhoods and communities when we continually place “convenience” as our primary value. When the bookstores, record and video stores are all gone, as are their typically quirky and knowledgeable employees, what will fill our sidewalks? Cell phone retailers? Real estate offices? Industrial condominiums that block out the sky?

Well okay. Suppose we concede that it’s short-sighted to value personal convenience over the collective benefits of community. Still, Amazon simply offers a wider array of products. Will the local bookstore have all of Balzac’s early novels? How about the rare guide to stamp collecting that I covet? Sure, the bookstore can order them. But what if I want to read the blurbs or look inside the books immediately?

Similarly, what if I live in a rural town where the only bookstore is five miles from my home? Or if I live within a homogeneous population, say a Mormon enclave in Utah, or a Hasidic community on the Borscht Belt? Does not Amazon offer great opportunities for more diverse (and potentially better) education to people with limited access to books?

Of course it does. As do the internet’s many other wholesale distributors of products and information, such as Netflix and wikipedia. Both of these are resources I use regularly. I can no more imagine doing research without wikipedia than I can imagine my evenings without Netflix’s instantly downloadable documentaries and TV programs.

Still, these resources must all be consumed with caution. Wikipedia does not have everything, nor is it completely reliable. (It is necessarily limited by the biases and values of its contributing writers.) Amazon may on its surface appear diverse, comprehensive and democratic in its wide array of offerings. Yet its danger lies in its monopolization of the power over what so many read. Suppose that tomorrow, founder Jeff Bezos decided to exclude all books written by women? Or all novels depicting homosexual relationships?

Perhaps this sounds unthinkable in our open market. Yet just a year ago, “Amazon de-ranked hundreds of gay- and lesbian-themed books,” writes Onnesha Roychoudhuri in the November/December issue of The Boston Review. “Without a sales rank, the visibility of the titles plummeted.” Though the books were eventually made available once again, Amazon representatives offered little explanation as to what happened, nor were any changes made to safe-guard similar actions in the future.

In fact, many publishing houses are starting to regard the mega-franchise as somewhat of a bully. From aggressive phone calls attempting to coerce small presses into unfair pricing schemes to in-person threats, Amazon has been far from a friendly face. “Dennis Loy Johnson, head of Melville Publishing…received a visit from a cadre of Amazon employees at a book convention…’ They kept saying, ‘Why aren’t you participating in the program [the Amazon co-op which enables publishers to have their books listed on the site]?’…I told them I couldn’t afford it. They countered that Johnson ‘couldn’t afford not to.’” (Roychoudhuri)

And who could forget the whirlwind couple of days during which Macmillan refused to cooperate with  Amazon’s book markdowns for the Kindle? Macmillan CEO John Sargent flew out to speak with Amazon execs, hoping to negotiate a pricing model that would be fair to publishers and writers. Before Sargent even got off his plane, Amazon had removed the buy buttons from all Macmillan books. (They were later replaced, but the vulnerability of writers and publishers was felt around the world.)

While Amazon consistently argues that its low prices are better for readers–who doesn’t love saving an average of $15 on a new hardcover?-one can’t help but wonder if this will be good for readers over the long-term. What will happen when writers stop receiving royalties because their books are being sold so cheaply? How will alternative and small presses continue to operate when they can no longer compete within Amazon’s pricing scheme? (Books are sold from publishing houses to Amazon, usually at a discount, though Amazon has been stepping up the pressure for greater discounts, and small presses are feeling the hit.)

Eventually, fewer small press offerings will be very bad for readers who prefer less mainstream or more diverse reading fare. In fact, as large corporations such as Barnes and Noble, Walmart and Target  have increasing influence over how a book is produced (offering input on everything from storyline to book cover to book title), and then offer their books at drastically lower prices than the traditional $25 price, it’s possible that offerings to readers will become increasingly narrow. Goodbye unconventional characters. Goodbye literary experimentation. Goodbye careful line-editing.

Within Amazon itself, many readers don’t realize that the books being recommended to them are not exactly the fairest sample of titles. Rather, they are part of just one of Amazon’s many algorithms, “the result of paid promotions.” (Roychoudhuri) These promotions lean heavily on the best-sellers as opposed to the books that might in fact better suit a reader’s needs. It is also common for the same books to be offered at different prices to different customers, depending on on a reader’s purchase history. So much for diverse and democratic offerings.

So–what can writers do? What must writers do?

I’d love to say that we should all be boycotting Amazon and supporting our local bookstores. Yet the enormous price disparity between the two often makes such a recommendation unrealistic.

Perhaps then we should be ordering our books strictly from Barnes and Noble? Not a bad idea, except that the stock is simply not as comprehensive. Furthermore, is it really effective to trade one mega-corporation for another?

One good move has come from The Author’ s Guild. In order to help writers keep track of their books, they created WhoMovedMyButton.com. Here writers can educate themselves about Amazon’s “Buy-Buttonology” and receive notification should Amazon make books unavailable for purchase. (Though what power individual writers have to actually change their book’s status once Amazon makes such a move, I do not know.)

The Authors’ Guild seems to have the right idea. That is, writers need to help other writers. Group blogs, women writer groups, language poets, experimental novelists–whatever your ilk and whatever your identification, perhaps now is the time for writers to work collectively to discuss and solve these problems. Rather than forming individual enterprises (another blog, another literary magazine), perhaps we ought to focus our energy on what commonalities we share, and how we can build on one another’s strengths. (This is of course not to disparage blogs or lit mags, but merely to encourage writers to find ways to work together in collectives, so that we are less solitary and that the strength of our numbers may truly be felt.)

Beyond that, I look out and I turn to you, dear reader. What do you think of Amazon? A wonderful resource or an invasive plant within contemporary literature?  Has Amazon affected your writing career? What have you done in response?

Dog Eared Books, in San Francisco's Mission District

Litquake is an annual event, but on almost any day or night in San Francisco, there is likely to be something for the literary-inclined — a poetry reading at a bar, a book swap in a cafe or a reading in the book-lined lobby of the Rex Hotel. This is a place, after all, where dozens of fiercely independent bookstores not only survive but thrive, thanks to a city of readers who seem to view books not only as a pleasure, but as a cause.

In a recent article in Slate Magazine, Portland State University professor Paul Collins looks back to what is arguably the first how-to on writing fiction. Certain ideologies aside, the advice still rings true for today’s aspiring writers, yet it comes with that signature Victorian flair.

After warning that there are no small ideas, only small writers—but many small writers with small ideas—Cody tells would-be Victorian writers to show and don’t tell (“To say your heroine was proud and defiant is not half so effective as saying she tossed her head and stamped her foot”), to kill their darlings (“sacrifice absolutely everything of that sort”), and write what they know. Oh—and don’t quit your day job: “No man ought to make the writing of fiction his sole business.”

Matt Trueman of The Guardian reviews the latest theatrical adaptation of The Great Gatsby–a seven hour stage production in which “not one of Fitzgerald’s words is left out.”

When The New York Times wrote up an article on Figment–a new website dedicated to young authors and readers–I kind of had this strange feeling of familiarity.

Figment.com will be unveiled on Monday as an experiment in online literature, a free platform for young people to read and write fiction, both on their computers and on their cellphones. Users are invited to write novels, short stories and poems, collaborate with other writers and give and receive feedback on the work posted on the site.

Salman Rushdie

It’s concentration more and it is to do with developing skills of concentration and I think that is something which, well a few things I think about being a writer that you get better at with time.

Arthur Krystal of The New York Times (it’s starting to become obvious what I read) has posted an essay on the phenomenon of literary lists–catalogues in prose, poetry, and drama–and what they can tell us.

Even though this dates back to November, I was surprised to find out that I was quoted in the Reader’s Almanac–the Library of America’s blog. In a brief article on the reactions to Joseph Epstein’s commentary on T. S. Eliot and the decline of literary culture, the Library of America mentioned my own commentary, posted here at Xenith.

It wasn’t that long ago that I mentioned one of the many quagmires of novel writing—or at least one of my personal predicaments. As one might expect of a writer, I very much love to read. As one might expect of an amateur novelist, my favorite literary form is the novel. I love novels to the extent that I fantasize about the apocalypse just so I have time to read them. Luckily for me I wear contacts so there’s no danger of my glasses breaking when they fall on a rock. I’ve been known to worship novels. I suppose it goes without saying, my reason for writing one.

This is the quagmire: when you (meaning me) are writing a novel, your focus is shifted. It’s more difficult to take it in as a complete work of art. Instead you get hung up on certain sentences, a character’s mannerisms, the overarching structure. In time the novel has your thinking so warped that you have to put it down. Not to mention the way novels haunt your own prose style. What happens when you read too much Faulkner? Your sentences try to crawl outside of themselves. You’re tempted to use the word crepuscular.

So what does a lover of books do? Writing a novel is a long process. I’m currently working through my second draft and while I’m moving at an alarming pace I realize there is still a long stretch of writing before me. Writing the initial draft took three months. With all that novel left to write and rewrite you can’t simply tell yourself that you’ll read again when it’s over. You have to compromise.

I am reading poetry. I am reading essays. I am reading philosophy and criticism. Unless it’s a singular cohesive text I don’t even bother reading the whole book. I’ve read portions of books from Philip Larkin, Yusef Komunyakaa, James Wright, T. S. Eliot, and Jorge Luis Borges. I’ve read essays both comical and awe-inspiring from Martin Amis and David Foster Wallace. I’m in the middle of one of the most fascinating philosophical literary texts I’ve ever read: Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet. What is interesting, I’ve noticed, is that I’m not reading in the same way that I’ve always read. Again, novel writing has warped my sensibilities. When I read Anne Carson I’m looking for something. I’m searching. There is something she’s trying to tell me and I’m going to use it in my work. I read as a novelist these days, gathering information. I can tell that Eros the Bittersweet is going to be a strong influence on my next novel, which at the moment is only a title and a document full of notes. Reading has become research, and as horrifying as that sounds it’s more exhilarating than anything because I’m loving every moment of it.

That is how the reader in me is surviving. Yesterday I took a holiday and spent the day at home. Toward the middle of the afternoon I spread a blanket on the grass in my back yard and in what may have been a writer’s fantasy I listened to the birds and read about the triangular structure of love. I even managed to incorporate a bowl of cherries, as though the symbolic representation of happiness wasn’t yet complete. Even though reading can be a toxic enterprise you can’t put reading on hold. It keeps you grounded in the rest of the world. For a while I was wholly absorbed in my novel and I let nothing else in. You start to feel anxious. Even though you think you’re putting all your creative energy into a novel there is a piece left unused: that creativity that occurs when you encounter something inspirational—a logical conundrum or a scientific fact or a little piece of history. You have to keep feeding your creativity with books. You have to read, even if you can’t read your drug of choice.

In lieu of a gushing blurb, the literary type’s bathroom stall tribute, this begins a potted series on the fraught transition from page to screen, and cinema’s treatment of writers and writing.

Lots of us love books. Lots of us love films. What could be more natural than to bring the two together? Much like other natural (and indeed unnatural) acts, the process is frequently highly charged, messy, and unsatisfying for both parties.

Which proves true for Neil LaBute’s (In The Company of Men) adaptation of AS Byatt’s acclaimed novel, Possession. An irresistible plot for anyone enamoured of dusty old volumes and faded letters, as well as a good mystery, but ephemeral, and difficult to capture onscreen, directed by one of those talky playwrights one feels obliged to admire. Still, there’s a relatively fresh writer, and the director has penned one of the most vicious and provocative screenplays in recent memory. Not all bad, right?

Possession comes unstuck in its treatment of the romantic elements of the plot. The adaptation dilutes the book’s tandem of relationships to a wet-eyed, slow moving melodrama, rather like a less fleshly Mills and Boon twin pack; never a good analogy since my native snobbery makes me suspicious of all items that come in twin packs, like cheap toilet paper. The cast, all actors of calibre, do their best with the limp material, which goes a little something like this:

Scholar and Token Yank in London Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) stumbles upon a series of passionate love letters penned by a well-known purveyor of respectable Victorian sentiment Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam, The Tudors, Emma, Gosford Park), to a woman who is emphatically not his adoring, repressed wife (Holly Aird). Scenting a scandal, he discovers the recipient is Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle, best known for being Elizabeth Bennett, here with flowing Pre-Raphaelite tresses), a lesbian firebrand and poet.

In his sleuthing, he enlists the reluctant help of a sceptical fellow academic (Gwyneth Paltrow, once again demonstrating her facility for English vowels), saddled with an unfortunate name, and an even more unfortunate on-off boyfriend named Fergus. The estimable Toby Stephens typecast again as sneering public school alum who uses ‘old chap’ too liberally, and wears polo-necked sweaters with a blazer, aiming for Steve McQueen, but missing the target just a little – lazy shorthand for Nasty Bastard. Small wonder poor Maud (Paltrow) spends most of the film looking bored or wanly disapproving. But she soon takes a personal interest in the case, for no less a reason than her distant relationship to The Other Woman.

The above soon pales into insignificance, as before you can say ‘Mulder and Scully’, or indeed ‘Jinkies!’, we must endure some terribly dull odd-couple-y meet-cute bonding of scruffy, instinctive maverick and prim, cool rationalist. Eckhart and Paltrow share minimal chemistry, and there’s no sense of jeopardy in their coupling, since the boyfriend seems to have little interest in the matter. He does, however, provide a stumbling block while those meddling kids hang out in dusty attics, by allying himself with a wealthy, ruthless American collector of Ash memorabilia, also with a propensity for polo necked garb (a gloriously hammy Trevor Eve).

This plays out alongside flashbacks to the intense, years-long affair between Christobel and Ash, as it moves from between the pages to between the sheets. Alas, the film spends little meaningful time on the meeting of minds before we get to the tastefully filmed bodies, so it proves difficult to care.

Possession might have been saved from utter lassitude by small supporting roles; Lena Headley radiates quiet rage as the wronged, faithful lover, and the wonderful Tom Hollander appears as a louche solicitor friend and clichéd sounding board for Roland, as well as Maud’s eccentric, aristocratic parents, played by Anna Massey and Graham Crowden. But without the support of the script, none given enough to do.

It’s all very prettily done, with lots of elegant cinematography and picturesque locations, but unchallenging, and largely humourless. Even the unintentional hilarity of the grave-digging scene didn’t add much to this torpid, badly written effort.

A few recent articles have persuaded me to consider the rise of freely distributed electronic media, most specifically books. With the spread in popularity of sites like Project Gutenberg and Google Books, we often hear horror stories of entire collections of books succumbing to a militia of scanners, condemned to be pinned, naked, to the Internet, where they will be permanently visible and available sans charge. Publishers and authors panic at the thought of this copyright infringement, at their oncoming doom suggested by this free information; how will they pay the rent when nobody has to buy their book anymore?

If the overly sarcastic tone hasn’t already suggested my dismissive scoff at this terror, then let me state it quite clearly: there is nothing to worry about. It seems to me that these particular individuals and publishing companies have forgotten one of the oldest and most treasured facets of Western civilization: the library.

So, in truth, what is Project Gutenberg other than an easily accessible, international library that never closes? If we are to call it a library, with 27,000 titles it’s an embarrassingly small one. The Hennepin County library system, seated in Minneapolis, MN, claims to house over five million books. My question is a simple one: why is browsing easily accessible information via the fibers of the Internet a sin when simply visiting your local library and perusing the same titles is encouraged? It’s a paradoxical, daresay hypocritical, concept.

I do confess that I used to think similarly, that freely available information would be the downfall of the publishing industry, and then the end of writing as a career, however I’ve since thought about the situation clearly. There’s something to be said about owning a book. In truth, I don’t know anyone who would choose to download a book in lieu of plucking it off the shelf at Barnes ‘n’ Noble and thumbing through its pages at home, making a comfortable space for it on their living room bookcase. There are certainly books that I use for their informative value that I wouldn’t consider purchasing, but again, I’ll use them anyway when I go to the library—that haven that we seem to never remember. Naturally, some will download, but these readers aren’t going to stop buying books: they never bought them in the first place. Online content is not going to destroy book sales, only increase worldwide readership. It may, perhaps, even spark the interest of readers who may not have been readers before, leading to more books purchased. There’s really no danger here. Readers will always buy books and cherish them as beautiful artifacts: we attach the wonders within to the physical, external form—the font on the cover, the smell of the pages—and are thus forever voracious consumers and collectors of the written word. When bookstores stop charging for books and just give away physical copies like Jolly Ranchers, then we’ll talk.