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Thaddeus Wert's avatar

What a great post. I have loved Tom Wolfe since I read Electric Kool Aid Acid Test in high school. Even at that young age, I could tell Wolfe wasn't impressed with the childishness of the Merry Pranksters. And whenever I see Al Sharpton today, I think of Reverend Bacon from Bonfire of the Vanities.

As much as possible, I use my Kindle as an eReader only. I buy inexpensive digital collections of classics from delphiclassics.com, or download free copies from standardebooks.org. I don't trust Amazon to preserve original versions. Last night I reread Flannery O'Connor's short story, "Revelation", and I wondered how long that will remain available with its repeated use of racial slurs -which are used to make the main point of the story - but that is something that a lot of people today won't get.

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Ruth Gaskovski's avatar

I have to admit that I have never read anything by Tom Wolfe, although I am certainly familiar with his name (there is simply only so much time to read and there are still so many classics to get through...) and the background you provide sounds fascinating.

I have profound skepticism of digitizing books to "preserve" them, for the exact reason you note here. I indeed collect physical books so that my children can have them for their own home libraries once they move out. In a news piece I read about the Peel District School Board here in Ontario, I was horrified to learn that they emptied the school library of all books that were written before 2008 (including Anne Frank!) because of "lack of diversity". They did not even pass them on, but instead sent them to the landfill. Digitizing books under authorities who decide what should be read is a dangerous endeavor that will most certainly doom countless books down the memory hole.

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