Permenance In A Temporary World

Jonathan Franzen warns ebooks are corroding values

Freedom author tells festival audience that the 'impermanence' of ebooks is incompatible with enduring principles

Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk
Monday 30 January 2012 06.50 EST

Jonathan Franzen has spoken of his fear that ebooks will have a detrimental effect on the world – and his belief that serious readers will always prefer print editions.

The acclaimed and bestselling novelist, who denies himself access to the internet when writing, was talking at the Hay festival in Cartagena, Colombia. "Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I'm handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that's reassuring," said Franzen, according to
the Telegraph.

"Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough."

For serious readers, Franzen said, "a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience". "Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change," he continued. "Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don't have a crystal ball. But I do fear that it's going to be very hard to make the world work if there's no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government."

The acclaimed author of Freedom and The Corrections – which are published as ebooks – has said in the past that "it's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction". He seals the ethernet port on his own computer to prevent him connecting to the internet while he writes, also removing the card so he is unable to play computer games and wearing noise-cancelling headphones to prevent distraction.

The disruption posed by technology is even voiced by one of his characters, Walter Berglund, in Freedom. "'This was what was keeping me awake at night,' Walter said. 'This fragmentation. Because it's the same problem everywhere. It's like the internet, or cable TV – there's never any centre, there's no communal agreement, there's just a trillion bits of distracting noise … All the real things, the authentic things, the honest things, are dying off.'"

Franzen said at Hay that "the combination of technology and capitalism has given us a world that really feels out of control".

"If you go to Europe, politicians don't matter. The people making the decisions in Europe are bankers," he said. "The technicians of finance are making the decisions there. It has very little to do with democracy or the will of the people. And we are hostage to that because we like our iPhones."

If printed books do become obsolete in the next 50 years, Franzen is pleased that at least he won't have to see it. "One of the consolations of dying is that [you think], 'Well, that won't have to be my problem'," he said. "Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/30/jonathan-franzen-ebooks-values

Winston Riley Honored

SOME of the leading female dancehall artistes of the 1980s have hailed music producer Winston Riley for giving them a voice in what was a male-dominated arena.

Riley died Thursday at the University Hospital of the West Indies at age 65. He had been in a coma since being shot in the head by a gunman at his St Andrew home in November.

Deejay Sister Charmaine was a teenager in the mid-1980s when Riley helped catapult her to stardom. "It was Johnny P and Tuffist who took me to meet Mr Riley by his record store at Chancery Street. He was one of the best producers out of Jamaica.

Everything he touched became a hit," Charmaine recalled during a telephone interview last Friday with the Observer from her New York City home last Friday.

Riley produced Charmaine's first hit, the X-rated Glammity. He also produced some of her other big songs such as Granny Advice (which was sampled by dancehall artiste Timerblee in Bubble Like Soup); We Have The Body and Man Look Nice.

Sister Nancy ruled the dancehall with One Two and Bam Bam, both of which were produced by Riley. She was the first female artiste for Riley's Techniques label.

She described their relationship as good in the beginning but said things eventually deteriorated.

"He was a good person and he did look out for me," said Sister Nancy, who works as an accountant at a New Jersey bank.

She met Riley while she was honing her skills on the Stereophonic sound system in the late 1970s.

"It was General Echo and Hugh Hugh Madoo who brought me to Mr Riley while he had his shop downtown. I really admired how he took recording serious," she recalled. "You couldn't go into his studio and do any foolishness."

She said she last saw the producer in 2005 at an event at the Mas Camp in New Kingston.

"He told me he wasn't well and I told him to take care of himself," said Nancy.

Another Riley protégé is Junie Ranks, now based in New York City.

"Mr Riley was one of the best producers that I worked with," she declared.

"From the first day I stepped into his studio I didn't know I could really do this music thing. But he made me who I am," she continued.

She remembered Riley as a perfectionist who made sure he put out the best product possible. "When Sanchez recorded Loneliness he was off key and Mr Riley made sure the finished product was on key before he put it out."

Riley produced Junie's 1983 debut single Counteraction as well as Gimme Di Money, Cry Fi Mi Boops (her response to Super Cat's Boops) and Shirley Duppy.

Lady G was not a member of the Techniques camp but it was Riley who produced one of her biggest hits, Legal Rights with Papa San.

She recalled her time working with Riley.

"Mr Riley was a musical genius, I met him through Junie Ranks in 1988," Lady G told the Observer. "I followed her down to Mr Riley's record shop and he asked me to come to the studio later that evening," she added.

"He said he had something for me to do and when I went to the studio I saw Hopeton James and we recorded Samfie Lover which became a hit for us."

Winston Riley hailed from west Kingston and was a founding member of the famous Techniques harmony group which recorded at producer Arthur 'Duke' Reid's Treasure Isle label.

He was best known as a producer of countless hit songs. Two of his biggest hits were Dave Barker and Ansell Collins' Double Barrel which made the British national charts in 1971, and the much-sampled Stalag 'riddim' which was done in 1974.

Sister Nancy


Winston Riley

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/Female-artistes-remember-Winston-Riley_10622047