The Real Trouble With E-books

Novelist Jonathan Franzen is in the news again for talking smack at a literary festival in Colombia about the very media that promote his literary efforts. This time, the target is not Oprah but e-books, which he says are a threat to "responsible self-government." Quite a few people have had fun at his expense. Andrew Shaffer, a blogger for The Huffington Post, created parallel statements delivered by one "Johannes" Franzen to booksellers at the 1564 Frankfurt Book Fair under the headline "Print books are damaging to society." Yet Franzen is a poser, not a holdout. The Corrections has been available on Kindle since April 2010, and his nonfiction became available as e-books about the same time that his novel Freedom was released in August.