E-Ink Part I

October 14th, 2009Blog1 comment

I’ve been taking the PRS-600, Sony’s touch screen e-reader, for a test drive. So far the results are mixed.

At my request, my agents have been sending me scripts to study. Around a dozen arrived yesterday. A dozen more or so are set to arrive in the next couple of days.

Now, our good friend Aaron is a literary manager; he uses a Kindle DX to read the mountains of scripts that he has to deal with. This is great for the earth — he has already saved many a tree by doing so.

So now that I’ve also got a ton of scripts to read, this became my plan as well. So I picked up the PRS-600 at Best Buy with the intention of trying it out and seeing how it works. Am I ready for the E-Ink revolution?

Getting .pdfs onto the device was pretty easy. I connected the machine to my mac using a USB cable; it installed the necessary software directly from the e-reader itself, treating it like a hard drive. Sony’s client software for adding and organizing files on the e-reader is somewhat like iTunes: You can import .pdf and book files, create folders on the e-reader, drop them in. Fairly easy to use if not quite that intuitive — when you click on a file to view it in the client application, it isn’t clear how to go back to the list view of files. It’s fiddly, but the thing works as advertised.

The e-reader’s screen is a different story. The contrast is muddled even compared to other Sony offerings. Also there is quite a bit of glare. But you know what has great contrast and absolutely no glare? PAPER.

And how do scripts look on this thing? Not bad. In the portrait orientation an 8.5×11 page of Courier is readable but fairly tiny; going to landscape solves the problem but splits each page into vertical halves.

Can I read a script on this thing? Yes, but it’s not as pleasant as reading it off a paper page. It is nice however to be able to carry around dozens of scripts in a small device.

The Kindle DX is probably where I want to go. It has native support and a bigger screen. But the price (490 spacebucks!!!) is a turn off. Also the Barnes and Noble offering is on view next week. So we’ll definitely have to see what’s up over there. But as far as e-ink reading goes, I think it works for me when it comes to scripts. Periodicals too. Books: No.

The reason is that I feel like books are a nexus of history, time, and place. To Kill a Mockingbird is a clear portal into a very specific time in America and to your own personal history as a reader when you first picked it up. The very nature of a novel demands that its very best form is a physical one: Bound paper that sits on your shelf. It occupies space in the world. You can see it, remember who you were when you read it, what it means to you. You can pull it down off the shelf and page through it, read it again. Very much like a trophy you won once — it’s a tangible piece of your history.

Reference books in electronic form: Fine. That works. That’s even better, because they are instantly updatable and searchable. But works of fiction are no-go for me. They’re too sacred.

Screenplays on the other hand are different. For me, I think reading them off a Kindle would totally work. This is because to me, a screenplay is an ephemeral thing — it is a story that is still on its way to its final form. Not to say that screenplays can’t be a serious form of literature. Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption” is proof of that. In fact, reading the script for Robert Siegel’s “The Wrestler” makes me classify it in this category as well. These things are well written. I’d probably keep those on my shelf.

But everything else — TV episodes, romantic comedies, zombie movies — I’m studying for structure and to see how things were written. No reason to sacrifice a tree.

Well, except for episodes of The Sopranos. Those are incredible to read.

This guy better win or he’s going to epically embarrass himself.

Either that or he’s a good samaritan and is there to boost the egos of everyone that passes him.