Analog’s revenge is manifested in those phenomena we can see around us, provided we’re lucky enough to be in the right place. Vinyl records are on pace to outsell CDs for the first time since the 1980s. Bookstores are springing up again, often with a greater emphasis on the personal and social (cafes, poetry readings, meetings with authors) – the sort of thing that brings more involvement from customers.
A recent driving trip down the Pacific Coast, from Seattle to Los Angeles, brought this home to me in a surprising way. It was predictable that big cities like Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles had book and record stores – Powell’s City of Books in Portland claims to be the largest bookstore in the world, while LA’s cavernous, warehouse-like Amoeba Music is one of the largest record stores. The surprise for me was that I found such stores in a number of small towns.
Port Townsend, Washington, is a beautifully preserved Victorian town with about 10,000 people, yet it has at least two bookstores (I think I might have seen a third as well). A short drive away on the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles – the final home of the great short story writer Raymond Carver – has its own bookstore. They are real bookstores too, with extensive stocks of new and used books, knowledgeable staff, and a calendar of events. Astoria, Oregon, with a mere 12,000 or so people, also boasts book and record stores. If you thought traditional nights at the movies were no longer an option, you’ll be pleased to hear that Port Townsend even has its own art house cinema, the Rose Theatre. It’s not some dilapidated architectural curiosity, but a renovated facility with a full range of programs.
The above photo, taken in our hotel in Astoria, hints at the value of analog. The album covers are aesthetic objects in themselves, suitable for decorating your lobby, and come with their own memories and resonances. You can’t decorate a wall with digital downloads.
And books do furnish a room, as Anthony Powell would be glad to tell you. Or as the guest in The Great Gatsby says, discovering the books in Gatsby’s library: “Absolutely real – have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real.” In that early classic of the business novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, one character makes the sensible comment that “if we have a library, we have got to have books in it.” Books are a way to show your taste, a way to gain entry to a more rarified world in the eyes of your acquaintances. You can’t really do this with a Kindle or Nook.
These examples from the Pacific Northwest suggest that, at least in some parts of the globe, the future of analog is bright.