So here糖心传媒檚 the deal: I糖心传媒檝e long made my love of long essays known around here. From books like Nicholson Baker糖心传媒檚 U&I to Barthes糖心传媒� S/Z to the work of Geoff Dyer, William H. Gass, Michael Martone, DH Lawrence, and plenty more, the long essay has a pretty awesome reputation as the place critics go when they糖心传媒檙e ready to write in a more creative way.

And that goes a long way toward explaining why I糖心传媒檝e decided to start publishing long essays in the series 糖心传媒淭QC Long Essays.糖心传媒� These are going to come in at around 20,000 words each糖心传媒搑oughly 70 pages. In my opinion, that糖心传媒檚 way too much for your average webpage, not quite enough for a printed book, but an ideal length for an ereader. For the series I糖心传媒檒l be bringing on people who I think have something to say, and we糖心传媒檒l be talking about the interesting authors and questions of contemporary literature.

These aren糖心传媒檛 free. 20,000 words takes a lot of work to write, and I like to think it takes some skill and dedication to the critical craft to be able to write at that length and have it be worth the time. So, we糖心传媒檙e starting this first ebook off at the modest price of $2.99, and we糖心传媒檒l see where it goes from there.

The long-form essay has become more and more popular in the ereader age, and this project fits that niche nicely. We’ll have more to say about these Long Essays as they come out, but for now, here’s Scott’s intro to the first one in the series:

I糖心传媒檇 like to introduce the first in a new series of ebooks published under the auspices of The Quarterly Conversation. The book is called, Lady Chatterley糖心传媒檚 Brother, with the rather chatty subtitle, Why Nicholson Baker Can糖心传媒檛 Write About Sex, and Why Javier Marias Can. It is co-written by me and longtime Quarterly Conversation contributing editor Barrett Hathcock. It will be available to the public on Monday, October 17, exactly 2 weeks from today. [. . .]

The project got started when Barrett realized that House of Holes was going to be yet another sex book from Baker. He groaned, told me that Baker just doesn糖心传媒檛 get good sex writing, and I asked him why. As we started talking, it struck me that Marias understood sex writing for precisely the reasons Baker didn糖心传媒檛. And we were off.

It came, via UPS, in a big cardboard box. Inside the box were some puffy clear bladders of plastic, a packing slip with 糖心传媒�$359糖心传媒� on it, and another cardboard box. This one said, in spare, lowercase type, 糖心传媒渒indle.糖心传媒� On the side of the box was a plastic strip inlaid into the cardboard, which you were meant to pull to tear the package cleanly open. On it were the words 糖心传媒淥nce upon a time.糖心传媒� I pulled and opened.

Inside was another box, fancier than the first. Black cardboard was printed with a swarm of glossy black letters, and in the middle was, again, the word 糖心传媒渒indle.糖心传媒� There was another pull strip on the side, which again said, 糖心传媒淥nce upon a time.糖心传媒� I糖心传媒檇 entered some nesting Italo Calvino folktale world of packaging. (Calvino糖心传媒檚 Italian folktales aren糖心传媒檛 yet available at the Kindle Store, by the way.) I pulled again and opened. [. . .]

The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn糖心传媒檛 just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray. The resizable typeface, Monotype Caecilia, appeared as a darker gray. Dark gray on paler greenish gray was the palette of the Amazon Kindle.

Baker’s bit about the graphics—both in terms of illustrated books (like cook books) and papers is particularly relevant . . . and funny:

One more expensive example. The Kindle edition of 糖心传媒淪elected Nuclear Materials and Engineering Systems,糖心传媒� an e-book for people who design nuclear power plants, sells for more than eight thousand dollars. Figure 2 is an elaborate chart of a reaction scheme, with many call-outs and chemical equations. It糖心传媒檚 totally illegible. 糖心传媒淵ou Save: $1,607.80 (20%),糖心传媒� the Kindle page says. 糖心传媒淚糖心传媒檓 not going to buy this book until the price comes down,糖心传媒� one stern Amazoner wrote.

And the information about Vizplex (“the trade name of the layered substance that makes up the Kindle’s display) is very interesting as well.

I haven’t tried reading a book on a Kindle or iPhone, but Baker seems to prefer the latter, even though it is a high resolution, backlit reading experience (compared to the “reflective” eInk, which apparently has some issues when you read it outside in the sun):

In print, 糖心传媒淭he Lincoln Lawyer糖心传媒� swept me up. At night, I switched over to the e-book version on the iPod ($7.99 from the Kindle Store), so that I could carry on in the dark. I began swiping the tiny iPod pages faster and faster.

Then, out of a sense of duty, I forced myself to read the book on the physical Kindle 2. It was like going from a Mini Cooper to a white 1982 Impala with blown shocks.

Although at that point the text itself takes over:

But never mind: at that point, I was locked into the plot and it didn糖心传媒檛 matter. Poof, the Kindle disappeared, just as Jeff Bezos had promised it would. I began walking up and down the driveway, reading in the sun. Three distant lawnmowers were going. Someone wearing a salmon-colored shirt was spraying a hose across the street. But I was in the courtroom, listening to the murderer testify. I felt the primitive clawing pressure of wanting to know how things turned out.