There has been much wringing of hands by publishers, agents and serious readers of all stripes over the fate of the paper book. They lament the loss of their sacred vehicle for delivery of the long story: that dusty, pulpy, tactile experience that smells at first like a newly slain and bleached tree and then later like a musty treasure dragged from your grandmother’s attic.

All of us who prefer reading and writing in the long format rather than in sad little electronic dibs and dabs are staring at an unfolding revolution. I’ve come out on the side of this digital tsunami of change having a positive impact on storytelling.

But others aren’t so sure. The latest post on this subject that has taken my attention is this one by Johann Hari where he says:

The book — the physical paper book — is being circled by a shoal of sharks, with sales down 9 percent this year alone. It’s being chewed by the e-book. It’s being gored by the death of the bookshop and the library. And most importantly, the mental space it occupied is being eroded by the thousand Weapons of Mass Distraction that surround us all.

I’ve been hearing this for years and paying special attention given my own (albeit fading) preoccupation with making the list of top American novelists under 40. I turn 40 this year and other things, which include movies, work, a kid, red wine and fishing, are all conspiring to sap my energy for the sort of literary navel gazing required to write the type of novels I’m interested in. I’ve done the dance with agents and heard their lament all too often. They’re wonderful people, but they’re challenged by the state of the publishing industry. Here’s what one nice agent recently wrote me about a novel manuscript I sent her:

So I think you’re a strong writer – I have to say I enjoyed reading this and was very impressed by your talent which is obvious throughout.  You’ve written a difficult novel but made it engaging and tense, and kept the reader wondering.

But I feel that there are some big problems…at a different time I might have encouraged you to think about a rewrite and to show it to me again, but now it’s such a difficult climate for fiction, that I’m not going to do that.

I used to get that “difficult climate” line a lot.  Maybe it’s a way to let someone down easy…to pass on a manuscript but encourage a <40 writer to keep his chin up and keep at it. Maybe it’s a polite way to say I suck. Or maybe it’s an earnest reflection of the pressure they’re feeling as this era we love so much, that of the long form story in print, goes gently into a good night lit by glowing rectangles in various sizes. If it’s the latter, this tells me that in a previous era I probably could have had a shot at landing that top agent and staking out a modest career in the low stakes world of literary fiction.

But instead I’ve moved on to making documentaries and other distractions, and I’m finding less and less time to write.

But I’m still a reader. If I don’t have at least two books on my nightstand in various stages of completion, I feel a hole in my existence that can’t be filled by either the lesser experiences of social media or the Great American Lobotomy Machine. And being a reader of both long stuff and very old stuff gives me several distinct advantages that make me relavent in a tightening marketplace:

Advantage one: Russian novels and endurance

If you can read a long, rambling Russian novel with a myriad of characters each of whom inexplicably has three or four names, all of which sound similar to those of the other characters, and if you can concentrate long enough, and hard enough, to get through a thousand pages and then be so moved that you weep like a child when it all comes together in the end…then you can pretty much analyze any situation, no matter how dark and tangled, and find your way through to the other side.

People who don’t read Russian novels might reach points in their lives or careers where they feel stalled or impossibly entangled. What you learn from Russian novels is that if you just plod through, if you just focus and turn the page, eventually it will come together. Through sheer brute tenacity, you can reach the conclusion of any given situation.

This has helped me survive any number of challenges, from persisting through numerous creative obsessions to surviving crazy bosses and any number of seemingly hopeless situations of the personal or professional variety.

Persistence pays off. And if the reading of long-format books is truly dying in this age of 140-character interpersonal communication, then I’ve got a secret weapon the next time I face that brick wall and start slamming my forehead against the mortar. I can keep myself sharp through this long slog of life and career, and the fewer folks out there who know this Secret of Dostoyevski, the better the chance that I’ll reach the other side first.

Advantage two: the “creative guy”

I’ve acquired a reputation, not quite honestly, as being something of a creative guy.  I’ve heard it over the years at various corporate and institutional jobs. “Hey, you’re the creative guy, you go figure something out.”

It’s always felt unearned. Mainly because I’m not that creative. My creativity stems largely from stealing things written by dead guys who can’t sue me. That advertising copy? That was a riff on Dylan Thomas or Ovid. That story concept? Straight out of a letter by Flaubert, with imagery from Rilke. The latest commercial script? Heavily influenced by Walt Whitman, whom I read a snippet of daily to help me earn that creative guy label.

Of course, I’m not the only one who “collaborates” with Walt Whitman – the best advertising people all do this, and some aren’t afraid to admit it:

Advantage three: a refuge

Some folks spend small fortunes on psychotherapy or golf, trips to the Far East, yoga classes, you name it, all to achieve some sort of meditative balance in their lives. I’ve got my own distractions that cost me in both time and treasure, not the least of which are wine and fishing. But a paper book is the perfect, portable, inconspicuous, low-cost way to slip into a different plane of existence in order to achieve that distance from the electronic cacophony that is our daily lives.

A novel habit could be the very thing that keeps you sharper than the competition, especially with fewer and fewer folks out there who hone the same required level of concentration that allows you to read something good. If you have an easy, accessible, inexpensive place to retreat for a few hours or moments at a time, then you don’t need that trip to the day spa or those pricey extra eighteen holes to get away. You can save your coins for more important things such as red wine, vitamins, or maybe an MBA degree.

I’m not afraid of books going away. I can go to our local library book sale and load up on really good stuff for five dollars a box. There are so many classic works going back some two thousand years that I have yet to read that, should the practice of writing books cease tomorrow, I could still map out a lifetime of reading.

So I’ll always have this refuge, this bargain retreat that can take me to the Great Russian Steppes or down the Mississippi on a raft with that pesky Huck and my long-time hero and mentor, Jim.

In closing: Seek and Destroy

So in the end, I’m not afraid of the cessation of publishing or the disappearance of reading from mainstream culture. Why? Because it’s always going to be my thing. I frankly don’t care if other people (other than my wife and daughter) continue to read stuff or not. I want my kid to read because it will give her the same advantages that I perceive reading gives me. I don’t have to worry about her, because at seven she is obsessed with collecting fairy books and she begs to hear more chapters of Little House on the Prairie every night. She’ll be just fine when it comes to reading.

If publishers stop publishing and people stop reading, maybe the box loads of books at the library book sale will drop from five bucks to two-fifty.

If publishing and long-format reading collapse, I’ll retain my secret advantages. I can remain the creative guy thanks to Walt Whitman. I can retain my strategy for plowing through difficult situations.

So if long-format books become “my thing,” I’m fine with that. I recall listening to this little known band from the Bay Area when I was a kid. They were called Metallica and they had this album called “Kill ‘em All” that none of the radio stations ever played because it was too raw and angry and poorly produced. This meant that the only way to hear their music was to read about it in some photocopied, pathetic little music zine or to have a friend hand you a copy.

Once you’d discovered Metallica, you became part of an underground movement, a sort of greasy, black tee-shirted clan of socially awkward individuals who possessed this power of frothing, addictive music that they only shared with others of their kind.

To connect with this clan, all you had to do was hum, in a nasal falsetto, the opening bars of “Seek and Destroy” and you’re fellow clansmen would begin banging their heads: “bwananaa, bum bwananaa, bum bum bum bum bum bwanahh!” You then knew that you could safely talk about music and anarchy with them.

Later on, when Metallica’s fame grew and and you could find them in records stores and on the radio and in music videos, our desperately awkward clan lost our secret muse. When the band ceased to be underground, they ceased to interest us. When they stopped eating sandwiches of stale Wonder bread smeared with stolen ketchup packets form fast food chains, their mystique diminished. They were now “lame.” By virtue of earning a living, they had “sold out.” We had to look elsewhere because we now shared the secret with the general populace, and that wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.

So if books go underground…if they become the purview of a few strange individuals sitting around staring at bleached pulp for hours on end, I will not be afraid nor saddened. Instead, I’ll know who I’ll be safe to sit next to on a bus when I don’t feel like talking – someone engrossed in a book is less likely to start some inane conversation. I’ll know who I can trust. I know who I can safely talk to without being bored to tears. I know what I’ll be able to look for on park benches or in airport lobbies to find others of my kind.

If books finally begin to disappear from mainstream culture, maybe I’ll find my tribe again.