I imagine the death will be mourned much like that of a rich uncle whose testament has yet to be read. The gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts will not occur until later, when it is discovered that Uncle Octavo has squandered his fortune in recent years and there is nothing left for his various relatives or wives, much less his children, legitimate or not.

Let us look at the evidence.

There have been many articles of late on the coming of the electronic book. Mr. Johnson very wisely proffers some more subtle forensics, but most of the others have the gosh-wow of a kid in the 1920′s who has built his first crystal-radio. Oh, how the world will change! And I would hasten to add, the world did not change enough to keep that kid off the beaches at Normandy in 1944.

The first new new internet was the system of canals that enlarged our lives starting around the 1820′s. By that time, mankind had traveled on roads by foot, wagon, and coach for many thousands of years–roughly at the speed of conversation from ear to ear. One terrific change caused by the canal was the rise of New York City publishing at the hub of a new age. Railroads came along shortly after–much like wi-fi has followed cable–and increased the importance of New York as the intellectual center of the universe.

Electricity brought with it the genius of the telegraph, the teletype, then the telephone. The radio was quickly overshadowed by the television. Through all of this, the book maundered the results. Gatsby played his phonograph, the literati danced, while in the alcove by the potted palm, Prufrock, martini in hand, warned of the hollowing of mankind. And, nearby, the butler could be seen with a candlestick entering the library.

The threads which held the bindings through the centuries have been pulled in favor of a cheaper glue. The sturdy cloth covers that replaced the extravagance of leather have now become mere cardboard. The paper of the text itself is re-cycled–acid free and ready to be recycled again. All of it is disposable now. Books warp and buckle on the shelf without being read or even handled.

And what of the contents in the library safe? The jewelry is paste–mostly post-modern costume artifacts. Words are now adjusted to suit the occasion. If a word bothers you, it can be banned. If an author does not stay on topic, he won’t get a slot on the talk show.

It is time for the e-book.

It’s time that the author be dethroned in any case. Who are they, after all? Just products of their time. Their words might well have been spoken by any other. Their ideas are borrowed, are they not? They are just the latest product of an imperfect educational system. Where they differ, it is only a matter of prejudice.

It is time for the e-book.

Truth is only relative. Offending passages can be digitally removed. ‘Facts’ can be enhanced to suit the moment. And who will be the judge of that? Or is it just that–the truth has no relatives.

Who will save the Earth from these troublesome books? Recycle them!

It is time for the e-book. Have you got one yet? It can be read on the subway, or at the park. All the books in the world are in your hand. All the intellectual power of Rome! No need for libraries. No need for bookshops. No need, in fact, for books.

Technology has triumphed. No longer is the screen bleached by the brilliance of the sun…But neither is it graced by the glimmer of quiet revelation as the eye meets the word in ink on a page.

Mr. Steven Johnson refers to the book as “dark matter.” Yes! Precisely. The tens of millions of books that have shaped our culture will now be burned into pixels of light.

Mr. Johnson is clearly smitten with his toy, but importantly he has paused to ask some questions. His wariness is perhaps caused by a glance at the toys of yesteryear filling the back of his closet shelves.

As the great Google digitalizes text and makes each passage of Moby Dick available sentence by sentence, and word by word, what place will be left for Ishmael? Will Isaac be the only survivor instead? Choose your own text, and Melville be damned.

Mr. Johnson notes: “Because they have been largely walled off from the world of hypertext, books have remained a kind of game preserve for the endangered species of linear, deep-focus reading. Online you can click happily from blog post to email thread to online New Yorker article–sampling, commenting and forwarding as you go. But when you sit down with an old-fashioned book in your hand, the medium works naturally against such distractions; it compels you to follow the thread, to stay engaged with a single narrative or argument.”

Willy Loman might have warned, “Attention must be paid.” But with attention spans being reduced to a mere click, is it necessary to read the part about the whaling industry? Can’t I just go right to the good parts? Are you bored yet?

Will writers write so that readers can play tag with the gems and ignore the settings? The heroin of one climax after another will make the marijuana of Proust rather passe, don’t you think? Or is there time to think when there are so many links to follow? The great Google will lead us to an answer.

And when the electricity fails and the lights go out, what? Was the candlestick to hold a candle, or to bludgeon?

Ever thankful to those who made the effort before us, with heartfelt apologies to those who are still in the fight and the few who support them–offered upon the closing of Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston.

1. Corporate law (and the politicians, lawyers, businessmen and accountants who created it for their own benefit)–a legal fiction with more rights than the individual citizen, which allows the likes of Barnes & Noble and Walmart to write off the losses of a store in Massachusetts against the profit of another in California, while paying taxes in Delaware–for making ‘competition’ a joke and turning the free market down the dark road toward state capitalism.

2. Publishers–marketing their product like so much soap or breakfast cereal, aiming at demographics instead of people, looking for the biggest immediate return instead of considering the future of their industry, ignoring the art of typography, the craft of binding, and needs of editing, all to make a cheapened product of glue and glitz–for being careless of a 500 year heritage with devastating result.

3. Book buyers–those who want the ‘convenience’ and ‘cost savings’ of shopping in malls, over the quaint, the dusty, or the unique; who buy books according to price instead of content, and prefer what is popular over what is good–for creating a mass market of the cheap, the loud, and the shiny.

4. Writers–who sell their souls to be published, write what is already being written or choose the new for its own sake, opt to feed the demands of editors rather than do their own best work, place style over substance, and bear no standards–for boring their readers unto television.

5. Booksellers–who supply the artificial demand created by marketing departments for the short term gain, accept second class treatment from publishers, push what is ‘hot’ instead of developing the long term interest of the reader–for failing to promote quality of content and excellence in book making.

6. Government (local, state and federal)–which taxes commercial property to the maximum, driving out the smaller and marginal businesses which are both the seed of future enterprise and the tradition of the past, while giving tax breaks to chain stores, thus killing the personality of a city–for producing the burden of tax codes only accountants can love.

7. Librarians–once the guardians, who now watch over their budgets instead–for destroying books which would last centuries to find room for disks and tapes which disintegrate in a few years and require costly maintenance or replacement by equipment soon to be obsolete.

8. Book collectors–who have metamorphosed from book worms to moths attracted only to the bright; once the sentinels of a favorite author’s work, now mere speculators on the ephemeral product of celebrity–for putting books on the same level with beanie babies.

9. Teachers–assigning books because of topical appeal, or because of their own lazy familiarity, instead of choosing what is best; thus a tale about the teenage angst of a World War Two era prep school boy is pushed at students who do not know when World War Two took place–for failing to pass the torch of civilization to the next generation.

10. Editors–who have forgotten the editorial craft–for servicing the marketing department, pursuing fast results and name recognition over quality of content and offering authors the Faustian bargain of fame and fortune, while pleading their best intentions like goats.

11. Reviewers–for promoting what is being advertised, puffing the famous to gain attention, being petty and personal, and praising the obscure with priestly authority–all the while being paid by the word.

12. The Public–those who do not read books, or can not find the time; who live by the flickering light of the television, and will be the first to fear the darkening of civilization–for not caring about consequences.

Thus, we come to the twilight of the age of books; to the closing of the mind; to the pitiful end of the quest for knowledge–and stare into the cold abyss of night.