Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard

Leonard, Elmore. Road Dogs. New York: William Morrow, 2009

Walter Giersbach '61

Robert Pinsky, reviewing for The New York Times in May 2009, said Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs “is about the varying degrees of truth and baloney in human relationships. Sometimes the truth or the baloney is lethal. Droll and exciting, enriched by the self-aware, what-the-hell-why-not insouciance of a master now in his mid-80s, Road Dogs presents interesting questions: Can a grown person change? Specifically, can a man abandon expertise that wins him respect but makes a mess of his life? Can anybody trust anybody? Is love ever true? Is friendship ever real? Or, leaving aside love and friendship, does loyalty exist? We road dogs—trotting along companionably on our way to sniff and woof and boogie-woogie and perhaps knock over an occasional trash barrel together—are we reliable?”

I’ve maintained a list of every book I’ve read since 1973, starting when I realized I was reading an embarrassing amount of pop fiction at the expense of more worthy literary efforts. Not that Robert Ludlum is bad, but it’s genre writing. Finishing my seventh Elmore Leonard opus I realized it was time to get back to Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering or David Liss’s Conspiracy of Paper. Then I had my epiphany: Elmore Leonard was an extremely good writer.

You know Leonard from the films Get Shorty, Stick, Mr. Majestyk, Jackie Brown and 27 others. You just haven’t read him.

The Christian Science Monitor’s James Kaufman (who teaches at the U. of Iowa) wrote in 1983, “It’s taken awhile for people to catch onto Leonard, though Stick finally brought him the scrutiny of the critical establishment…. But like more overnight successes, Leonard had been writing…since 1953.” Newgate Callendar, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1973, stated, “When [Leonard’s] 52 Pickup appeared in 1974, it had some critics talking in terms of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald…. But it is really wrong to talk of this writer in terms of Chandler and Macdonald. He has little in common with those two. They are ‘clean’ writers; there is no profanity to speak of in Chandler, and Macdonald has never been an exponent of the verismo school of speech. Leonard is.”

Leonard’s characters are for the most part, good, decent people, but ones who might challenge you to arm wrestle. The writing is spare and lacking in simile or metaphor. His protagonists have interior thoughts and existential questions. What remains when the reader puts down a Leonard work are characters drawn in clean, sharp lines. He is Hemingway, unexpurgated and sitting in a bar or police squad room.

Then you may find Road Dogs and Leonard’s 40 other novels are addictive.

Books (and a couple of films) by Elmore Leonard at the Grinnell College Libraries

PS3562.E55 (3rd floor)

Road Dogs. 2009 On Order The Hot Kid: A Novel. 2005.
Mr. Paradise. 2004.
Tishomingo Blues. 2002.
Pagan Babies. 2000.
Be Cool. 1999.
Riding Rap. 1995.
Rum Punch. 1992.
Maximum Bob. 1991.
Get Shorty. 1990.
Killshot. 1989.

Films

3:10 to Yuma. 2008

Rum Punch. 2002

Hunger

Knut Hamsun. Hunger. New York: Noonday Press, 1967. Originally published in Norwegian in 1890.

R. Stuhr

According to the Isaac Bashevis Singer's introduction to this translation (by none other than Robert Bly), Hamsun is the father of modernism, won the Nobel Prize in 1920, and sadly, was a dupe, and therefore a pariah in his own country, to Hitler. The friend who recommended this book to me told me he was a Nazi, and through the entire novel (I read the introduction last) I kept thinking, that my friend had mispoke on that detail. But Singer lays it out unambiguously. Singer writes, "The Knut Hamsun who had kept aloof of the masses and social reformers allowed himself to be taken in by Nazi demagogues. It was a sad day for many of Hamsun's followers when a picture of him greeting Hitler appeared in the newspapers. In it, Hamsun's face reflects shame, while Hitler looks at him mockingly....Following Hitler's defeat, Hamsun's sons were imprisoned."

Singer considers Hunger to be one of Hamsun's four best novels along with Mysteries (1892), Editor Lynge (1893), and Pan (1894). Hunger takes place completely in the mind of the main character who is an impoverished writer living in Christiania, Norway. From time to time he looks for a job, but he makes what living he does make through writing. Hamsun's character is nearly insane from malnourishment and want, but always conscious of his wild compulsive behavior. Despite his tenuous grasp on life and sanity, he continues to try to write. When he knows he is at his limit, money suddenly materializes in some way, but it never lasts long and it is never enough to restore him to health. The book ends abruptly when the writer convinces a ship captain to take him on board to work.

After all the pain and desperation, wildness and compulsiveness, Hamsun's character is overjoyed at the prospect of the ship and not bitter about his days of poverty in the streets of Christiania. He ends the novel, "So he gave me a job to do ...When we were out on the fjord, I straightened up, wet from fever and exertion, looked in toward the land and said goodbye for now to the city, to Christiania, where the windows of the homes all shone with such brightness."

Burling 3rd Floor PT 8950 .H3 S813x 1967

A Prairie Reading at the Faulconer Gallery

Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College Libraries, and Prairie Studies co-hosted a thoroughly enjoyable event last Tuesday night (September 1) at the Faulconer Gallery. The reading celebrated the closing week of the Small Expressions and Beneath the Surface exhibitions that have been going on all summer and that include an array of visual representations of the prairie. We had thirteen participants reading and performing, students, faculty, and staff. I, for one,was inspired by the choices and the enthusiasm behind the choices, so I decided to share the program with the Grinnell Community. If you have a favorite text that represents the prairie or nature in some respect, please let us know at the Book Review (bookreview@grinnell.edu)--just send us the title 0r the title and a sentence or two description.

Dean Porter opened our program with a reading from Jacqueline Edmonson's Prairie Town: Redefining Rural Life in the Age of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). (HN79.M6+E36+2003). This is a contemporary study of conditions in the rural areas of the midwest.

Betty Moffett read an essay that she wrote about her own personal prairie, "My Prairie," and then sang a song, again her own composition, with Sandy Moffett and Mark Schneider, "Golden Iowa." Both her essay and song depict the peaceful beauty one can experience stepping off of the pavement and into the grasslands of Iowa. Betty's essay was published in Midwest Woodlands and Prairies and you can hear the Too Many String Band perform her songs at Sts. Rest Coffee House on the third Wednesday of every month.

Jacob Gjesdahl enthusiastically recommended The Emerald Horizon: the History of Nature in Iowa by Cornelia F. Mutel (University of Iowa Press, 2008). (QH 105.I8 M875 2008) Mutel describes the way the prairie tends to itself (if left to its own devices). Mutel's book seems to be one that can lead the reader to a deep appreciation of the subtle Iowa landscape. If you have friends or family who wonder how it is you live in the middle of the country surrounded by cornfields, this might be a good book to give them.

Mark Schneider read the poem "Soy Beans," by Alan Orr from Hammer in the Fog. Mark also sang (with Sandy and Betty!) the song "Roseville Fair" by singer Bill Staines. "Soy Beans" is a poem about the hardships of farming versus the different kind of risk taken by the speculator.

Katherine Vanney read from a childhood favorite, Laura Ingalls Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake.

Tilly Woodward read from the booklet of poems by Paula Smith and available at the gallery. The poems were "Rhizomes," "The Grassland," and "The Tallgrass on Fire."

Richard Fyffe read two of his own poems, “Peterson’s Guide (Only a God Can Save Us Now)” and “Like a Picture, or a Bump on the Head,” and “Prairie Proper” from Merrill Gilfillan's Rivers and Birds (Johnson Books, 2003).

Kayla Koether read from Kent Nerburn's Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder (New World Press 1994). Kayla's reading illustrated the perspectives and cultural orientation of native people on the prairie.

Rebecca Stuhr read a short poem by Gary Snyder, "It Pleases," and played two etudes for flute by Robert Wyckes, "The White Tailed Kite," and "The Marsh Hawk."

Hart Ford-Hodges read an excerpt from the text she'd used in a biology class, Konza Prairie: A Tall Grass Natural History by O. Reichman. (University of Kansas Press, 1987). QH105.K3 R45 1987.

Catherine Rod read an excerpt from the writings of an early settler in Grinnell. You can find this memoir in the college archives and learn something about the unpredictability of Iowa weather and the boom town of Westfield.

Eliza Mutino read from the poet laureate, Ted Kooser, "So this is Nebraska," and "In the Corners of Fields."

Finally,

Jon Andelson read an excerpt from a novel by Herbert Quick (Bobbs-Merrill, 1922.) Vandemark's Folly PS3533.U53 V3. This excerpt celebrated the hard and sometimes miraculous work of the farmer, while at the same time mourning the loss of the prairie caused by the emergence of farmland.

You can see that the mixture of selections was eclectic. Each reading left me wanting to hear more from the poet or author or song writer ... You might want to investigate some of these readings as well, many of them are available in the libraries.

submitted by Rebecca Stuhr

My Year in Iraq

L. Paul Bremer with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Some one recently asked me what is the funniest book you have read in the last five years? Honorable mention has to go to Pervez Musharraf's In the Line of Fire: A Memoir. But, for real belly laughs the undisputed champion is L. Paul Bremer's My Year in Iraq. The most endearing quality of the book is that despite the absurdity of any situation Bremer finds himself in he never fails to convey a sense of absolutely childish sincerity.

It is hard to know where to even start. Shortly after the U.S. invasion, in a surprise turn, the Iraqi army “self-demobilized.” Despite this setback Proconsul Bremer valiantly stuck to his principal mission, which was providing for the material well-being of the Iraqi people. Bremer was besieged by a range of issues such as “...what to do about subsidies, the state-owned enterprises and the currency, down to the price and availability of rice and beans.... We had inherited a structural crisis” (p.28). In a corollary to Mickey Rooney in virtually any Andy Hardy movie Bremer might have been heard saying: “Hey kids, let's put on a structural adjustment.” After all, just as sure as there were weapons of mass destruction to unearth, the decrepitude of Iraq's industrial base was due to Saddam Hussein's “economic mismanagement, lack of investment, and cockeyed socialist economic theory” (p.62). As everybody with an economics background knows, the way to turn around an economy with eighty percent unemployment is to put into place a flat corporate tax rate of fifteen percent. Privatizing state industries and devaluing the currency are also helpful in this respect.

Bremer, a master of improvisation, need not have concerned himself with any of the technical literature which erroneously maintained that the state sector in Iraq was established with little regard given to the competing models of collectivism or free enterprise. Imagine the naïveté of any one believing for a minute that the thing that mattered in Iraq was the relationship of senior figures in Saddam's regime to various enterprises, be they state industries or private ones. Patrimonial state development? Get outta here!

Despite a media that refused to report on the good news stories and focusing instead on all manner of negativity, Bremer remained steadfast in his hope for the people of Iraq. In a reflective moment he opined: “One day... a free Iraq with its educated, hardworking people will help transform this region” (p.70). Some what like Henry Fonda in Young Abe Lincoln, walking off into the sunset to the strains of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Bremer remained positive to the end. “Once secure, this country will be a tremendous economic success” (p.388).

Bremer, who I argue missed his calling in life, like all great comedians has “got a million of 'em.”

Burling 1st Floor DS79.769 .B74 2006

The University In Chains

Henry A. Giroux. The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

This book must be subversive; it is not to be found in any public or college library in the state of Iowa.I only happened upon it through a citation in Chris Hedges' latest light-hearted frolic Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Giroux who lost a battle for tenure at Penn State University argues that the “trilogy of forces now shaping education” are patriotic correctness, consumerism, and militarization. The American university has continued to see its position as a public sphere of democracy erode by virtue of its relationship with corporate and military interests. “As a handmaiden of the Pentagon and corporate interests, it has lost its claim to independence and critical learning.”

The book's first and by far longest chapter is in large part a digression of how militarism has afflicted American society in general. Rather than sticking to concrete examples of the military establishment having their way with the American university and calling the shots through the funding of research (of which he does some) Giroux drifts into a semi-poststructural digression. A strained effort to further develop the theoretical construct of a biopolitics through militarization as a means of explaining how American culture at large has been infected with the intersection of war, violence and the spectacle is somewhat tiresome. Perhaps it is small-minded prejudice on my part but the mention of Michele Foucault and the use of words such as “praxis” puts this reader in a foul mood. Then throw in the empirically incorrect assertion that George W. Bush originated the grab and torture program of “extreme rendition” (p.27) and further reading is done with a jaundiced eye. President Bush may have elevated the practice to an art form but there are multiple sources that attribute the start of the policy to the Clinton administration in 1995 and 1998 in both Egypt and the Balkans respectively.

The most interesting chapter dealt with the concerted right-wing attack on higher education. This phenomenon is exemplified by David Horowitz and his organization Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). Horowitz, who has opined that the American Library Association is “a terrorist sanctuary,” advances the notion that what the academy lacks is “balance.” Seeking to do for university education what Fox News has done for broadcast journalism Horowitz maintains that conservative students are being victimized by leftist college professors who are indoctrinating the vulnerable youth. One point that one wishes Giroux had made was, if what Horowitz says is true [sic], where are the fruits of these efforts? Where are all the university-trained radicals that should be apparent as they aid the barbarians and terrorists in the destruction of America?

Perhaps the most horrifying part of this book is the subject of the consumer model of education that has spread like a virus. This is the belief that college students are fundamentally customers. By further imposing corporate hierarchies on the university it only follows that part-time faculty should be utilized as much as possible. A particularly brutal example of this is the plan that the University of Illinois has for developing a completely online entity which is an explicitly for profit operation that employs no tenured faculty. The University of Phoenix and Western Governors University are further examples of the marriage of corporate culture and higher education. For profit institutions,that are publicly traded, are poised to take advantage of the high-speed technologies that allow for huge opportunities in cost reduction. By cutting maintenance expenses and eliminating entire buildings such as libraries and classroom facilities university education in this country can be more fully made into a commodity.

Perhaps someday in the future colleges and universities might run advertisments heralding a coupon good for a reduction in tuition. The education “consumer” of tomorrow might avail themselves of Priceline.com or look for a satisfation guaranteed or your money back arrangement.

Two Novels that I can't find the will to finish

Franzen and Rakoff: Two Novelists

Rebecca Stuhr

I have recently looked forward to reading two novels and find that I can't finish either of them. Both of them I picked up at least two times more than I really wanted to and then finally said, nah. It just isn't worth it. And I like to finish books. What happens if you don't care how they end? The first is A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff (Scribner, 2009. Burling, Smith Memorial: PS3618.A437 F67 2009 ). It has been said that it is an homage to Mary McCarthy's The Group. McCarthy's group members were all Vassar graduates and Rakoff's are Oberlin graduates who are living in New York. For all Oberlin students and alumni, the references to Oberlin buildings and practices could be fun, but the characaters won't make them nostalgic for their own Oberlin buddies. These Obies are artsy and literary but lacking in soul or a spirit of community beyond the end of their lovely noses. There is no compelling plot, and what there is of it is mostly moved along (as opposed to revealed) by dialogue, which one does not get lost in. I got about 3/4ths of the way through and set it aside for a book by Jonathan Lethem, a favorite author of mine. This is one of his recent novels, You Don't Love me Yet (Doubleday, 2007). This novel features a group of aging and emotionally sagging young adults in Los Angeles. They are part of a band on the verge of making it big. I stopped reading just after their first real concert takes place. The bass player is a young woman who has fallen for "the complainer" who she meets via her part in a phone service for people with complaints, which in reality is part of a performance art project. She meets him, breaking the rules of the service and project, and finds that he is an older, enormous man. She goes on to get sick drunk and spends days and hours making love with him... barely making it to her concert in one piece. The band's performance is also part of a performance art project by the same artist empressario--the project which goes wrong but the band is a success--the words of the bands songs are all words that the bass player collected from the complainer, writing them down on a yellow pad and handing them off to the band's song writer (a wraith of a young man who doesn't remember to eat but is fed at rehearsals by the drummer). The singer is the bass player's former boyfriend. He works at the zoo and has abducted a kangaroo that is ailing and he is keeping it in his bathtub. I know it sounds fascinating and quirky, but Lethem must have been feeling cynical about novel writing. This novel has a hard unattractive feel to it, or maybe he wrote this under a contract deadline-- it lacks any joy or humor or beauty (at least what I recognize as humor, joy, and beauty) and, as of yet, I'm not sure what the message might be. I will give him another try, but this one I won't finish (and it's short!).

What am I reading that I like? Jonathan Franzen's collection of essays called How to Be Alone, John Buschman's dense Dismantling the Public Sphere (more about this one later), Matthew Battle's Library: An Unquiet History (more about this one as well), and finally Gary Snyder's No Nature: New and Selected Poems. I love Gary Snyder.

Methland:The Life and Death of an American Small Town

Nick Reding. Methland: The Life and Death of an American Small Town. New York: Bloomsbury Books, 2009

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Nick Reding's Methland is loosely organized, inattentive to detail, and yet still persuasive in its main argument. The subject of the book is how a small town in Iowa (Oelwein) is ravaged by the epidemic of crystal methamphetamine use starting in the late 1980s. The social costs were staggering.

In its modern incantation methamphetamine appeared in Oelwein in the 1980s. But the problems associated with the drug really became manifest in the 1990s. The meat packing industry which formerly employed around eight hundred people at wages of up to $18 per hour in 1990, through a ruthless process of consolidation, cut wages by two-thirds to a little over $6 an hour. In addition to the wage reductions jobs were lost as well until the last owner of the plant,Tyson Foods, finally closed down entirely in 2006 laying off the last hundred or so mainly undocumented immigrants still employed there.

Reding argues that the twin rails of the town's demise were the savagery of agribusiness' consolidation techniques and the concomitant spread of crystal meth which became both more potent and less expensive as the town took an economic nosedive. While the story of Oelwein's woes needs context, Reding wanders all over the state and country, e.g. the chapter on his father's hometown of Algona, which detracts from the focus of the story. In fact the chapters dealing with Lori Kaye Arnold (the actor/comedian's sister) and the city of Ottumwa are in many ways more compelling.

There are a number of details in the book which are empircally wrong. The mayor of Oelwein is fifty-five years old at the time of the book's writing yet Reding has him organizing a grocery store union in Dubuque in 1959 when the future mayor is fourteen years old (pp.123-124). Oelwein is not northeast of Iowa City it is northwest (p.145). Lori Arnold allegedly has no access to workers compensation while employed at Cargill-Excel in Ottumwa. There are a limited number of exemptions to the workers compensation law in Iowa. One has to work in agriculture, be self-insured, or an independent contractor not to be covered (p.151). How exactly is Ecuador a “rogue” state? (p.209). And, there are yet more examples of literary sloth throughout the book with which I shall not continue to bore the reader.

Yet despite these deficiencies the book is worth reading. It would also make a great gift for the drug- using-middle-age- Iowan on your holiday shopping list.

Burling Library 2nd floor HV5831.I8 R43 2009

Natural History--Two very different books

I have recently finished reading two very different books with deceptively similar titles: A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman (1991), and A Natural History of Seeing, Simon Ings (2008).

Ackerman's book takes us on a whirlwind tour of each the five senses, primarily via various anecdotes from the author's personal life. Her prose is flowery, occasionally dangerously close to saccharine or syrupy. Her descriptions of the sensory systems are very oversimplified and sometimes inaccurate, and practically no discussion is given to the history of the senses or the study of the senses. (Indeed, a more appropriate title for the book might be A Personal History of My Senses.) Interesting tidbits of information are interspersed throughout the book, but I found the over-the-top poetry and flights-of-fancy into the experience ("qualia"?) of being sensate too distracting to make up for the dearth of any substantial information.

Ings, on the other hand, has written a fascinating, educational, and readable book. His thoughts about his infant daughter and the development of her visual system provide a bit of narrative, but A Natural History of Seeing succeeds because of the information he presents about the evolutionary history of the eye and the social and cultural history of the researchers who have studied it. Both the science and the history are precisely written in clear, non-technical language.

The contrast between the two is striking, and it made me think about how difficult it would be to write non-fiction about scientific topics that manages to be both interesting and accurate.

Sarah Marcum '08

A Natural History of The Senses
Grinnell College Science Library BF233 .A24 1990

A Natural History of Seeing
On order

Stephen L. Carter and Henry Louis Gates

Carter, Stephen L. The Emperor of Ocean Park. New York: Knopf, 2002.

Carter's hefty novel (657 pages) is about politics in Washington, D.C., politics in academia, and politics within families. The "hero" and narrator of the novel, Talcott Garland, son to controversial and once influential judge, Oliver Garland, is in a rocky marriage to an ambitious lawyer who, it has been rumored, is in line for a high federal court position. As she tries to maintain a discreet profile, Talcott, who teaches law at a prestigious institution, has reason to suspect that his father was murdered, and his investigations into this possibility make it difficult for his wife to maintain a low profile. Talcott is also ambitious, but is also insecure, jealous, and a little self-absorbed. While Carter has provided an intriguing and captivating plot line, he also examines life as an African American in the academy. Talcott's every move is watched and commented on, analyzed and criticized. Favors are asked and not returned, motives are questioned, and accomplishments do no receive their full merit.

One scene in the novel is amazingly similar to a news story, reported just yesterday (7/20), of celebrated scholar Henry Louis Gates who was questioned by police in his own home after they received a report that he was breaking in. He was later arrested, it seems, because of his angry response to the questioning. Here is the link to the news article: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/harvard.html.

In Carter's novel, Talcott is being followed by representatives from the several people who are also looking for information about his father. The two men beat Talcott up and he climbs a construction scaffolding to escape them. When the police arrive after having been called they arrest the bruised and beaten Talcott as the suspect. Regardless of the fact that he shows his prestigious university ID and keeps telling them that he works there and that he is the one who has been beaten, he is taken away. Later, his colleagues criticize him for creating a scene and for bringing bad publicity to the department by getting himself arrested.

Carter's novel is interesting and worth reading on many levels, for its view of political and academic life, and for its exploration of privilege and race in our society and especially in academia. Get it on a CD (about 20 hours worth) at your public library for a transcontinental summer drive.

Burling Library PS 3603. A78 E4 2002

Other novels by Stephen L. Carter at Grinnell College Libraries

New England White. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
PS3603.A78 N48 2007.

Palace Council. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
PS3603.A78 P35 2008.

Before writing novels (in the 21st century), Carter wrote books on society, politics, and government (in the 20th Century). To see a list of all of Stephen L. Carter's books follow this link.

Slate Article considers Amazon's ability to delete books from your Kindle

Farhad Manjoo. "Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four: How Amazon's Remote Deletion of E-books from the Kindle Paves the Way for Book-Banning's Digital Future." Slate (www.slate.com) July 20, 2009. 

Rebecca Stuhr 

Manjoo reports on Amazon's capability to delete books remotely from their customer's Kindles. Recently Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm; in June it deleted several Ayn Rand novels; it has been reported that some customers have had Harry Potter books deleted, the reason given that the copies were bootlegged and were breaking copyright. While conceding that Amazon may have had reason to recall illegal digital editions, Manjoo notes that Amazon's terms of use do not give customers ownership of the books that they download. While not new to the electronic world, libraries have been licensing rather than purchasing electronic databases and collections for some time now (and have been working out agreements and creating third party archives as a safeguard), the idea that there is no ownership of books in this new medium suggests a disturbing ability for corporations or governments to censor material in a much more final way than has been possible in the past -- even through book burning. Manjoo calls on Amazon to revise their terms of use and to discontinue the practice of remote deletion. This two page article is worth reading for all book lovers, readers, and present and future owners of Kindles. 

This leads me to comment on my recent study of public libraries, and my early realization that e-books are not a format that is conducive to many readers outside of academia. Computers are not universally owned, and access to the Internet is not in every home nor even widely available through libraries. The lack of funding for libraries and the demand for computer time means that in many urban public libraries, individuals are allotted from thirty to sixty minutes a day at the computer--if they can get to the library during its open hours. It is too soon to say good bye to the printed book, and there are many reasons, including the tenuousness and fragile nature of the digital copy. 

http://www.slate.com/id/2223214/