My Friend Steve, the Pirate.

A friend of mine, who I’ll call Steve, sent me an email this weekend about a piece he heard on NPR. It was a rebroadcast of an interview with Franzen about his latest novel Freedom, and Steve thought it might be interesting for me, given that I’m working on a novel myself. Then he wrote briefly about Franzen’s other novels (which I haven’t read) and then said “I took the liberty of attaching a copy of ‘The Corrections’ to this email…” 

Whoa. Hold the phones.

I scrolled down and opened the text file and sure enough there it is. The entire content of the novel. It’s not pretty, but I can send it to my kindle, and read it like any other book. WTF. I have no idea how he did this. How did I have no idea that this was possible?

Then my brain starts in on the ethics of it all. Stupid brain.

On one hand, it’s just like borrowing a book, but from far away (Steve lives in San Diego). Also, I wasn’t planning on buying the book anyway, so it’s not like this is a lost sale for Franzen. Still, it is kind of like, no actually, it IS, pirating creative, proprietary material. So I guess I feel a little guilty, but I’m still going to read it. 

I guess my morals are weak. Or maybe my super-strength morals are simply corrupted by my serious book addiction. Addiction makes a person do stupid things. 

Whatever the case, I find the whole thing fascinating. In the future, you can borrow books over email. 

The future is now.