Hrm:
On his original
blog post, he wrote that after telling the hitting "joke" at the conference, he then went gave a long explanation of what his objections were to the kindle. He also said that the author of the nytimes article reduced his concerns to one word ("elitist") and that he didn't feel that was a fair representation.
Of course, since he didn't post his actual objections on the blog it's hard to tell whether any of his objections are valid or not. But regardless this seems to be a case where a journalist took his words out of context and at least somewhat twisted them.
He's since posted this update:
In the aftermath of my recent public comments about my fear and loathing of Kindle and its kind, I have received a few dozen amazing, passionate, and compelling emails about the power and beauty of electronic books (and many more hilarious ones questioning my sanity, my morality, my anger management ability, and my writing skills). I have been especially humbled by those Kindle readers who, because of various physical issues, can only read with the machines. While I still have serious qualms about the technology, I have been challenged and emotionally moved enough to take a long-requested meeting with the folks at Amazon and Kindle and listen to their arguments for the machines. I'm on Amazon's list of most-requested authors whose fiction is not available electronically, so now, thanks to the beautiful emails I received, I will do my best to enter the meeting with an open mind. And I definitely promise that I will not beat up anybody at Amazon or Kindle.