A Novel Approach

Reading, though intimate, an exclusively personal and intense pleasure, is also socially significant. For an internal act, it's so often the focus of external and often poisonous judgement, though those judgments are sometimes more imagined than real. But also because of such a perception of there being a certain sort of assessment, reading is often turned into less of a recreation than a social yardstick, with books becoming as culpable as the shoes we wear or the cards we carry. In fact, due to such a vigorous blurring of these lines, sharing in the delights of reading have turned into an extensive game of hide and seek, not in the least on that social minefield that is reading.

The subject matter we choose to read about, theoretically because we enjoy it, is often a subconscious choice perpetuated by pleasant reading experiences that we have had before. In that sense it seems arbitrary, and no one should tell us what we should be reading (as more sinister governments have tried to insinuate). Much like I enjoy having a couple of Snickers bars every now and then, or partaking in flaccid noodles bobbing in a plastic cup of indeterminate origin, I too sometimes like to read novels that, in more polite circles, would be described as ones written with less than savoury intentions. I don't usually feel self-conscious about them; yet I never read them in public - on the train, in the park, because of the paranoia about looking like a grown-up idiot, like somebody who has forgotten to zip his pants or take the tags off her new blouse, or men engrossed in American comics - that is, a faux pas.

Then I realised how disparaging I'd become about what I chose to read in public. Was it not the snob in me that had recoiled at the thought of reading that? I wondered whether what we choose to read is to a large extent determined by how we anticipate others will respond to hearing that we've read it. This forms the very basis of literary pretence. There is, much as we would like to deny, a certain subset of the vast repository of the literature, that are perceived to be reflective of certain high intellect, or social pedigree and a certain refined persuasion. Even if our natural tastes steer us mightily away from such (more often than not) dreary literature, there more reward in toting around The Name of the Rose (a book that contains everything, like the book that Faust was offered, only at a much more reasonable price) all day than in nodding off to the awful, meandering translation of the corruptive influence of knowledge.

But there goes my snobbery again. Sometimes because it this it becomes difficult to distinguish between the people who enjoy academic reading (anything Russian or written before 1900, bonus points if both) out of a sort of masochistic humour, or those who are out to impress. Though honestly, I've never judged anyone by the cover of their book, nor have I been moved by someone's choice of book, which I believe is entirely an affair of personal leanings, like the brand of one's breakfast cereal, or colour of lipstick, and hence also an entirely mundane thing. It might also be because of other people thinking that I would be thinking what they would be thinking about me thinking about what book they are reading, in the same way that a cunning game of "Polar Bear" is played. Hence people on both sides do get deceived, with those who are accused of shallowness and those who then seem to have affectionate and impeccable literary tastes.

It is not entirely true that some form of psychoanalysis cannot at all be performed through the observation of book choice, however. But the conclusions that may be drawn are awfully limited and are probably flawed. There is no evidence that people will like you more because you have read the whole of In Search of Lost Time (or as a more common example, War and Peace) unless they happen to like neurotically patient people with a masochistic streak, for example.

Unapologetically, I still go down the relatively unexplored line of rather academic reading, even if it sometimes attracts undue attention, which I try to brush aside - unless someone does call me a 'poser', a comment which I take rather indignantly. Much as we would like to elevate ourselves higher on the stepladder of moral finesse, our gateways from this plane to the other can often also be our snares.