three cute blue-eyed cubs=one angry tiger stranded on boatThe New York Times is all about trendspotting. You don't say, people use this thing called craigslist for more than just sketchy apartment rentals? Really? People still care about looks even though it's online dating? I think they should do an article about super-snobby subway reading. There are the Post readers (would be treated with barely-veiled scorn, maybe by Michiko herself), the Metro readers (desperate) the Times readers with the intricately (inexplicably!) folded paper turned to the Travel or Books section (professors taking the train up to Columbia, core audience) and then there are the various types of book-readers. Man reading dog-eared Colette? Perv looking to impress . . . impressionable young hipster girl with headphones, who is reading Bukowski but wishing she was reading the new Jennifer Weiner book. Legions reading fat paperback Left Behinds, Zane (et al.) and Terry Goodkind novels (they live in different universes (red states?), critics can't be expected to explain them) . . .
So, according to the Times, the F train is the intelligentsia train, chock-full of aspiring writers and acclaimed novelists (I'm sure someone spotted one of the Jonathans once. I've only spotted Jon Heder and Ana Gasteyer, so it's become the nonstop laugh-track/body odor/unwashed hair/eating large containers of chinese food train to me). I would link you to the article but unfortunately, it's Times Select. But man, is the teaser exciting. So what happened to me on this genius train, finally reading Life of Pi? I actually got a scornful look by some guy reading Notes from the Underground. Please. That was so 1995. Or 1864. At least I was wearing black nail polish when I read it. Whatever. I'm not going so far as to endorse some sort of populist view on literature, because really, it's not for everyone. If it were, we would live in a different sort of world. Platonic? Fascist? We'll never know. But you can't deny that people do check out each other's reading material, just like we try to sneak a peak at each other's iPods. And we make judgments. But everyone should get a get-out-of-jail-free for subway reading, since we're really reading so we won't have to focus that someone's hand is resting on our asses and our heads are cradled gently in some guy's armpit. So, whatever looses you from the bonds of reality, whether it be Dan Brown, lurid headlines or Russian existentialist literature . . . go for it. But, I bet the woman reading the steamy romance novel is escaping from her surroundings a lot more effectively than you, Mr. Dostoyevsky. If looking up every other word in the dictionary interrupts the narrative flow, I guess you'd better get back to imagining that pregnant woman naked. Good thing you didn't offer her your seat.
3 comments:
This is just to note that I use bookcovers--both prefab and homemade by me from random paper--to thwart that very peeking. What am I reading? Honestly, it's usually something perfectly respectable. But more to the point, it's nobody else's damn business. B/c I am also freakish about not bending the spines of paperbacks, I also often hold the books in such a way that my fingers are covering the title on the interior. Usually, people don't notice or care, but it's funny when I look up and catch people really intent on figuring it out. Fuck you, gawkers! Read your own shit! This is mineminemine.
As you can see, it is a big mix of spite--which I believe is often one of the truest expressions of the self--and a need to establish some boundaries in that all too public space. And, I am crazy.
FYI--I break the backs of all books intentionally. This includes hardcovers. I have terrible, horrible bad manners and cannot be stopped. But this is why I don't like to borrow books from friends. The compulsion within is too strong to fight. I...must...break...it.
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