Other People's Books

Why do we care about other people's books? What's it to us what somebody else is reading? It's a matter of taste, one that doesn't impact or infringe on us in any way — not like the tinny beats escaping nearby headphones, for example, or a neighbor's appalling choice of window trim color. Still, we strain our eyes to make out the title of a stranger's paperback, staring and not-staring as if it were a pretty girl or a one-armed man.

That woman in the café — it looks like a Penguin Classic, two-word title, a cameo at the top of the spine. "Anna Karenina"? "Jane Eyre"? The high school kid in the movie line — is that the first time he's read "Catcher in the Rye"? Is that guy really studying to be a civil engineer, or does he just like the diagrams? Your dinner host is halfway through "The Nanny Diaries," and his wife uses a highlighter to mark her place in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." (Or are those his slippers over there?)

Partly, it's a search for affinity. You scan a new acquaintance's bookshelf for common ground, hoping not to come across anything too disturbing — too much Margaret Atwood, a cadre of postmodernist critics long after college, the sequel to "The Bridges of Madison County." The collected works of Ayn Rand — don't walk, run. Even a single title is something to work with, a conversation starter. In this spirit, cities across the nation have launched One Book reading programs to bring their citizens together, though once you've finished "To Kill a Mockingbird," the Camp David of literature, it becomes tougher to find places to go.

A face lost in a familiar story is no longer completely alien — you catch a glint of recognition amid the anonymous mob, a lifeline out of solitude. If you can make out the book in the hands of that woman on the 4 train, you can join her somewhere far away from this crowded car. There's also an element of voyeurism; you know the scenes playing out in someone else's mind as if you were privy to their dreams and fantasies, even the parts they haven't got to yet.

Other people's choices in reading provide a window into their mind and character. This is why experts and intellectuals are so often filmed in front of their bookcases — it's as if their actual brains were on display. You feel more confident taking advice from someone who reads hard books. I've never been so flattered as when two friends at different times commented, "Oh, are you re-reading 'Moby Dick?' " (As if I'd ever once managed to conquer the leviathan).

For some people, the books in the crowd reveal something they'd rather not know and they react, indignant with denial, going beyond criticizing books to criticize their readers. A.S. Byatt has her knickers in a twist lately about people reading Harry Potter. "But why would grown-up men and women become obsessed by jokey latency fantasies?" she laments in a New York Times op-ed called Harry Potter and the Childish Adult. Caleb Carr is right there with her in the letter column a couple days later: "But let adults know that their obsessive devotion is feeding something far more frightening than the dark arts: a retreat from the complexities of adulthood in a dangerous world."

Reading as escape — you heard it here first, folks! In each case, "but" is preceded by condescending permission-granting, but they're not fooling anyone. To people like Byatt and Carr, these middlebrows who should know better are part of the problem — they could so easily be improving their minds and supporting legitimate literature, yet here they are, reading children's books! (This is to cast no aspersions on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, or Lewis Carroll, of course; they get the Oxford Exemption).

It must be tiring being a literary snob, afraid to be seen in public with the wrong reading like an out-of-season trucker hat. Which side are we on with the Foer kid, again? Is Jim Frey the new Bukowski or the new Eggers — and where does Eggers stand these days, anyway? Contrast this with the blissful oblivion of the doesn't-care square reading Anne McCaffrey dragon fantasies for all the world to see.

Conversely, in a kind of guilt by association, books themselves can be tainted by the kind of fans they attract. Do people feel the same way about Wally Lamb since his second Oprah's Book Club selection, or was that how they felt about him in the first place? Jonathan Franzen couldn't take the chance of losing his indie cred, like some alternative band unfortunate enough to attract too broad an audience ("I used to like him, but then I overheard my mom quoting scenes from the boat cruise to my dad.") And now she's gone and chosen "East of Eden" — the nerve! Oh well — we'd pretty much finished with Steinbeck anyway.

It takes a certain kind of courage to carry around the current pick by Kelly Ripa no matter how good it may be. For that matter, the whole book club thing in general is a little suspect, something so solitary done in a circle with hummus and wine, a swinger's party for nerds.

Then there's the Underground Literary Alliance, who decry the bourgeois masses who glut their minds with the privileged prose of the super-elite (this latter group includes college professors, children of college professors, acquaintances of college professors, and acquaintances of Rick Moody). Only those who've lived authentic, rigorously screened blue-collar lives may take up the pen, and the rest of us can buckle down and read about reality for a change — or else! (Don't be too alarmed; the ULA is harmless enough for now, the Insane Clown Posse of the Blogosphere, as long as they don't go all Baader-Meinhof on us).

There's no accounting for taste. In the greater scheme of things — taking into account corporate super-criminals, people with car alarms, Republicans and reality show contestants — people with questionable reading habits are pretty innocuous. They're quiet by definition, for one thing.

As Mao said, let a hundred flowers bloom. Celebrate the myriad dustjackets coloring the landscape as a reflection of the diverse vitality of our republic. Enjoy your own reading and recommend it to friends. And don't sneer at the admin reading young adult mysteries in the bus shelter.

— J. Daniel Janzen (jdaniel at flakmag dot com)