The only straight line in Nature that I remember is the spider swinging down from a twig.
Emerson again. Our recent conversation here about e-books seems to prove his point, since responses to last week's column wandered nicely off topic in an intriguing way that proved irresistible. We'll get back to e-books, but this time we'll happily veer from the spider's straight line.
I had confessed that by reading Emerson in a supermarket checkout line on my iPod, I felt much less conspicuous and/or pretentious than I might have with a hardbound copy of the essays perched on the shopping cart handle.
Nicki Leone of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance raised a valid point: "I can't help but think that if more people read in public, it would stop being 'conspicuous.' And why 'pretentious?' What is it about our current culture that reading books in public feels pretentious, even to a book person?"
Great question. I've read a lot of articles about public readings, but fewer about reading in public. Without venturing too deeply into psychoanalysis, why do I feel self-conscious?
Here's my take on the issue: I was raised in an essentially non-reading, working-class home with a sports-obsessed father and four competitive brothers. We were groomed to be athletes, not academics. The fact that I was essentially the only obsessed reader in the family was never an issue, but even as a kid I saw reading as a deliciously private act of rebellion.
Some of this lives on, I'm sure, in my occasional self-consciousness about reading in public ("public" being a tricky word, since airplanes or subways, for example, seem less problematic because other people are reading, too). Part of this may just be vestiges of my hard-won battle for a reading life--nature over nurture.
Linda Barrett Knopp of Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe, Asheville, N.C., rationally suggested that "to be seen reading a book in public is neither pretentious nor conspicuous." Such an act is "a clear signal to this biased bookseller that a mind may be focused on something higher, educational, funny, who knows, but at least on something besides the tabloids near the register."
"I appreciate that within a non-reading family you would feel self-conscious," she added. "My mom read all the time and took me to the bookmobile (I still remember having my hands inspected by the librarian to see if they were clean enough to handle books) to borrow books every week. Reading was a great way to avoid family interaction, too, and tolerated by my parents, but watching too much TV, well that was more rude to them, and I still find it very odd when you go visit people and they keep their TV on while you talk. Like this intruder in the room just yakking at you. I was fortunate to have such encouragement in my early years and books still remain the most significant part of my life besides family."
Knopp also had some thoughts on the e-book/indie booksellers issue, which I'll share with you soon.
Novelist and memoirist Lev Raphael noted that he "always felt naked in public if I didn't have something to read with me--magazine, newspaper or most often, a book. Though we were poor when I grew up, there were always books in our house, and I rarely left home without one. Perhaps because I got used to being stared at in the 1960s for my longish hair, tie-dyed jeans, and peace regalia, I don't blanch today when I'm stared at in a doctor's office or airport lounge for my choice of reading material.
"Back before it became acceptable to openly criticize George Bush, I was on a book tour and my choice that trip was admittedly provocative: The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn. The book and I got lots of hostile stares, but I kept reading. Surprisingly, nobody said anything. When I was on the way to speak at Yale years before that, I was reading Kitty Kelley's Nancy Reagan biography and people actually said, 'How can you read that trash?' I replied that it was simply an update of Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country."
How do you feel about reading in public?
Emerson again:
The art of writing consists in putting two things together that are unlike and that belong together like a horse & cart.
Me . . . reading Essays: First Series, even in a supermarket, even on an iPod.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)