Book Nerds are Shallow

I loved this essay in the Sunday Times about deal-breakers for book lovers. It's called "It's Not You, It's Your Book." It begins: "Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”"

I found that hilarious, telling, pathetic and enviable all at once. In the next graf, the essayist, a book lover, sates: "Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast."

Or there was this nugget later in the essay, from Augusten Burroughs, the gay-blade that wrote Running With Scissors. I've never read the book, but adore the film, which, I'm sure, makes me a rube. But check one of his recollections: "The author recalled a date with one Michael, a “robust blond from Germany.” As he walked to meet him outside Dean & DeLuca, “I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of ‘Proust’ by Samuel Beckett.” That, Burroughs claims, was a deal breaker. “If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one’s education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn’t imagine it.”"

All of this is quite humbling, since I'm a very proud non-book reader. I read newspapers and magazine, neve finding the time to read books. Well, actually, I have no inclination to read books. I guess that my own personal symptom of growing up in the ADD Age. A book is too daunting, time consuming. They're also somewhat pompous and self-serious. But I admire book readers. They're cool to me. Not cool as in: "Yeah, dude is aight." Cool as in: "I wish I was a book reader." And, in all honesty, I could totally see some potential main-squeeze kicking me to the curb because I'm an ignoramous when it comes to novels. I had to google and then wiki Pushkin. I've never had any desire to read Proust. This usually surprises people when they find out that I'm a writer, but that's the reality. I'll read non-fiction, but films satisfy my fiction jones.

I identify with these kind of people, however, because I'm a music snob. On a fundamental level, I would probably never fall in love with someone that isn't passionate about their music. Or, someone with poor, schumck-tastes in artists and albums -- I'd probably sabotage that kind of relationship. A lightweight music head can head for the next lame. "You never heard Fullfillingness First Finale?! Peace." "You think jazz is boring?! Bye." "You don't wanna go see Bilal?! I'll call you a cab." That's me, in a nutshell...I'm serious.

The irony in all this is that the book and music snobs have these deal breakers and go around sifting and filtering relationships, based on some deviant notion that they are ensuring that they link up with someone of similar heft, depth and gravitas. But the mere fact that we're using entertainment (books, music) as a barometer or litmus test is as shallow as it gets.

Leave it to someone from the Daily Show to sum it up best: "If that person slept with the novelist in question, that would probably be a deal breaker — more than, ‘I don’t like Don DeLillo, therefore we’re not dating anymore.’”"