You liked that book? Pretentious crap. Get out of my bed.

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Discussion over an article published Sunday night on the NY Times website dominated my email inbox today. Given the fact that so many SM readers are hyper-literate (or at least think they are) this simply had to be shared, discussed, and dissected to death here as well. Ready yourselves:

We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. 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. At least since Dante’s Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.” To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. “It tells something about … their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is,” Fels said. “It speaks to class, educational level.”

Pity the would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes: sometimes, it’s the Howard Roark problem as much as the Pushkin one. “I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,” said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. “He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless ‘philosophy’ he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.” (Members of theatlasphere.com, a dating and fan site for devotees of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” might disagree.)… [Link]

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p>I confess, I went to theatlassphere.com to see if Vinod had posted a dating ad there. The article goes on to conclude that you must be incredibly shallow if you dump someone based openly (or secretly) on the fact that their taste in literature sucks compared to yours. In fact, it wasn’t until I read this article that I wondered, for the first time in my life, if I was shallow. Am I destined to be “Baioed“? Not only would the pre-32 year old Abhi break up with a girl if she had ever in her life waited in a line for a Harry Potter book, he may also have dumped her if she didn’t like Mos Def The Cure (yes, I am a music snob as well). However, the new Abhi is reflective about the depth of his shallowness, mostly because he had been completely unaware of it until recently. The new Abhi wants to change. There have always been hints. Let me tell you all about one recent break-up. Well, it still feels recent but I guess it has actually been a while. It was a blogger. I read this person daily and they opened my eyes to new things (even stuff I didn’t care about like Bollywood was made mildly tolerable). About a year into the relationship the cracks started to show. I think we both saw them but…its hard to give up on something that you’ve invested time in together. Eventually they went their own way. And then, just recently, after I wrote this book review he wrote this counter review, and I knew we weren’t meant to be together. The passive aggression (see the second stab) over literature is plain for all to see. A good friendship was a better idea. He just doesn’t get my rawer tastes.

Continuing on with the article, I realized how formulaic some of our behaviors have become in this internet age. For example, I confess, I’ve done this (and I’m sure many of you have as well):

Still, to some reading men, literary taste does matter. “I’ve broken up with girls saying, ‘She doesn’t read, we had nothing to talk about,'” said Christian Lorentzen, an editor at Harper’s. Lorentzen recalls giving one girlfriend Nabokov’s “Ada” — since it’s “funny and long and very heterosexual, even though I guess incest is at its core.” The relationship didn’t last, but now, he added, “I think it’s on her Friendster profile as her favorite book…” [Link]

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p>Even if it didn’t work out, a scar on your heart in the form of a good book feels tolerable. When I thought about it I realized that some of my previous failed “relationships,” that were in retrospect marked by unsustainable high highs and low lows, were foreshadowed by literary incidents. I once dated a girl that loved Lolita by Nabokov (brilliant) but also liked Waiting for Godot by Beckett (pretentious waste of time).

“You mean you haven’t read it yet? I read an advanced copy. She really has outdone herself”

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p>Being South Asian makes it even harder with respect to finding literary compatibility, especially if you want to date someone desi or someone who is dating you because they find you exotic. There is the added pressure of having to always know when the newest desi-lit book is coming out so you can be prepared to sound like an expert on it. Well you know what? I don’t read desi-lit! Gasp

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p>The single best line in the article however, has got to be the following:

Compatibility in reading taste is a “luxury” and kind of irrelevant, Levy said. The goal, she added, is “to find somebody where your perversions match and who you can stand…” [Link]

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p>That really is a transcendant statement. I’ve never heard it put so concisely and correctly. I recently went on a date with a girl that confessed to being a Chopra (yes, that one) fan in her younger days. The old Abhi would have snuck out the bathroom window. The new Abhi finished the date only to learn that some of our perversions matched.

Baby steps.

109 thoughts on “You liked that book? Pretentious crap. Get out of my bed.”

  1. For me, bad spelling is the deal breaker.

    I absolutely agree! I also am a grammar freak and hate it when people write LiKe ThIS or write in “internet talk.”

  2. do comic books qualify as literature?

    Yes, YES, oh god, YES! As does anything that goes beyond candy. One of my biggest pet peeves is to deal with certain subtypes of literary people who go on about “exploring the human condition”, looking down their noses at everyone else. These are the same sort of people who promote mediocre literature over fantasy or SF or comics because the latter are “speculative” and “genre fiction”, while literature has an “intense realism”. Speculative my posterior. I’ve read more political commentary, social satire and musings on human emotions and behavior in Asterix, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett than I have in literary authors like Camus or Seth. Frankly, I suspect that “human condition” is a codeword for “fetish porn about suffering”.

  3. 48 · ocotillo said

    I think Ayn Rand appeals to so many DBDs because of the theory we hold dear that we ‘make’ it based on our own merits

    Actually, I think it’s more than that. Since Indian society in general constantly worries about things like reputation/image and ‘what will other people think?’ all the time, many DBDs in their late teens end up very frustrated with these norms. Growing up in India, we were constantly constrained by expectations of our parents/aunties/uncles and society in general to maintain a ‘good image’ (I would attribute this to the arranged marriage process that heavily weighs things like reputation). Ayn Rand’s individualistic point of view, especially the ‘who cares what others think?’ attitude appeals directly to these people who want to break away from these constraints enforced by society… which imho could explain Rand’s popularity back in the des.

  5. do comic books qualify as literature?

    Only if you call them graphic novels (and they should be as obscure as possible).

    That said, my mother told me, many years after my parents’ divorce, that she should have known not to marry an Ayn Rand fan. True story.

  6. I’ve read more political commentary, social satire and musings on human emotions and behavior in Asterix

    Amen. Goscinny and Uderzo also introduced me to wordplay and puns. My personal favorites were always the Roman centurion names. Noxious Vapus, Dubious Purpus, etc. Hilarious!

  7. do comic books qualify as literature?

    yes they do. It is fast food but still food. Only the narrow minded and ignorant deny that certain genres qualify as literature. Mandrake and Phantom and Nick Carter are excellent material when one is in school although I have not picked up any of these for ages. Talking about comics – several indian language newspapers carried serial comic strips ( incl Mandrake) and for many who could not afford to buy comics, the old newspapers were a constant source of pleasure.

  8. i am just high jacking the tread for a second to comment.

    “intellectual snobbery” this is the exactly the reason I am scared to attend any SM meetup.

  9. 52 · pingpong said

    I suspect that “human condition” is a codeword for “fetish porn about suffering”.

    pingpong that is actually a very philosophical observation. Maybe people who like to read too much about human condition are very emotional people who like to revel/analyze/dissect human suffering ?

  11. do comic books qualify as literature?
    yes they do. It is fast food but still food.

    I’d hardly call V for Vendetta, the Sandman series or Watchmen fast food …

  12. I think Randomizer in #53 has it exactly right. This probably also why Ayn Rand thought the way she did.

  13. If a woman breaks up my emails into segments when she replies — you know, a couple of lines, short answer, then she reads the next few lines, answer, — deal breaker. I like people who read the whole thing then reply in essay/letter form. emoticons also deal breaker.

  14. Abhi, you are so cute, I just want to pinch your little cheeks. Thanks for making me smile!

  15. The article implies women do not read non fiction, I have to agree to a degree with that. Not to generalize, but a lot of the women I know (yes, there are exceptions) never read non fiction for leisure. What is with that? And no, the converse is not true. And no, Cosmo and People magazine do not count.

  16. do any of y’all have sex, or do you only read books to your dates/spouses?

  17. 63 · I, Effendi said

    If a woman breaks up my emails into segments when she replies — you know, a couple of lines, short answer, then she reads the next few lines, answer, — deal breaker. I like people who read the whole thing then reply in essay/letter form. emoticons also deal breaker.

    I agree with you on the email part. If I wanted every line parsed, I’d ask a judge out for a date. As for the emoticons, I used to be part of the same tribe on that issue. However, I’ve come to appreciate that it can often be a not so subtle way of displaying whimsy or playfulness, and I’m all up for playful.

    As for literary works, anything by Dr. Seuss is a good read. Any woman over 21 and without child who can recite Dr. Seuss is a keeper.

  18. I’m out of the dating scene (thank god!) and so I now encounter this snobbery in what I call the Social Olympics. When you go out with a certain kind of person (usually pricky desis), there’s no conversation, only competition. The evening becomes about outdoing the other person, and these days it’s almost always travel and food. Indian-borns suddenly have tons of cash and it’s all about having been cycling in northern Mongolia and trekking in darkest Peru. What’s irritating is that these are potentially fascinating conversations, but the information is delivered only to outshine and outclass.

    Now that I’m on the dark side of 30, I look back on my sins of snobbery and realise that there’s ALWAYS somebody who can look down on you. There’s always a subject that somebody considers all-important and that you know nothing of.

    “Can you BELIEVE, he/she didn’t know the difference between realism and impressionism?”

    “Victorian poetry and Elizabethan?”

    “an in-line four and a V-twin?”

    “a merlot and a cabernet?”

    “heck, a merlot and a cabaret!”

    “brachiole and orchiette?”

    “wasabi and wassup bhi?”

    “CCD and CMOS?”

    “Provia and Velvia?”

    “Naim and Linn?”

    “Focus and Gong?”

    Etc. etc. etc.

    What makes knowledge of literature more important than knowledge of fashion? If you’re assessing compatibility, then you might consider it important—-that you’re probably unlikely to get along with somebody who reads only Vogue and wears designer wear. But to consider yourself superior, as soooo many of us do?

  19. 65 · Ardy said

    And no, Cosmo and People magazine do not count.

    Ardy, since when is Cosmo non-fiction ? :P) Now Playboy, on the other hand, because its articles are factual and because its pictures are un-retouched, and because we all know women who look like their centerfolds, veritably defines the nonfiction genre :0)

  20. 66 · delirium tremens said

    do any of y’all have sex, or do you only read books to your dates/spouses?

    I guess people here don’t.

  21. Any woman over 21 and without child who can recite Dr. Seuss is a keeper.

    “My brother reads a little bit. Little words like if and it. My father can read big words, too Like Constantinople and Timbuktu!”

  22. Leena @ 58: Now, now. Let me say you need not fear of “Intellectual Snobbery” at the SM meetup. I have attended one and only —waaay back in Washington/DC, hosted by Anna and Abhi, and the evening was just marvelous. All you need to response with – in case of awkward conversation is: Oh Really !

    Note to Old and New Abhi: When you say “get out of my bed”, I am sure you are talking to your “Imaginary” date, no?

  23. Now Playboy, on the other hand, because its articles are factual and because its pictures are un-retouched, and because we all know women who look like their centerfolds, veritably defines the nonfiction genre

    Lol. Good one Chachaji!

  24. 21 · tash said

    Oooh I hear ya Meena. Although mine is a taller test, obscure NZ humour like Flight of the Conchords on HBO (10pm! Thursdays?… I think I only have the DVD because we don’t have fandangled things like HBO in NZ, only 4 channels and one is an endless repeat of a 1998 version of a Country Calendar special on different types of fence wiring. No, really). I think it’s a lot easier when you live in a city/country that has a lot of the artsy-cultural-y things you like, whether it’s cool little art galleries or better gigs or indie bookshops and cafes…it’s the humour and the place, not the books! I have a BA in English too (someone seems to have listed that as a credential so I figured it must count for something other than a $20,000 debt certificate)…and I try to shop at indie bookshops and I like belle and sebastian and feist…but really, I think some random 80’s unknown actress said it best on Sleepless in Seattle… (I can feel the rotten tomatoes being thrown by film snobs, right now! I like David Lynch! kinda)… there are some people you wouldn’t kick out of your bed for eatin’ crackers, and there are some you would…and while ayn rand or dan brown or jk rowling might be contributing factors, i doubt literary street-cred is the ultimate test of any relationship.

    I fell in love with you when you mentioned Flight of the Conchords and Belle & Sebastian, but then I noticed your inconsistent capitalization, and that is a deal-breaker.

  25. Wow, some of you here are a bunch of murderous sub-editors.

    I fell in love with you when you mentioned Flight of the Conchords and Belle & Sebastian, but then I noticed your inconsistent capitalization, and that is a deal-breaker.

    But your inconsistent off-setting of quotes must be a “deal-breaker” for somebody out there. As a snobby IBD, your use of a ‘z’ (pronounced zed please) in capitalization is… not quite a “deal-breaker” but definitely an “off-putter”.

  26. (I’m sure my use of quotation marks to distance myself from lazy phrases that I use without thinking in speech anyway will be a “deal-breaker” for somebody else out there.)

  27. This thread has turned into reason # 964 why we need a sister Sepia Destiny website.

    i am just high jacking the tread for a second to comment. “intellectual snobbery” this is the exactly the reason I am scared to attend any SM meetup.

    Leena no worries all these virtual intellectual snobs are rather cuddly creatures in person. 🙂

  28. 75 · The G-Man said

    Wow, some of you here are a bunch of murderous sub-editors.
    I fell in love with you when you mentioned Flight of the Conchords and Belle & Sebastian, but then I noticed your inconsistent capitalization, and that is a deal-breaker.
    But your inconsistent off-setting of quotes must be a “deal-breaker” for somebody out there. As a snobby IBD, your use of a ‘z’ (pronounced zed please) in capitalization is… not quite a “deal-breaker” but definitely an “off-putter”.

    I know, I never poof-read. Use of ‘z’ is a IBD trait??? I usually use ‘s’ because I’m an IBD and also because my snobby high-school in Canada stressed British spellings. I intentionally used ‘z’ because the majority of the readers here are American, and I didn’t want to appear snobby with my British-spellings.

  29. A big “D’oh!” on two counts: 1) On messing up the quotes again 2) On misunderstanding your IBD comment

  30. What makes knowledge of literature more important than knowledge of fashion? If you’re assessing compatibility, then you might consider it important—-that you’re probably unlikely to get along with somebody who reads only Vogue and wears designer wear. But to consider yourself superior, as soooo many of us do?

    Right on. My standard for friends and (before I was married) dates is this: be a huge nerd about whatever it is you’re into. Maybe you don’t profess to know a thing about 19th-century African American literature, but you’re obsessed with lexicography (or baseball, or forestry, or ancient Aztec culture, or whatever). If you’re passionate about it, you think critically about it and learn as much as you can, and you can talk about it in a way that gives me a sense of why it moves you so much, then we’re cool. And I might just learn something about forestry or lexicography in the process. If we’re into the same books, fields, whatever, that’s great. If not, maybe it’s about subjective taste– but if you can mount a well-reasoned or at least funny defense of your favorite Dan Brown novel, I won’t mock you (much) for liking him.

  31. SSK – heh!

    I love British spelling and usage, not just because I grew up with it, but because it’s still full of the history of this crazy language. Oestrogen. Aeon. Fulfilment. Catalogue.

  33. Hah – I pulled that comment at the last second deciding that I sounded really pretentious… now I’m naked and shamed.

  34. I am late to this, but it is only because I was stuck in my therapy session. Still working on overcoming my shame about my eighth grade lionization of Erich Segal as Greatest. Writer. Ever. What can you say about a 25 year old girl who died? Apparently, anything that works on a pre-pubescent boy, but nothing that isn’t sappy beyond belief. Thankfully, I was soon distracted by Frederick Forsyth’s exquisite descriptions of, let’s call it espionage, in Day of the Jackal. Till a friend gave me Fountainhead, that is. And I was amazed that I had lived a life to the ripe old age of 13 without having read a genius like Ayn Rand. Thankfully, my infatuation did not last so long that I actually read Atlas Shrugged. Life is too short for reading two Ayn Rand novels.

    Finally, in college, I discovered my one true literary crush: Raymond Chandler. And the man I want to be is no longer Howard Roark but Philip Marlowe. Unfortunately, I have neither his strength of character, nor his ability to withstand brutal beatings by unnamed thugs.

  35. Philip Marlowe…his ability to withstand brutal beatings by unnamed thugs.

    Well, of course he can withstand beatings! His good name is “maar lo”.

  36. Well, I suppose it works both ways, avidly reading and pre-ordering Harry Potter will save you from guys like Abhi 🙂

    Jokes apart though, I agree, Ayn Rand sucks.

    And no, your taste in books do not have to match, they have to be harmonious. He affectionately smiles at your Potter-mania and you indulge his whim to read again “all the Biggles I read when I was a kid.”

    Otherwise, Abhi dearest you will be sneaking out of one relationship to another for the rest of your blogging life 🙂

  37. Don’t know anything about ‘The Fountainhead’ but I do love ‘The Figurehead’ 😉

  38. Well, of course he can withstand beatings! His good name is “maar lo”.

    Does he have a sister called: Rosemary Gant Marlowe?

  40. UberMetroMallu@88. That was funny! I almost spilled my Ethiopian organic coffee on my collection of Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, Chetan Bhagat , Danielle Steele and… well, thats about it.

  41. 61 · sonal said

    do comic books qualify as literature?
    yes they do. It is fast food but still food.
    I’d hardly call V for Vendetta, the Sandman series or Watchmen fast food …

    Preacher is also a great comic.

  42. Oddly enough, the sequence of events was a little different for me. Several years ago, I came across a woman whose perversions matched mine. Needless to say, we got along famously, until she uttered those dreaded eight words, “Have you read _______? I think she’s wonderful,” and pressed a book into my hands. You can understand my sense of trepidation; I had a good thing going here, but I knew myself for the pretentiously shallow DBD that I was — if the book turned out to be tripe, I wasn’t certain that I could look at her the same way again or continue the semblance of a relationship.

    Fortunately, the book turned out to be excellent. And so, what of the woman?

    Reader, I married her.

  43. 61 · sonal said

            <blockquote>do comic books qualify as literature? 


    yes they do. It is fast food but still food.


I'd hardly call V for Vendetta, the Sandman series or Watchmen fast food ...

    Preacher is also a great comic.

    I LOVE Sandman and all things Neil Gaiman! 🙂

    V for Vendetta was pretty good, too.

    Fortunately, the book turned out to be excellent. And so, what of the woman? Reader, I married her.

    Shaad,

    That’s a wonderful story! And I love the Jane Eyre reference.

  44. Somehow whenever I try to use blockquotes here, it always gets messed up….

    Oh well….I’m sure that is a deal breaker for someone on here…haha

  45. Camille, since it’s on your list, the BBC has done a fine job of recording Ulysses, you can listen to it and follow along in the book – total cheating but fun and you can cross it off your list.

    Thanks, bess. I’ve read Ulysses but really don’t like it (unlike other people who don’t read it and rank it in their top 10). I’ll look into the dramatization, though. Maybe it will shine light on something I hadn’t thought of. Or it will make me want to stick pencils through my eyes like the book did. 😉

    I never read books. I only read book reviews. They tell me everything I need to know about the story plus the literary criticism. Saves time and having to think, and allows me to converse seemingly intelligently about a huge range of books.

    44, are you riffing off of Tom in Metropolitan?

    do comic books qualify as literature?

    Of course! I don’t think it’s even a food vs. fast food distinction. There’s certainly the graphic novel genre, but there’s really fantastic storytelling and literary impact that is rooted in comic books. Not that “literary impact” measures the worth or value of a book, anyway.

    Ardy, I have no idea what you’re asking — is your general premise that women don’t tend to read non-fiction books for leisure/pleasure?

  46. I gotta tell ya. One thing that bores me in a lot of indian american type sites is the amount of book events. YAAAWN. I just can’t get myself to readd most fiction. Oh, I loved books like Sherlock Holmes as a kid and 1984 was pretty cool to read as a teen. But a lot of these poetry and book readings .. eh.

    I am a semi snob when it comes to movies though. I say semi becuase I enjoy dumb movies too. However, I set the limit at Nora Ephron-Nancy Myers type movies. Ughhh. None of those please.

  47. 30 · Camille said

    I loved this article — I thought it was funny and kind of right-on, at least for my friend cohort. I remember the first time I got into a heated conversation with a close friend over literary tastes. We both liked Love In The Time of Cholera (consensus: poetic), but we disagreed on Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness (her: brilliant, me: self-consciously hip) and Joyce’s Ulysses (her: masterful, me: only on top 10 lists because no one actually reads it).

    Camille, it’s apparent our literary tastes match. I think it’s time we matched perversions. Sappho and pineapple juice date amidst the cherry blossoms in DC?

  48. Oh, I’m unabashedly shallow about this, or at least I used to be. Readers of Ayn Rand or people who claimed in all seriousness that Dan Brown is one of the most talented literary figures of the last century were textual roadkill as far as I was concerned.

    Then I fell (or as Gaiman would put it “did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards”) for a young man who admitted to me without any shame or appreciation of higher, purer feelings whatsoever, that he didn’t like to read. At all.

    No happy endings here. That ship sank before it even sailed, but on the plus side, I’m now much more receptive to people who like books, no matter how personally abhorrent I may find their tastes in literature.

  49. Lot of pretentious name-dropping going on here. What has all this rampant anglophilia accomplished for desis other than alienate the small missionary school educated class from the rest of the folk?

  50. What has all this rampant anglophilia accomplished for desis other than alienate the small missionary school educated class from the rest of the folk?

    What alienate means?