Performative Readers and Hypocrite Lecteurs

Apparently, there’s a thing called ‘Performative Reading’ and the ‘internet’ or rather some Insta/TikTok 20-something lol-merchants don’t like it. 

I have become aware of the phenomenon thanks to Andy Miller of Backlisted fame, posting about this Guardian Article on it: 

“It’s called performative reading not just because someone might be pretending to read, but rather that they want everyone to know they read. The presumption is that they’re performing for passersby, signalling they have the taste and attention span to pick up a physical book instead of putting in AirPods. And we’re not talking about Colleen Hoover’s latest or a romantasy title; the books that qualify are capital “L” literature: Faulkner, Nabokov, Franzen. The heavier the better.”

Miller himself reacted, fairly, to my mind, with an F-bomb laden Bluey, Blusky, Blueski? or whatever a post, or ‘tweet’ is known as on Bluesky. Yes, Fuck Off to this. 

Yet another example of social media not being used to bring people together, to share enthusiasms, positivity and love, but to police others. To tut and shame and attempt to proscribe what people may and may not do in public, in some weird Nancy Mitford style U and Non-U version of personal presentation.

On some level, this is simply the reverse of Baudelaire and Eliot’s warning not to be a (un) ‘Hypocrite lecteur’, although both are wrong, readers are indeed morally superior to all other humans.

Of course, these attempts at anti-reading humiliation is nothing new. The difference is that, back when I was being shoved against walls by gurning, mouth-breathing thugs at Monks Park School in Bristol some decades ago, my tormentors didn’t come armed with mobile phone cameras and Instagram accounts. However, my crimes of ‘liking reading’ and ‘liking books’ were offensive enough to them to warrant aggressive attention. Reading to them, was also ‘Gay’.

The UK, unlike say France, has long had an ambivalent, even hostile attitude to intellectuals, even readers, especially public ones. Eliciting a knee-jerk ‘Who do you think you are?’ response in some. Or in my youth: ‘You think you’re It, don’t you?’.

Personally, from a very young age, I’d always used books and reading as a way of escaping from the wider world. I certainly didn’t stick my head in a book in order to attract unwanted attention – Hey everyone on the street, in the playground, I’m reading ‘Moby Dick’.

Reading was my way out, a book was a shield, or an escape hatch, never a flashing beacon, advertising my existence and pretension.

I must admit though, a few judgey moments myself on public transport, over people’s reading matter – all those copies of Atlas Shrugged being wielded by riders between Bermondsey and London Bridge, I’m looking at you.

 To my shame, I remember inwardly tutting at seeing multiple people reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Bridget Jones’ Diary or other books du jour, back in the 1990s. ‘Look at you all, reading the same book!’ (I had actually read both myself, hypocrite lecteur indeed).

Nowadays, I’m heartened to spot even one fellow reader on a bus, tube or train carriage. Amidst a sea of people fingering their phones (blatant double-standards warning again, often I am doing this myself) or worse, blaring YouTube clips or distorted music out loud, catching sight of a book is like a candle in the dark. 

Once I was reading American Psycho on the tube and laughed at one of the passages where Bateman ecstatically extols the virtues of some band like Huey Lewis and the News, or Phil Collins. A woman opposite tapped her friend, to draw attention to my book and the fact I laughed. They shook their heads and gave me a look. I can only assume they thought I was laughing at some bloody dismembering of a victim, based on what they’d heard about Ellis’ book. I managed to resist the urge to explain and withdrew back into the pages to hide once more. 

I think we should have more performative reading, the more obscure, massive, erudite, difficult the book, the better. If I see someone plugging away at Finnegan’s Wake, To the Lighthouse or Comet in Moominland on the tube, I’ll smile. 

Here’s a themed bonus – a poem called ‘Awkward Chapter’ which, handily concerns, unfortunate choices of reading matter. 

Awkward chapter

The year my beach reading took a dark turn, 
I got lightly toasted, outside a hut, 
facing the Caribbean. 
Scabbed iguanas scuffled in and out of shade. 

Tiny footprints, temporary dents on the surface 
of an off-white cappuccino froth of sand. 
Each morning, we’d stroll into the breakers, 
delighted at an ocean bright 

in childlike crayon blue. Later on, my head swirled 
into a world of neurotic Calvinists, in Scotland – 
possibly possessed, slaying sinners. Next, I traced 
the course of an ill-fated coupling, 

as a marriage fell apart, in east-coast suburban USA. 
Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. 
Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Oh, how I used to laugh 
at people’s faces, when I told them, 

which books I took on honeymoon.