I mind my own business with a restraint that puts me at the outer edge of normal (just barely), but suffer from a compulsion to know what other people are reading. Planes used to be good places to indulge, walking back from the lavatory down the narrow isle with a good view of seats on either side. Pickings are slim, these days. I don’t care what’s on a glowing screen. If pages aren’t being turned, I don’t bother.
What’s left? New York City’s subways. A recent trip suggests a New York Times’ decline. If people are buying it, they’re not packing it. Contrary to years’ past, most of the newspapers I saw weren’t in English. (One of the joys of NY is the range of languages, the daily reminder of living on the earth, not just burrowing through a single life’s construct.)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo continues ubiquitous. Good book, although I skipped a lot of it, not being able to take the sick/slasher-on-girl action. I’m not even sure how it turned out, but my fondness for the main character remains. I keep hearing that nonfiction dominates. Not on the subway. For every person hefting a biography, history, self-help or textbook, there are five plowing through a once-upon-a-time.
After Henry Kingsley Amis expressed contempt for his son Martin’s prose, a reporter asked Martin if he had a rejoinder. He quoted dad, who late in middle age told him, “I’m never going to read another novel that doesn’t begin with the
words, ‘A shot rang out.’ “
Lots of fictional shots ring out on the subway. Sadly, I saw nobody carrying John Godey’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, even though last year’s movie remake must have brought it back. If there’s more perfect subway-reading fare, I don’t know about it.
On the other hand, transcending your surroundings is always an option. A young man in a bowler hat, jeans and vest with a lattice of tattoos running up his right arm got on at Columbus Circle to ride downtown. Out of his satchel he took a hardback copy of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson and proceeded to lose himself in her pages. I mustered every shred of super-ego not to say, Thanks for the sight of you.
when I visit my daughter in NYC (tv producer)I
never read the nyt or books..but when I am in seattle I read the nyt…cause there are newsprint worthy to read here.
From brooklyn to manhattan , there are a good number of readers.in the sub..because the ride is tedious and boring.
Great piece! Your essay is better than a picture. Small quibble: Kingsley Amis is the father of Martin, no?
Thank you, William. The mind might have mountains, but it also has burrowed holes where names known turn strange, like ankles twisted into balloons.