Is it OK to read Infinite Jest in public? Why the internet hates ‘performative reading'
Reading in public – not cool. Or at least 'performative reading', as it's been dubbed on social media, is worthy of ridicule.
Not long ago, during the peak years of corny millennial humor, we celebrated @HotDudesReading, an Instagram account-turned-book that showed attractive men toting books on trains and park benches. Now, god forbid anyone (hot dudes included) enjoy a moment of escapism during the capitalist grind, or else they might end up in someone's mocking post. To quote the caption of one popular meme depicting an anonymous train passenger reading a Brit lit classic: 'Poser art himbo on the subway barely 10 pages into his performative copy of Frankenstein.'
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, signaling 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.
Of course, it requires a deeply broken brain to be this bothered by a stranger's summer reading list. Chalk this obsession with performative reading up to a wariness of personal branding. We can't even indulge in an innocent hobby without it being considered some sort of aesthetic curation.
Last month, Hailey Bieber poked fun at her vapid image in a Vogue TikTok, in which she pulled out The Portable Nietzsche ('I love this one, probably my fourth or fifth time reading it, so good') and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason ('been taking a lot of notes from this one'). The hosts of the Run-Through, Vogue's official podcast, later called the post 'satire'. Another win for the books-as-props community.
Ten years ago, John Waters's famous quote about how if you go home with someone and they don't have books, 'don't fuck 'em' came printed on tote bags. Now, is the prevailing wisdom that anyone who dares read the newborn-sized Infinite Jest during their lunch break an absolute loser? I decided to find out in my own personal mini-odyssey.
The performative reading canon spans many titles and genres, and I thought about using Robert Caro's The Power Broker, Moby Dick or The Bell Jar in this experiment. Ultimately, I chose Infinite Jest, because it clocks in at over just 1,000 pages, I've never met a person who had finished it, and at many times I've considered picking it up but reconsidered simply because I did not want to be the dude on the subway reading Infinite Jest. I found a $9 copy at my neighborhood bookstore in Brooklyn and braced myself for what I was sure would be abject humiliation courtesy of the gen Z cashier. Instead, she asked if I needed a bag.
'I think so – it's kind of heavy,' I said, propping it on my hip dramatically as if it were a small child. She nodded for the person behind me in line to step forward with the apathy of someone who's not being paid enough for this.
On the train, I held the behemoth in front of my face, angling so the woman with groceries across from me could not help but notice that I was Better Than Her. As I peeked over the page, I tried to clock any annoyance. But, tragically, she had things to worry about other than my reading list.
When I got to Washington Square Park, the unofficial campus center of New York University and general young person shenanigans hub, I awaited to be caught in the act, secretly filmed for a TikTok ridiculing my performance. Again, no one cared – except for a gen X man who sat on the park bench next to me, exactly the type of guy who might consider David Foster Wallace a modern-day saint. He politely asked how I was doing with the book. I told him I was 20 pages in and hadn't quite hit footnote hell yet. He said to keep going and suggested that I literally cut the book into thirds to make it more manageable. (Apparently this is common knowledge among Wallace support groups that have popped up through the years.)
After I thanked him and went back to reading, a crazy thing happened: I enjoyed myself. One of life's simplest pleasures is falling into a story and tuning the world out. But to get there, you have to stop worrying about what someone's going to think of you – or whether you'll unwittingly end up in a bitchy TikTok. And as far as I know, I didn't.
All the finger-wagging about performative reading begs the question: where are we supposed to read the classics? Can it only be done at home, like a secret bad habit? For people who take public transit, especially trains with spotty wifi, commuting can be the only time when we have an hour or so to totally focus on a book (and on not missing our stop). So the next time you see one of us reading at a bar, coffee shop or the park, please leave us alone. This is not for you; we're just enjoying the vibes.
It's a scary time to be someone who cherishes the written word. The country is in the midst of a literary crisis. We're told by college professors that students can't read entire books anymore, that gen Z parents don't like reading to their kids, that smartphones ruined our ability to focus on anything longer than 30 seconds, that AI slop will take over publishing. Don't be a chump. Read everywhere, and read often.
And maybe there's still some steeze that comes from flexing an 'important' book. When I posted on Instagram about reading Infinite Jest in public, a friend told me she once went to a 'nudist' spa in Portland where she encountered a guy reading the book in a jacuzzi. 'He had the biggest penis I've ever seen in my life,' she wrote. 'It wasn't a performance, it was promotion.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
24 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Completely radical': how Ms magazine changed the game for women
The first of July marks the anniversary of Ms magazine's official inaugural issue, which hit newsstands in 1972 and featured Wonder Woman on its cover, towering high above a city. Truthfully, Ms debuted months earlier, on 20 December 1971, as a forty-page insert in New York magazine, where founding editor Gloria Steinem was a staff writer. Suspecting this might be their only shot, its founders packed the issue with stories like The Black Family and Feminism, De-Sexing the English Language, and We Have Had Abortions, a list of 53 well-known American women's signatures, including Anaïs Nin, Susan Sontag, and Steinem herself. The 300,000 available copies sold out in eight days. The first US magazine founded and operated entirely by women was, naysayers be damned, a success. The groundbreaking magazine's history, and its impact on the discourse around second-wave feminism and women's liberation, is detailed in HBO documentary Dear Ms: A Revolution in Print, which premiered at this year's Tribeca film festival. Packed with archival footage and interviews with original staff, contributors, and other cultural icons, Dear Ms unfolds across three episodes, each directed by a different film-maker. Salima Koroma, Alice Gu, and Cecilia Aldarondo deftly approach key topics explored by the magazine – domestic violence, workplace harassment, race, sexuality – with care, highlighting the challenges and criticisms that made Ms. a polarizing but galvanizing voice of the women's movement. Before Ms launched, the terms 'domestic violence' and 'sexual harassment' hadn't yet entered the lexicon. Women's legal rights were few, and female journalists were often limited to covering fashion and domesticity. But feminist organizations like Redstockings, the National Organization for Women, and New York Radical Women were forming; Steinem, by then an established writer, was reporting on the women's liberation movement, of which she was a fundamental part. In Part I of the documentary, Koroma's A Magazine for all Women, Steinem recalls attending a women's liberation meeting for New York magazine. Archival footage discloses what was shared there, and other meetings like it: 'I had to be subservient to some men,' says one woman, '… and I had to forget, very much, what I might have wanted to be if I had any other choice.' The response to Ms was unsurprising, its perspective so collectively needed. 'A lot of these articles could still be relevant,' Steinem muses in Part I. But, says the publication's first editor, Suzanne Braun Levine, 'I don't think we all were prepared for the response. Letters, letters, letters – floods of letters.' Koroma unveils excerpts of those first letters to the editor, vulnerable and intimate: 'How bolstering to find that I am not alone with my dissatisfaction that society had dictated roles for me to graduate from and into.' By the time Ms was in operation, the staff was publishing cover stories on Shirley Chisholm, unpaid domestic labor, and workplace sexual harassment. 'Who is it you're trying to reach?' a journalist asks Steinem in an interview back then. She replies: 'Everybody.' 'They tried to be a magazine for all women,' explained Koroma in a recent interview, 'and what happens then? You make mistakes, because of the importance of intersectionality.' In an archival audio clip, the writer and activist (and close friend of Steinem's) Dorothy Pitman Hughes says: 'White women have to understand … that sisterhood is almost impossible between us until you've understood how you also contribute to my oppression as a Black woman.' Marcia Ann Gillespie, the former editor in chief of Essence and later Ms's editor in chief, confides to Koroma: 'Some of the white women had a one-size-fits-all understanding of what feminism is, that our experiences are all the same. Well, no, they're not.' Alice Walker, who became an associate editor, shared her own writing and championed others', like Michele Wallace's, in the publication's pages before quitting in 1986, writing about the 'swift alienation' she felt due to a lack of diversity. Wallace recounts her experience as a Ms cover girl, her braids removed, her face caked in make-up. She adds: 'I want to critique [Ms], but they were very supportive of me. I don't know what would've become of me if there hadn't been a Ms magazine.' She left, too. 'I was not comfortable with white women speaking for me.' Levine admits, 'We made a mistake,' featuring Black writers but having few Black cover stars and no Black founding staff. 'The work still needs to be done; we're always going to have to rethink things,' Koroma says. It's a running thread in Dear Ms, one that creates a rich and ultimately loving picture of the magazine. 'Ms. is a complex and rich protagonist,' Aldarondo reflected. 'If you only talk about the good things and not the shadow, that's a very one-dimensional portrait. One of the things that makes Ms so interesting and admirable is that they wrestled with things in the pages of the magazine.' For Part III, No Comment (named for Ms's column that called out misogynistic advertising), Aldarondo chronicles its contentious coverage of pornography, which the staff primarily differentiated from erotica as inherently misogynistic, many of them aligning with the Women Against Pornography movement. In an episode that opens with unfurling flowers and the words of the delightful porn star, educator, and artist Annie Sprinkle, Aldarondo depicts the violence of the era's advertising and pornography, and the women who were making – or enjoying – pornography and sex work, proudly and on their own terms. In a response to the 1978 cover story Erotica and Pornography: Do You Know the Difference? Sprinkle and her colleagues, the writers and adult film actors Veronica Vera and Gloria Leonard, led a protest outside the Ms office. The staff hadn't 'invited anyone from our community to come to the table', says Sprinkle, despite adult film stars' expertise about an exploitative industry they were choosing to reclaim. 'To see these women as fallen women,' says Aldarondo, 'completely misses the mark.' Behind the scenes, the staff themselves were at odds. Former staff writer Lindsy Van Gelder states: 'I knew perfectly good feminists who liked porn. Deal with it.' Contending with the marginalization faced by sex workers, Ms ran Mary Kay Blakely's cover story, Is One Woman's Sexuality Another Woman's Pornography? in 1985. The entire issue was a response to activists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon's Model Antipornography Law, which framed pornography as a civil rights violation and which Carole S. Vance, the co-founder of the Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force, describes in Dear Ms as 'a toolkit for the rightwing' that ultimately endangered sex workers. Dworkin, says Vance, refused a dialogue; instead, the magazine printed numerous materials, the words of opposing voices, and the law itself to 'reflect, not shape' readers' views, says founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin. The hate mail was swift – including Dworkin's, once a staff colleague: 'I don't want anything more to do with Ms – ever.' Gu reveals something far more frightening than hate mail, a horror that didn't make its way into the film: death threats and bomb threats, which the staff received in response to their most controversial stories. 'There was actionable change that happened because of what these women did,' says Gu. 'The danger they put themselves in is not to be discounted. I get emotional every time I talk about it ... I have benefited largely from the work of these women, and I'm very grateful.' That actionable change refers to the legislative reforms prompted by Ms's coverage of domestic violence and workplace harassment. In A Portable Friend, Gu examines the 1975 Men's Issue, the 1976 Battered Wives Issue, and the 1977 issue on workplace sexual assault. 'Back then, there was no terminology if a woman was being hit by her partner at the time,' says Gu. She spotlights heartbreaking archival footage of women sharing their experiences with abuse: 'If it'd been a stranger, I would have run away.' Van Gelder herself reflects on the former partner who hit her. 'Did you tell anyone?' Gu asks. 'Not really.' In an archival clip, Barbara Mikulski, former Maryland senator and congresswoman, says: 'The first legislation I introduced as a congresswoman was to help battered women. I got that idea listening to the problems of battered women and reading about it in Ms' Adds Levine: 'We brought it into the daylight. Then there was the opening for battered women's shelters, for legislation, for a community that reassured and supported women.' The same idea applied to workplace sexual harassment: 'If something doesn't have a name, you can't build a response,' Levine exclaims. 'The minute it had a name, things took off and changed.' Gu shared that while 'there's a little bit of questioning as to whether it was Ms who coined the term [domestic violence], they were certainly the first to bring the term into the public sphere and allow for a discussion'. The Working Women United Institute eventually collaborated with Ms on a speak-out on sexual harassment. Despite obstacles, the scholar Dr Lisa Coleman, featured in Part I, describes the publication as one 'that was learning'. 'It's easy to be critical at first,' says Koroma, 'but after talking to the founders, you realize that these women come from a time when you couldn't have a bank account. It's so humbling to talk to the women who were there and who are a large part of the reason why I have what I have now.' Gu noted that the lens of the present day can be a foggy one through which to understand Ms — which, in truth, was 'completely radical,' she says. 'You weren't going to read about abortion in Good Housekeeping. You have to plant yourself in the shoes of these women at that time.' Our elders endured different but no less tumultuous battles than the ones we face now, many of which feel like accelerated, intensified iterations of earlier struggles. 'Talk to your moms, to your aunts and grandmas,' Koroma added. Aldarondo agreed: 'One of the great pleasures of this project, for all of us, was this intergenerational encounter and getting to hear from our elders. It's very easy for younger people to simply dismiss what elders are saying. That's a mistake. I felt like I already understood the issues, and then I learned so much from these women.' Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print premieres on HBO on 2 July and will be available on Max
Daily Mail
35 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Kristin Cavallari rare snap with lookalike daughter amid child custody woes with ex Jay Cutler
Kristin Cavallari shared a rare snap of her daughter Saylor James, nine, calling her a 'Future CEO' in the caption. The reality star, 38, wore a slightly sheer knit white top with a matching skirt as she cuddled up next to her mini-me daughter in the snap. They took their adorable mom/daughter selfie in the bathroom, which she shared on Monday to her Instagram story. Kristin calling her daughter a 'future CEO' comes after the former Laguna Beach star revealed that Saylor wants to take over her Uncommon James jewelry line one day. The TV star shares Saylor and sons Jaxon, 10, and Camden, 12, with ex-husband Jay Cutler. The cute post comes just months after she shared another snap with Saylor - this time as they made pieces for the star's jewelry line. Cavallari and her daughter could be seen standing around a long table that had various pieces spread out on top. At one point, Saylor pointed at a beaded necklace and the pair also shared their thoughts on a pair of earrings. As the nine-year-old continued to pick out jewelry items, the mom-of-three flashed a proud smile on her face. Kristin added text towards the bottom of the clip which read: 'How it feels designing jewelry with your mom.' The star also took to her main page to upload an adorable selfie of the pair while further taking her fans on a behind-the-scenes look as they designed pieces together. Fans flocked to the comment section to point out how Kristin and her daughter look alike, with one penning, 'Stopppp shes your twin! So precious!!' Another wrote, 'Your stunning mini. thank you for sharing her with us and congrats on your collab boss ladies!' 'This is precious! Congrats Mama & Saylor,' an Instagram user added, while one typed, 'She is your Twin.' In April, Kristin revealed that Saylor wants to take over Uncommon James one day when she's older. 'She's been telling everybody. I think the whole school knows about it. When it came out, she actually had all of her little girlfriends over, and she gifted everyone the collection,' she told People at the time. 'And it's just been really fun for me to see how excited she is about this and to be able to do this. She has all the plans to take over Uncommon James one day, and I honestly do feel like she probably will because she is very into it for being nine years old,' she said. The media personality has recently begun showing her children more frequently on social media after hiding their faces for privacy. She previously shared another glimpse of Saylor as they prepared a tasty dish with strawberries in the kitchen of the star's Tennessee abode. Cavallari's daughter could be seen carefully slicing red strawberries with a knife on a cutting board. In the background, Kristin could be heard saying, 'My little helper! Chopping 'em up!' Kristin launched her jewelry brand Uncommon James back in 2017 - and both she and her daughter were seemingly putting together pieces for the new kids jewelry line called Saylor's Summer Break. The description is a 'collection of necklaces, earrings, and a beaded bracelet that brings playful designs and bright colors to their look,' per the official website. The prices for the line range from $18-$22 and offer products such as flamingo stud earrings and a gold-chained, wave necklace. At the time of the company's official launch, Cavallari spoke with PeopleStyle to give insight about the name of the brand - and also gave credit to her then-husband Jay Cutler. 'James is my daughter's middle name. It was also my brother's middle name, but I really love it for a female, even though it's "uncommon."' The star added that she initially wanted to simply name the brand James but knew it would be 'impossible to patent' and explained 'Jay came up with Uncommon and I loved it. So yes, I have him to thank.' In regards to the brand itself, the actress expressed, 'I really wanted to do a line that was really personal and a true reflection of my style, and I wanted to be really involved. 'I wanted to have a hand in every facet of the company. So I was really excited to start my own and it's very exciting for me because it is my own.' Last week, Kristin revealed the new custody arrangement with Jay. 'I did have my kids full-time for a while, and now I have them except for every other weekend,' Kristin said on her Let's Be Honest podcast. Adding: 'I'm not gonna get into the reasoning or the legality of it.' She was married to former football player Jay Cutler from 2013 until they split in April 2020, with their divorce finalized in June 2022. In August 2022, Kristin said on the Call Her Daddy podcast that their relationship was 'toxic' and that she ignored the 'red flags' when she first called off their engagement in July 2011 before reuniting five months later and tying the knot.
Daily Mail
35 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Florida surfer filmed being headbutted by airborne SHARK while trying to catch a wave
A seasoned surfer off the Florida coast was abruptly knocked off his board when a shark suddenly launched out of the ocean, and struck him in the head. Darren Kaye, 51, of Winter Park, was surfing off the coast of New Smyrna Beach - an inlet northeast of Orlando - earlier this month, staying alert after spotting sharks near the shore and witnessing several recent attacks at the popular surf spot, WFTV 9 News reported. Though he kept a close eye on the water, Kaye never thought to look to the air - until, in a split second, a spinner shark burst out from underneath the surface and headbutted him off his board. 'I have a scar on the side of my elbow from being hit by a car and that's what it felt like,' Kaye told WFTV. 'It felt like getting hit by a car. It was really strong and powerful,' he added. 'They're all muscle, you know.' Early on the evening of June 20, Kaye was sitting on his surfboard, gently bobbing with the waves at the popular surf spot that has been nicknamed the 'Shark Bite Capital of the World,' according to visit New Smyrna Beach. While paddling into the waves on a board commonly known as a 'fish,' something bizarre happened. In a wild moment caught on camera, a spinner shark - named for its signature spinning leaps during feeding - suddenly erupted from the water in front of Kaye. 'Kind of ironic, right?' Kaye told WFTV. 'So you're riding a fish, and the shark tries to get your fish.' Though the shark missed its prey during its unexpected leap into surfer-filled waters, it didn't miss Kaye - slamming into his head mid-air and sending him crashing off his board. 'I was just really happy its mouth wasn't open,' he told the outlet, noting that spinner sharks are known for ejecting out of the ocean while hunting for fish. In the moment, Kaye had no idea what had struck him as the sharp-toothed sea creature hurled him into the choppy waters of the Sunshine State. 'I got right back on that board and my pulse went to like 195 beats a minute in a second, and I paddled as fast as I could to get out of the way,' Kaye told WFTV. Kaye explained that the force he felt was eerily similar to a car accident - an experience he knew all too well, with a scar on his elbow as a lasting reminder. Thankfully, despite weighing over 120 pounds, spinner sharks aren't known for delivering serious or powerful bites during attacks. He did feel a sudden headache, but was relieved when he realized the damage was minimal. He promptly jumped back on his board to catch another wave. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Darren J Kaye (@dj_kaye_) 'We surfed there the rest of the weekend, we surfed there this morning, we surfed there yesterday afternoon,' Kaye told WFTV. 'We always have waves,' he added. 'We are lucky.' In Florida - particularly at New Smyrna Beach - not only are spinner sharks common, but bull sharks, one of the most dangerous species to humans, are also frequently observed. Earlier this month, a summer vacation took a turn for the worse when a mommy influencer's young daughter was attacked by a shark in the Sunshine State - leaving her without her right hand. Leah Lendel, 9, was snorkeling near the shore of Boca Grande with her mother and siblings around noon on June 11 when she was bitten by a shark. Bystanders said an eight-foot bull shark managed to bite off the girl's right hand and part of her wrist. She emerged from the water on her own, completely covered in blood. With the help of nearby construction workers, the family called 911 and created a tourniquet out of a beach towel to stop the bleeding. The little girl and her father were airlifted to Tampa - 100 miles away from the beach - where she was admitted for emergency surgery in the hopes of reattaching her hand. In an update to Gulf Coast News Now earlier this month, Lendel's mother said: 'They had to get arteries from her leg to the hand. Got the blood flow back to her hand. Install pins in bones. Still has open tissues. 'They will be monitoring her here for a week,' she added. 'But thank God she can move her fingers.' On June 12, Lendel's uncle also offered NBC News further details on the nine-year-old girl's condition: 'The doctors were able to do some miracles and put her hand back together.' 'She will be in the hospital for a while and then a lot of physical therapy to hopefully get her hand functioning again,' he added. Now that summer is in full swing - meaning shark attack season is underway - beachgoers and surfers alike should exercise extra caution along the East Coast.
