It's Not You, It's Your Books (NYT, March 30, 2008)
(via jessicap)
The article discusses taste in books as a matter of compatibility but stops short when getting at the real issue: representation. Through listing our tastes on Facebook, we’re representing ourselves. Choosing a significant other is the most agonizing issue of representation in most people’s lives because that significant other is supposed to be the deepest representation of our desires and selves. The point is that we’re more worried about how that person is going to make us look to others rather than how well we get along. I’m bored by the notion that taste in books suggests anything about the inner person rather than simply that person’s choices in how they want to project themselves to others/who they want to relate to/etc, all related to but different from the reality of who we are and who we relate to.
And to speak candidly about the society we live in: taste now is generally a matter of accumulation rather than understanding/appreciation. If someone hasn’t heard of Pushkin, it doesn’t speak to who they are insofar as their ability to appreciate beautiful things. It just means that they haven’t accumulated that many authors on their list of things. I’m reminded of Catcher in the Rye, where Holden says that he loves his sister because she laughs when things are funny. That kind of appreciation speaks to the inner self more than just a list of books people have read. The point is that anyone can read a book—which is why lesser people use that to torpedo people who haven’t accumulated as much, because that’s all they’ve got—but fewer people can acknowledge and understand beautiful things.
