I was a performative reader

I read the recent New Yorker article about "performative reading," (behind a paywall? maybe) and if you haven't heard that term yet, it's because you're not on the poison internet unless you have to be. It is, in the estimation of too many irritating people, the practice of being seen reading an actual book in public, and apparently it makes you an asshole, a showoff, performing smartness for the benefit of curating your personal online brand.

The article is quite thoughtful as it tries to distill what the hell everyone's problem is, and concludes that since literacy is on the decline and people are reading for pleasure less and that books are impossible to consume in the format that Instagram or TikTok allows, unlike dance routines or other presentational content, to be seen holding a book is how one communicates something about the self that doesn't require physical abilities or rehearsal. If you see a person holding a book in public, you're now allowed to accuse them of... reading.

My response to this is fuckaducknobodywantsanythingnice. The entire goddamn reason I even bring a book out into the world is so that I can hide from view behind it and read and be left alone.

Having said that, I was literally a performative reader for the first several years of elementary school until it was figuratively beaten out of me.

I entered first grade already knowing how to read. I don't remember anyone teaching me. I'm sure my mother helped me sound out words, and she was probably extremely patient with teaching me definitions. Eventually she bought me a dictionary. She also brought me to the library in our small town and let me check out as many children's books as they allowed. She read Harlequin Romances, pretty much exclusively. My father read Sports Illustrated. My grandfather, who lived with us, read the newspaper. My oldest brother read The Hobbit or some shit like that. Regardless of the reading material, the habit was modeled for me, so I picked it up.

My first grade teacher, Miss Rose, allowed volunteers the opportunity to read out loud to the class a couple of afternoons each week. I think it was her post-lunch strategy or keeping a room full of 6-year-olds engaged and giving herself some in-school time to grade papers. She alternated this routine with her own scheduled reading to the class. The first book she read to us was Charlotte's Web, a little bit each day. I became obsessed with not just the book itself but with the prospect of being an adult commanded the room. I struggled with math but when it came to reading I arrived fully formed, ready to display my skill set and establish dominance. I practiced for my arrival into the reading aloud hall of fame by reading to the stuffed animals.

I have only spotty memories of the actual material I selected for my semi-regular moment of being impressive. A picture-book edition of A Charlie Brown Christmas was one, Bread and Jam for Frances another. But these are solid choices. I was also a curator.

The problem with being a six-year-old boy in 1970 and doing any enthusiastic public reading was that other six-year-old boys hated you for it and wanted to beat you up. At recess I avoided this by becoming a jump rope holder for the girls or commandeering a spot on the swings with classmate Brenda so that we could discuss the most recent episodes of The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. Mostly the latter. And no amount of threat could stop me from wanting to read aloud to the class and prove to Miss Rose that I should be considered Her Favorite and a suitable substitute teacher should she ever feel like taking a day off.

Lots of the girls wanted to read aloud. Few boys. But then, one of those other boys, one of the sports boys, one of the boys who were friends with other boys, decided that he, too, would read aloud. When it was his turn, I looked out the class window and pretended not to be annoyed.

I kept my eye on him and decided we were enemies. And the field of battle expanded. In third grade when the music teacher let us bring a record to class and he brought the theme song from The Sting, I brought Half Breed by Cher. I was keeping score, and I was winning.

You got extra credit for book reports. You got even more extra credit if you would read your book report aloud for the class. We both did this.

By now, two years into the rivalry, I was used to the fact that a jock (for the purposes of this post, a jock is any third-grader who prefers playing on an open field with a ball to holding one end of a jump rope) was daring to conquer more of my territory. But I also made sure to best him when possible. I chose novels, automatically that was more grown-up and sophisticated than Frog and Toad Are Friends. This would certainly attract the admiration of the teacher who would simply know which child was superior.

After I had fully cemented my position in the elementary school ecosystem as uncool, he entered a reading contest against me. Who did this little asshole who could beat me up but never did and in fact never hassled me once think he was?

It was a year-long contest, and there was a chart on the wall for keeping track. He and I were neck-and-neck, ahead of the pack, but endlessly jockeying for first place. Finish the worksheet early? Start reading the book. Finish the book. Write a mini-synopsis. Get approved by the teacher. Put another mark on the chart. If this can process can be witnessed by the competition and other kids in the class, even better.

The competition heated up. I would alternate between short quick books with pictures to longer books with chapters. He noticed and we both adopted this strategy. Too many easy titles, quickie Scholastic sports-figure bios or borderline "baby" books like anything by Dr. Seuss, and you were unofficially cheating. Too many expansive Laura Ingalls Wilder digressions into 19th century homesteading, and you soon fell behind.

He won. Scorching loss. I can't remember what caused me to fall behind, but he kicked my ass by two books. I think he got some McDonald's gift certificates, which in the 1970s kid economy were gold-plated currency, making being a loser even worse.

The next year, we were neck-and-neck in the class spelling bee. The final two standing. I won because he forgot "cologne" had a silent "g." My prize was a Milky Way bar.

On the school bus, another kid said, "You won the spelling bee but X won last year's book contest, faggot." So people remembered my defeat. And that I was a faggot. No one knew what a faggot was, really, but it was something you didn't want to be and it was usually reserved for boys who lived for reading aloud to a captive audience and in their free time held jump ropes.

I Googled my competition. He seems like a decent and functional person today with a career and a reasonable amount of happiness, and there is no way he remembers me or my maniacal determination to beat him at books. But seriously, fuck this guy.

(above photo: some books in our home, used as a laptop perch for Zoom calls)