Judging a Book By Its Lover

Lauren Leto

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780062070159
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literaturkritik Geschichte & Theorie

"Leto is as funny as she is well-read; a delight for bibliophiles and wannabes alike."
—Wylie Overstreet, author of The History of the World According to Facebook

Lauren Leto, humor blogger and co-author of Texts from Last Night, now offers a fascinating field guide to the hearts and minds of readers everywhere. Judging a Book by Its Lover is like a literary Sh*t My Dad Says —an unrelentingly witty and delightfully irreverent guide to the intricate world of passionate literary debate, at once skewering and celebrating great writers, from Dostoevsky to Ayn Rand to Jonathan Franzen, and all the people who read them. This provocative, smart, and addictively funny tome arose out of Leto's popular "book porn" blog posts, and it will delight and outrage literature fans, readers of Stuff White People Like and I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar —people obsessed with literary culture and people fed up with literary culture—in equal measure.

PART III

How to Fake It

What Your Child Will Grow Up to Be If You Read Them…

MUCH LIKE ADULTS ADOPT favorite authors and genres in a way that defines their tastes, children fall in love with a particular imaginary world that embodies the elements they hold dear. For many, that’s their first bit of rebellion, recognizing that not every book is on the same moral plane when you laugh much harder at Dr. Seuss’s ne’er-do-well cat than the goody-two-shoes big red dog named Clifford.

A parent chooses (consciously or otherwise) books in line with the message of their parenting style; something in the plot picks up on how they’d rather their child appear, as the subdued orphan Madeline or the wily, brash Eloise. Remember what your parents read to you when you were younger? Did they try to quietly influence your worldview by stockpiling your tiny bookshelf with Paddington Bear instead of Tom Thumb? Now you have more evidence than their divorce to mount on the wall of things they did wrong.

For the record, my mom read Love You Forever to me so much as a kid that I can repeat it by memory, but my favorite books were the Berenstain Bears collection. I was an annoying child.

THE GIVING TREE

“I want that!” your daughter or son will be yelling next time you take them to the mall. Smooth move, Mom and Dad, teaching your kid about how parents will sacrifice for their children. Have fun explaining to your kid why a tree would do more for him than you would.

CLIFFORD

A big, red dog who…wait, does Clifford ever do anything? It’s a boring book for boring kids. A gigantic dog that doesn’t eat humans or at least crush a couple of houses? Snooze fest. Congratulations on begetting an average kid who will find a great position in middle management and have a somewhat happy marriage.

GREEN EGGS AND HAM

The perennial favorite of any gross-out kid—the one who throws boogers at classmates, pees his pants laughing at fart jokes, and pretends to blow up nearby buildings with the air bazooka he’s holding. In short: awesome.

THE VELVETEEN RABBIT

A crybaby in the purest sense of the term. Your child will get sentimental and emotionally attached to seemingly any object. These are the kids who won’t let a balloon go until it’s wilted on their bedroom floor. They’ll try to keep June bugs as pets. If they went to Hogwarts, they’d get placed in Hufflepuff.

LOVE YOU FOREVER

Daddy issues. The entire book makes not one mention of a father. Also, the whole taking-care-of-your-mother-as-an-old-woman thing is deeply creepy. Five-year-olds don’t need to know about that.

A LIGHT IN THE ATTIC

The edgy alternative to Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. Parents, you’re going to end up with a stoner on your hands. A wonderful, happy, creative pothead. How could you not? This collection of Silverstein poems is best read high. It’s only a matter of years before your kid tokes up and pulls out this book to blow his mind.

THE LITTLE PRINCE

Quietly contemplative. Regal. The other kids might call him names but you know your child is just introverted. He is far too busy contemplating the tao of life to bother with childhood rowdiness.

HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON

When your grown-up kid is delivering the news of his second or third divorce, remember all the nights you spent reading him this book, telling him that a boy could dance around with a purple crayon and make anything he wanted come to reality. Then stop wondering why he won’t stop sleeping with his secretaries. The answer is right here.

CURIOUS GEORGE

The creepy monkey kid whom no one likes. Seriously, why did the kid who loved monkeys always also look like a monkey? If you pick your kid up from school and a bunch of the other students are having him imitate an ape, you have to put your foot down. If not, in about ten years no one will go to prom with monkey kid.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Navel-gazing Tumblr addict. Seriously, Spike Jonze makes a movie about a children’s book and suddenly every hipster “omg < 3”s it. Next.

ELOISE

“Narcissist” is too easy and much too simple a word to describe Eloise fans. Those nosy gossips with a taste for high-class clubbing and the ability to seek out the best sample sales will be moving straight to a big city after college graduation. Just wait for their e-mails eagerly sharing their photos on The Sartorialist and mentions in the local gossip rag.

THE BERENSTAIN BEARS

Wild, hyperactive kid who gets kicked out of class for laughing too hard at things that aren’t funny. They’re unable to gauge when and how to end the joking around. If you oblige them with a chuckle, you’re inviting them to beat the joke into the ground.

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

Boring, crusty-nosed girl with glasses who hangs out in the library. I’m yawning just thinking about that book.

PANCAKES FOR BREAKFAST

This is a great book to read to your child if you never want to see your child again. You’re creating an adventurer. The “I’m going to move to Denver for a couple years and see how it pans out instead of graduating college!” kid. The “I think it’s a great idea to move to Paris without a job and see where life takes me!” kid. It’s awesome that you’ve created an independent adult but you might get lonely on the holidays.

MADELINE

Horrifyingly obedient, to the point where you can be reassured that even if you traveled out of town for a month and left her alone, your teenage daughter wouldn’t dare throw a party or look twice at the liquor cabinet. As an adult, she becomes a church group leader, even though you didn’t raise her with religion.

Stereotyping People by Favorite Author

THERE’S SOMETHING ESSENTIAL ABOUT our choice of our favorite author or book. We love those who speak to our experiences or to what we wish our world to be like. The author we put on a mantel and formally designate as our favorite says something very real and fundamental about how we view the world. A science fiction fan loves the alternate reality a book presents but knows it’s not real. From those dystopian societies, she doesn’t derive the expectation that she’ll someday live on Mars—she takes, instead, the feeling of adventure and endless possibilities. A Faulkner fan might not live in the South nor have any plans to, but he believes in the power of families and small communities. Your favorite author frames your approach to life. Having our favorite authors’ names proudly displayed on our bookshelves is our way of most aptly expressing the otherwise inexpressible.

I am hardly the first person to point out that a particular author’s fans often share a distinct personality type. Martin Amis once said of his experience at a book signing with Roald Dahl, “[At] signing sessions with other writers…you look at the queues at each table and you can see definite human types gathering there.” Like attracts like—and here are some authors who seem to attract a particular breed.

J. D. SALINGER

Kids who don’t fit in (duh).

STEPHENIE MEYER

People who type like this: “OMG. Mah fAvvv <3 <3.”

J. K. ROWLING

Smart geeks.

JACK KEROUAC

Umphrey’s McGee fans.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Girls who didn’t get enough drama when they were younger.

LAUREN WEISBERGER

Girls who can’t read. Or think.

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Thirtysomethings who were cool when they were twentysomething.

JODI PICOULT

Your mom when she’s at her time of the month.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

Boys who don’t read.

CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Boys who can’t read.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

People I would love to hang out with.

LEO TOLSTOY

Guys I want to date.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Guys I want to sleep with. (The difference between Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy lies in the fact that I think the Underground Man is sexier than Pierre Bezukhov.)

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY (OR WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY)

People who love excess verbiage.

AYN RAND

Workaholics seeking validation.

DAVID...