Pretending to have read something you should have
The first year of university. A shoebox cell in halls of residence. Polyester curtains that make shellsuit noises when tugged closed, and a squeaky mattress that repeats every toss and turn. In one corner, a low sink, in the other a lonely open wardrobe. The walls, cursed with slices and nicks, are all mine to populate. I do so with posters of French cinema I’ll never see, bands I’m not cool enough to actually like and prints by artists I don’t understand. Like half my VHS collection, CDs and books (the half on display), it is a pretence. The aim is to convey a sophisticated, appealingly aloof and charmingly troubled young man to the sequence of equally urbane women who will pass through. They never do. At least I am prepared, though.
Nearly two decades on, and the need to impress has been mostly dissolved by a mortgage and nappies. Yet there is one survivor: I still occasionally pretend to have read something I haven’t. Even worse than that, I enjoy doing so.
It is usually something revered, a classic or a modern marvel. More than once, it has been a book I was told to read at school and so took umbrage with, as is a teenager’s moral duty. Skeleton knowledge, scraped long ago from York Notes, helps me hold a conversation about such books, ditto watching a television adaptation or reading book reviews. Often, I own the work in question, it is just that the bookmark has not moved beyond page 32, but I get the idea.
The start of the deceit is not wholly my fault. I do not go around claiming to have read words I haven’t in some dull replica of my student walls. The fraud is induced. Others begin talking and bubbling wildly about a book, my smile and brief knowledge is taken to be a deep acquaintance, and then I do not have the heart to puncture their balloon. Besides, I am by now gratified by the thrill of the lie and feel like a sharp-suited spiv, the brains behind a very mild sting. I nod along, and yes, I loved that part too. I am a budget kingpin and I am getting away with it.
Beyond the raw tingle of breaking an honest life with the gentlest of swindles, there are probably deeper reasons at play. To fake is to avoid incredulous, high-pitched reactions (‘YOU’VE NEVER READ TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?!’) and resultant lectures. In darker hours, it is to avoid appearing a lesser reader or to feign intellectual prowess. Mostly, though, it is the best way to avoid causing offence.
There comes a day when, finally, the great un-read and lied-about is tackled. They were right, Huckleberry Finn is impeccable. You just can’t now say so.