Don't Judge a Book by its Subway Line

I was sitting at the 14th Street 1/2/3 subway station, doing some reading for a poetry lecture and waiting for the train. A portly older man in a pinstriped suit sat down next to me. He gave me the casual “just checking to make sure you’re not going to drool, spill, or fall asleep on me” glance. Then a curious light came into his eye. He leaned over, his neck contorting into a very uncomfortable position. I was alarmed at first. Then, realizing what he was after, I held up my book so he could see the cover.
From a black background, a brooding face stared out. Emblazoned in white text above the head was the title: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. The man nodded, apparently satisfied, and I lowered the book. “A mystery, huh?” he said with a knowing smile.

I was too startled to be polite. “Um, no. I mean—poetry.”

“Poetry?” He made a face. “Let me guess, they’re making you read it for some class?”
I mumbled something vague and dove back into the book. A few feet away, a few young people—clearly students, or recent graduates—gave me sympathetic smiles. When the train came, everybody boarded happily, smugly. We, the Intellectuals, the Poetry Readers, had found something about which we could feel smug—come on, this man looked down on anything that wasn’t a mass-market thriller!—and meanwhile, he could laugh at the naive college kids, with their heads in the clouds. Our paths, we all assumed, would never cross again.

The encounter gave me pause. What is it about subway reading? Why does it provoke such a universal, insatiable urge to question, to (occasionally) comment or compliment, and (more often) to judge?

I can’t lie: I’ve certainly judged people based on what they’re reading during their morning commute. Earlier this fall, sitting next to a man who was earnestly highlighting The Purpose Driven Life, I gloated all the way to Houston Street over my Gautier. On the other hand, I’ve also felt the unforgiving eye of the Subway Intellectual turn on me. One day during my first year at Columbia, when I was on my way to the train carrying only a wallet—no forgiving bag to hide my guilt—a friend gave me the newest Gossip Girl novel as a gag gift. The stares I endured in the 116th Street station! The stifled laughter! The derision!

Categorizing individuals based on their choice of subway reading is nothing new to New Yorkers. Some even take it further—in fact, this August, the New York Observer ran an adorably snarky feature on the books that define each subway line. (Apparently, those who ride the F train betray “a taste for harsh realities—perhaps a by-product of hours spent suffering through the train’s well-documented unreliability,” while “patrons of the N/Q/R/W are a gossipy bunch!” and, unsurprisingly enough, the L train’s reading “looks like a New York University summer reading list.”) In my opinion, it’s a bit extreme to define the economic, religious, and intellectual traits of a subway line by what you see in the hands and bags of its riders on a particular train car on a particular day.
But this, of course, raises another question: isn’t it just as absurd to try to define an individual based on what they happen to be reading at any given moment? Sure, sometimes it can give you a clue as to someone’s current interests, but reading material can be misleading. Every student who took Lit Hum probably found himself reading the New Testament or A Vindication of the Rights of Woman at some point, but my experience at Columbia certainly hasn’t led me to believe that every student in the College is a devout Christian and fervent feminist.

In fact, a great deal of the Columbia education is supposed to involve reading things that you wouldn’t, perhaps, read on your own, or studying subjects which you know little or nothing about. A liberal arts education is intended to be broad, exposing students to new concepts and perspectives. No one should feel that they have to agree with everything he or she reads, or, even worse, that they ought only to read those writers whom they already agree with. Following this line of thought, judging somebody based on what they are reading is not only unnecessarily critical, but also even anti-educational.

People will undoubtedly continue to draw snap conclusions about others based on what they’re reading. I’d be lying if I said I’d never do it again. But there are reassuring moments—the annoying guy who wouldn’t stop hitting on me even after I shoved Maureen Dowd’s Are Men Necessary? in his face (clearly, he didn’t think my reading defined even my current romantic outlook!), the two men talking amiably, one flipping through John Grisham, the other through Great Expectations. At heart, it seems, New Yorkers know not to judge people by their book’s cover.