Two people are sitting in a restaurant having lunch. One says to the other: “How’s the soup?” Does he really care about the soup? No. The question is a perfunctory social staple to fill conversational space with something. The soup could be hot or cold or good or bad. It doesn’t matter because it’s a pointless question. Asking a pointless question might not be as bad as asking the wrong question. A question is wrong when it fails to elicit the information the asker seeks.
Reading in public exposes one to various ambient challenges. For me, reading in public means reading indoors at a bar, and the challenges include dim light, background music, the din of conversation, speaker phones– and questions. Allow me to address them seriatim.
Most bars have dim light, but a small reading light solves this problem. I always carry one, and I can recharge it through its Micro USB port. Problem solved. (A library with an alcohol license might also solve this problem, but that idea is beyond the scope of this post).
Most bars also play music—- other than Discreet Music-type ambient music– constantly at a constant volume. (Eno). The din of conversation too, although composed of many individual conversations, is one amalgamated constant. These are not problems.
The solo patron at the bar who uses the speaker phone on his mobile phone is a problem. The piercing speaker phone is distracting in the same way one can sleep with the television on but not through the smoke detector chirps.
And the Curious Patron is a problem. He ignores the book as the universal “Do-Not-Disturb” sign and presumably thinks because I am alone, I would like to talk. I am not alone; I have a book. If having only a book as company is still alone, then I am alone, but I am not lonely.
The Curious Patron starts with “What are you reading?” The answer is unimportant because he has not read, nor is likely to read, what I am reading. He follows up with “What is the book about?” This question is a worse question because, even if it is an important question to the Curious Patron, I do not want to provide an oral book report while I am drinking and reading at a bar.
The ultimate question is often: “What is your favorite book?” This question without any parameters of genre, period, subject, author, etc. is overly broad and elicits a useless subjective response. I have read thousands of books over a lifetime and close to 800 in the last eight years alone according to my reading list. Even if I did answer the question, would my opinion be helpful?
The Curious Patron is either filling a conversational vacancy or trying to elicit from me what a good book for him to read would be. The engagement between us is not mediated by a judge who would promptly order an attorney asking a leading, argumentative, irrelevant, or otherwise improper question to “Rephrase the question.”
The “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” has the following two-line stanza:
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit. (Eliot)
One of the many interpretations of these lines is that they instruct ignoring asking the question– or possibly the difficult question– and seeking the answer through experience instead. That is not a deflection, but rather a different path to the meaningful answer.
What the Curious Patron wants to know is what book have I read that the Curious Patron would enjoy reading or benefit from reading. Therefore, the right question is: “What book do you choose to give to other people more than any other book?” This question requires the qualified choosing and the quantified number of giving.
Again, I am not deflecting, but I choose two: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I buy inexpensive paperback copies of each to give away.
Choosing a book above all others for giving away is the best evidence of what book I would describe as worth reading.
“How’s the soup?” Rephrase the question.
I. Librarian
Works Cited:
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Prufrock and Other Observations, The Egoist Ltd., 1917.
Eno, Brian. Discreet Music. Obscure Records, 1975.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Translated by M. D. Herter Norton, W. W. Norton & Company, 1934.
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. The Little Prince. Translated by Katherine Woods, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943.
You Might Like:
Leave a Reply