Performative Reading? Yes Please

My friend, the writer and musclebound hunk John Paul Brammer, who I saw the 2025 animated Smurfs movie with at the cinema (a beautiful memory), wrote an intriguing article about so-called “performative reading” on his Substack. I have been hearing this accursed two-word phrase, but I have never really paid it my full attention. It's been a fly buzzing round my head, easy to tune out. But now I must listen.

Me reading some stinky book. Frowning to let all passers by know I am judging.

J. P. says:

It should go without saying that no one should let themselves be bullied out of reading Infinite Jest because of rude posts on the internet. Ignore. But it does seem to me that reading books, and professing to reading books, invites a certain resentment these days. Resentment usually has something interesting to say. There are things in every culture that typically go unsaid, but find expression in resentment.

The idea of performative reading is something that, like many other online expressions of searing derision, seems transparently to come from a place of jealousy. Like with many opinions on welfare policies, train strikes, and the casual use of obviously expensive accessories, the 'performative reading' claim traces such a pin-straight throughline from the observer (I don't read) to the observed (you do read - and how!) that you could play it like a harp string.

I'm not claiming that no one has ever pretended to read something cool or important when they haven't, nor that book choices have never come from a consideration of what might make a reader look impressive - I certainly choose to read big canonical books in part because I'll feel good about having become a reader of that special, exalted book. None of us are immune from the societal image a book may confer, especially since, y'know, reading books is as much about engaging with culture and opinion as much as it is an insular hobby that one can sink into in delicious aloneness, but the gulf of judgement opens up too wide and too quickly, imo. It's an exercise in superiority that serves to spoil reading. Let's bring up barriers around 'correct' reading and ruthlessly apply them to random people on the train, we cry, because perhaps the reader is too beautiful to be respected.

It's an inevitable human desire to be superior, especially when confronted with the apparently effortless Instagrammable deities who dare to ride public transport as if they are like us anguished, unfiltered pedestrians, yet what is to be lost when we attempt to box away these enemies? Every sneer runs the risk of multiplying and turning inward. Oh, you're a Jane Austen fan? Name twelve of her esteemed, intimidating landowners right now.

But if 'performative reading' - i.e. posting a gorgeous picture of yourself reading a beautiful book, or dragging your tome to the café to sip elegantly on a cappuccino while dear Jean Valjean rips off his chains with beastlike strength (see - I have really read Les Mis), or even strategically positioning yourself in front of your aloof crush with a copy of their favourite Steinbeck novel - which you don't care about in the slightest - is considered a hideous betrayal of the pure spirit of reading, then paradoxically we become tight and closed-off. Reading cannot be for clout, we scream in the library, for reading must be pure and intelligent. And reader, I think this is a mistake.

Just having a smile at that book. She's wrong for this.

The statistical decline in literacy, the lowered percentage of adults who finish even one book per year (fewer than half of all American adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022), the big, comedy phone positioned directly in front of every child who might otherwise become an insatiable bookworm - all of these things have far-reaching effects and do constitute something of a cultural tragedy. I'm not the biggest doomer when it comes to phone use - I like phone! - but the simple fact is that there is little friction between all of us and looking at stuff on our phones, and there is a basic friction between all of us and opening a book. It might be small, but it is persistent. There is a huge amount of compelling content and information available to us at just a couple of quick swipes. You don't even have to think about it, you just open up a feed and away you go.

Miley Cyrus isn't on that phone. She's literally reading The Hunger Games.

It's a skill in its own right to cultivate choice and intentionality in a world of algorithmic funneling. It's fun and easy to scroll crazy style and check out whatever is brought to you. You can't do this with books, although of course, you might decide on which books to read based on what books you come across in this manner. In such an environment, any and all performative book posting might be quite the net positive. Okay, maybe Susan Gorgeous (my hypothetical beautiful book-reading influencer type) is reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Perhaps she is an identifiable dunce who only reads it (or pretends to) for the glittering special edition rhinestone cover she has been sent by an opportunistic publisher (they saw an opening in the market for bedazzled books). But maybe you see that thing and you think, ok, maybe I read The Count of Monte Cristo. Maybe reading, in whatever strange form, is cool.

Is that bad, or is that really good, actually?

This pap walk will never fail to make me laugh.

I think I might pursue reading more performatively than ever. Find me perched on the central line with my own glittering - blinding, even - copy of Ulysses.

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses (I haven't read it)