A Defense of the Airport Newsstand Kiosk

This post is the work of Nick O’Brien, a senior English major at and a native of Montclair New Jersey—RK

An anecdote:

A month or two ago, a young woman gave me her phone number. When I refrained from calling her the next day, a friend of mine demanded an explanation for the delay. What was I, crazy? I offered him some words of wisdom, and will stand by calling them that until the day I die. “Have you ever heard of a little movie called Clueless?” I asked him. “In Clueless, Cher gives her number to Christian, expecting him to hold off for a few days before putting the digits to use. Thus, she’s surprised when he calls the very next day.” Then came the kicker: “Now, Christian,” I said. “Turned out to be gay.”

In the company of people among whom my intellectual reputation is of any importance to me, I would have held off on the reference to a 1995Alicia Silverstone movie. But why? I don’t know when I began losing sleep over efforts to maintain the scholar in me—which I’m not sure really even exists—and the public projection of it, but lately I’ve grown tired of feeling guilty, in some way, for having been more riveted by Stephen King or David Sedaris than I was by On The RoadFrankenstein. Certainly there are many Clueless fans who are oblivious (I’ll refrain from what would be an obvious and groan-inspiring play on words) to the fact that the film is a modernization of Jane Austen’s novel Emma; frankly, it’s dubious that their experience with the film would be even incrementally enriched if they were aware. In fact, if such knowledge did change one’s perception of the film, that change would only narrowly escape superficiality. or (shudder)

Close reading, analysis of texts within their historical literary contexts, and especial reverence of those rare authors who have had monumental impact on the literary canon, are all, of course, admirable pursuits. But they should not be required for anyone to be considered a legitimate reader of books. Just as important as what an author is “trying to say” is what we feel when he or she says it; literature, like movies, music and other arts, is just as much a form of entertainment as it is a form of expression. We shouldn’t be inhibited from letting ourselves derive real pleasure from a John Grisham novel; guns, violence, sex, murder mysteries and the forensic evidence used to solve them are all really, really badass. The Da Vinci Code dropped like an atom bomb because Dan Brown knew how to use words to make people have fun better than almost anyone else at the time; he knew what kind of story we wanted to hear, and he told it to us, and as a culture, we shouldn’t feel the least bit guilty for eating it right up. And in that right, Dan Brown possesses a genius on par with that of many authors taught in academic institutions.

If a book—or any other work of art for that matter—carries a significant subtext, it’s important to understand that subtext; if not, take it and love it for what it is. There’s more folly in reading too much into something than there is in not reading enough: I once overheard a young man forcing existentialism into the film The Big Lebowski merely to justify liking it. Tragic.

And if you’re wondering whatever happened with the girl and her number, all I’ll say is this: there was a great deal of wisdom in my low-art Clueless analogy.