Love in the Time of Digital Text

I just read a silly essay in the New York Times about literary deal-breakers, as in, "I can't love a man who reads Italo Calvino." Having dated at least one boy-man in college who revered Italo Calvino, I can honestly say that the author is a pretty good indicator of literarily adept, but self-absorbed pretentious fucksticks who cook you tasteless vats of vegetarian curry, but Calvino himself is not the deal breaker. He's an excellent author whose work I happen to dislike. Same with Jonathan Franzen, Umberto Eco, Nathanial Hawthorne (though I do possess a fridge magnet of his likeness, which I won at a faculty shindig), anything manga, and the lesser variety of fantasy literature. I also dislike extremely prolific authors like Anita Shreve and Jodi Picoult, because I doubt the literary merit of books that take 2 months to churn out. But all that aside, I would still love a man who loved Jodi Picoult and comic book adaptations of Star Wars if he (1) was not gay and (2) had other great qualities, like strong shoulders and skills of ratiocination. In fact, I'm marrying a man with strong shoulders, who is acutely observant and logical, rarely reads, and when he does loves fantasy novels.

My fiance's interest in dorky literature exorcises all possible pretension out of our literary relationship. I love it; I can go from reading Anna Karenina to A Game of Thrones to bridal magazines and back again without feeling the need to defend my selections. In previous relationships with the Calvinophiles the pressure to be reading Lacan or someone irrepressibly hip like Kundera was ever-present. I wouldn't dare be caught reading The Devil Wears Prada for fear of immediately shedding all sexual and intellectual appeal. This may be indicative of my own insecurities, but still, who wants to spend her life furtively reading copies of Sue Grafton novels on the toilet to escape detection? I hate the side of me that takes classist pleasure in reading Tolstoy on the bus, and love my fiance's absolute indifference to public opinion of his taste in books.

And the best part is that while I wouldn't have deigned to touch George R. R. Martin 5 years ago, I'm now eagerly awaiting the fifth book in the Game of Thrones series. The T-man and I have great conversations about the series' characters and historical rootedness; our shared experiences of reading the books bring us closer. So what if we're dorks? At least we're happy dorks.

And finally, any form of reading that connects a human with a paper page, bound up in a real book, with its book smell and the indulgence of glorying in a story in bed under the covers, nose pressed to page, hands turning without your noticing, is a miracle in a digital age. When you find someone who appreciates the sensuality of literature, any literature, a man who willingly turns away from the glowing allure of his laptop, why argue over whether the book he's holding is Camus or Crichten? Instead, sigh with relief that he still glories in the physical. I doubt such glory stops with the book.