/lit/ - Literature

>>23047036
I was once reading a book in a park and a dude passed by with a girl and said, "Reading some Shakespeare?" and he and the girl laughed and kept walking. I said nothing as I tried to understand the apparent putdown. Both were white. I wasn't reading Shakespeare.

WTF was this...? Like drive-by anti-intellectualism? I think I was reading a hardcover copy of Inherent Vice with the jacket off, so it looked pretty nondescript. Did he think I was making a spectacle of myself by reading on a park bench...if so, that's fucking ridiculous.

Maybe others might have had a witty rejoinder at the ready, but I was too baffled, and besides, I don't consider it a good idea to talk back to rude strangers unless absolutely necessary.

Why has this memory stuck with me after all these years? I don't know! It was such a beautiful day, I was on the bench reading, and all was well, and suddenly I'm the object of someone's incoherent joke...

I guess reading in public was too obvious a demonstration of readerly habits for this insecure fellow and his friend?