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Ask a Literary Lady: Dealing with Book Snobs?
Dear Literary Lady,
Whenever I have friends over, a couple of them become really snobby when talking about books. Sometimes, they make my other friends feel bad because their literary tastes aren’t “highbrow” enough to join the conversation. What can I do to curb this behavior?
– C.R., Washington D.C.
Dear C.R.,
There’s nothing more annoying than when friendly literary conversation takes a turn for the pretentious. Suddenly, your friends become unrecognizable, passive-aggressive sophisticates. They start side-eyeing each other when authors and book titles are discussed, they compete to quote as many book reviews as possible, and they foam at the mouth if you try to discuss a recent bestseller. It takes all the fun right out of the discussion for everyone else.
I don’t know how close you are to your friends (and what you can get away with doing or saying to them) but if they’re regularly making other friends feel excluded or disdained, you’ll probably be doing them a favor by calling them out. I’d certainly want to know if I was being a bookish buzzkill.
Ships in 1-2 days.
Here are a few of my suggestions for stepping in (with varying degrees of snarkiness):
- Immediately start a new conversation with others and walk away. This leaves the offending parties standing alone together, quoting book critics to each other, and making air quotes. They’ll soon get bored and realize that they can’t show off their smarts without an audience.
- Take one or both of them aside and say something like, “Hey, I’ve noticed that some of our friends feel a little excluded whenever you guys talk about books. I know we don’t all read the same books, but it’d be great if we could all be part of the conversation.”
- When you see that they’re about to spiral into a great literary debate, jump in and change the topic. Ask the whole group a question that everyone can answer, “What book have you read more times than any other?” or “What book would make a good gift for Father’s Day?”
- Call them out by assuaging their egos and then taking control of the conversation at the same time. For example, “You guys are waaayyyy too smart for the rest of us—mind if we change the topic of conversation a bit?” or “Wow, you guys take literary discussion to a whole other level—we can’t keep up! Can we talk about ____ instead?”
- If you are very close to your friends, you might be able to get away with rolling your eyes and blurting out, “OH DEAR GOD, PLEASE STOP!” in exaggerated agony.
- Or just interjecting in your most know-it-all voice, “It’s leviOsa, not levio-SA!”
- Stage-whisper “Michiko” and “James Wood” to your other friends. Watch as your literary snob friends immediately stop what they’re doing and stare at you, trying to figure out what you said and if they’ve already read about it.
- If all else fails, play Book Snob Bingo with your other friends who are feeling left out. You get a point for every time they allude to their senior thesis, use jargon like bildungsroman, or refer to “the literary canon.”
Remember to keep your sense of humor about it and your friends will too. Don’t make too big a deal out of it, and don’t get huffy or spiteful in your actions. Your friends probably don’t mean to behave superciliously, they’re just carried away or competitive about their literary knowledge. We all have our own insecurities in social situations, and for some, pontificating about literature is a great way to hide them. Once your friends realize that their behavior is actually making others feel insecure or left out, they’ll likely be inspired to correct it on their own.
Love and paperbacks,
Literary Lady