Faking It

When I was younger, I got into the disgraceful habit of occasionally purchasing some weighty intellectual publication or other for the sole purpose of carrying it around in full view, and generally showing off. See, when you're like me, and you see fit to talk absolute bollocks about everything under the sun, it tends to help if other people believe that you're actually knowledgeable in some way. Therefore, I couldn't possibly sit down in the pub and posit my theories on England's World Cup squad selection, or the relative merits of stout over porter, unless I also had a copy of Zygmunt Bauman's Paradoxes Of Assimilation, or Max Weber's Protestant Ethic & The Spirit Of Capitalism face-up on the tabletop. Their stern covers never failed to lend credence to my words; others would bow before my wisdom, and accept without question that as someone in possession of such books, I was obviously a leading authority on how to build a suspension bridge out of Curly-Wurlys, and who would win in a fight between Dogtanian and Willy Fog.

Obviously, I never read them. That would have been counter-productive in any number of ways. But I made many a good friend due to the aid of these books, and it was in a fit of nostalgia that I decided recently to crack open their covers and actually give them a go.

My God, they're the most tedious things ever written.

It's little wonder that academics, as a general rule, have no mates. If this is what they spend their time doing, I'd imagine space opens up around them at parties in the same way it does around a dishevelled man in the bus station who's having an animated dialogue with the nearest bin. Why can't they just pretend to be smart, like everyone else? Why not just leave the notions of post-modern identity and the space-time continuum be - they're not going anywhere - and head down to the pub?

Unless, of course, they merely publish these books so that they can pop them face-up on the table in their local boozer, and then say to everyone with the utmost gravity: "Fellas, I'll tell you here and now who'd win a fight between Ben 10 and Dora The Explorer." If that's the case, they're cleverer than I thought.