You are on the train. You are probably in the quiet zone by accident, having completely failed to read the signs and only noticing when you felt a million commuting, demonic eyes boring holes into your iPhone. Ah, the minefield of social politics that is the British public transport system. And so, in order to redeem yourself, you take out a book.
"You see, people of the train, I am just like you. I also have a book with which I intend to be quiet. We are kindred spirits. You, Mr Chubby Banker, are reading The Big Short. You, Ms Trainee Lawyer, are reading To Kill a Mockingbird. You, Mr Cumberbatch, I can see that you are reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. And here, in my bag, is the book that I, innocent violator of the quiet zone, am reading..."
And that's when you see it. Poking out the top of your bag - too far out for you to pretend you forgot it - THE DA VINCI CODE. Your heart pounds, eyes narrow, anticipation runs in beads down foreheads, your hand is sweaty as it holds the offending book in mid bag removal... THEY KNOW!! They know you read Dan Brown. You have spent years declaring you are a Dickens fiend, boasting that you, yes you, have read The Mystery of Edwin Drood and NOW THEY KNOW. Your whole career of perpetuating literary snobbery has been a lie.
Because, at the end of the day, that's what it is, this fanatical adoration of Dickens, this ability to turn the leaden, convoluted pages of his unfinished works and claim they are "real page-turners!" It is literary snobbery.
Examine why it is you are ashamed of reading Dan Brown. Is it an inherently bad book? Is it despicably spelt, appallingly ungrammatical? Is it that the plot sticks like gum on the side of the train seat, or that the characters have less personality than Mr Chubby Banker's left jowl?
Or is it, perhaps, that, being a savvy consumer of literature in 2012, you know that most critics worth their salt would rather deny the existence of Jordan's ghostwriter than invite Dan Brown to a dinner party.
Austen is there, sipping red wine. Dickens is handing round napkins. Woolf has tucked into the prawn cocktail before Eliot sees, and Milton's cooked a mean lamb shank (Delia, of course) that Shelley is adding the roasted vegetables to. Noteworthy absentees: Dan Brown, Steig Larsson, Jilly Cooper, John Grisham, Danielle Steel, Mills and his plus one Boon. While some of these are evidently only defined as literature through the use of an antonym finder, some don't quite fit. Why wasn't Steig invited? He has, after all, written one of the best selling series of all time, and yet we know he'll never be there, glazing the lamb with Milton, pouring the wine for Austen.
Literary snobbery is the entire reason why Tolstoy is one place above Jackie Collins in the Best-selling Fiction of All Time list. Great writing can so easily be discarded in favour of gasp-inducing, saliva-curdling bodice-rippers. War and Peace may be one of the greatest works of literature published to date, but HAVE YOU SEEN HOW LONG IT IS?? The Stud is only 208 pages! Number one bestseller Shakespeare may have been the author who came closest to truly understanding the human mind, but Agatha Christie had such a good knowledge of who might have dunnit that she storms into a second place so close that two new Waterstones customers could blow Will out the water.
More often than not, Joe Bloggs and Jane Jones read War and Peace because they feel they have to, they feel they should. It is, after all, one of the greatest literary classics. And so, they gingerly fold over the cover, concentrate hard on the first sentence and... embark on an experience that will shatter their perceptions of life, revolutionise their political views, evoke emotions so lip-quiveringly powerful they have to pause on page 847 to dry off the tear-spattering on the radiator.
Literary snobbery makes literature the great force of human understanding that it has always been, will always be. If your colleague is the only reason you've just started Great Expectations, and your actually-quite-attractive lecturer the only reason you're halfway through Ulysses, then embrace it. Through them, through the inexplicable pressure you feel to do their bidding and pillage the Classics section, you are learning. You are changing, you are experiencing, you are understanding. Rather than leave The Killing Kind on your sunbed, leave your dad's copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And, in turn, lend him your Of Mice and Men. Write down the ISBN of Dracula for your colleague. Make sure that your quite-attractive-lecturer knows that, for you, it was better to read Women in Love after Sons and Lovers, not before. Offer your fellow snobs a napkin at the dinner party.