Commuter Column: A Reader Darkly

A couple of weeks ago I was getting on a train late at night. I walked back to a car that pleased me (far enough away from the bathroom in the car that preceded it, light on drunk yuppies, nobody eating a smelly sandwich or those weird, cylindrical bags of popcorn everyone seems to love so goddamn much). But there was one huge problem: the car was dark.

Like, James Ellroy dark.

There was a conductor, with a slug-like moustache draped lazily on his lip, making his way from the back of this car. I stopped him.

"Excuse me, is there any way you can turn on the lights?" I asked.

He looked at me like I had sprouted a second head. "The lights ARE on," he said. The 'What, are you a fucking idiot?' part was implied.

I looked back through the car, and it's true, there were lights on. Every other light was in fact electrified, casting a dim greasy yellow glow on the worn-down seats and scattered litter (including more than a few of those weird, cylindrical popcorn bags). This was an option. After all, the car had the aforementioned "pluses."

If I wanted to fall asleep, this would be an ideal car. I could drift off to dreamland with ease and comfort with lighting this low. Add a couple of candles and clear out the air of human suffering and it could have approximated the mood of an intimate French bistro.

But there was that colossal "minus:" if I stayed in that car I couldn't read anything.

So I dashed out of that gloomy car, never to return. I don't know how full the car got, although the train itself was fairly packed. I imagine that a lot of people ended up choosing that car precisely for the gloom. It's amazing to me how many people are content to just nod off and how few people actually do anything productive on the train.

This is more noticeable in the morning, when people are (slightly) more alert and focused. I usually sit in a two-seater in the morning, and my commuting buddy is always an intense focus for me. What are they doing? What are they wearing? Do I think they have an interesting job waiting for them in New York City? But I end up dwelling on the same thing: why aren't they reading anything?

As far as unscientific literacy surveys go, the people on the subway, from all walks of life and social strata, read a whole lot more than the upper crust, mostly white, socioeconomically enabled Metro North commuter. Most everybody just plays Brickbreaker on their Blackberry (or are furiously sending emails to and fro or checking stocks or whatever it is bigwigs do on their Blackberry). Or they watch a movie on their iPhone. Because, really, why wouldn't a movie originally projected 30 feet tall, look wonderful on a postage-stamp-sized screen?

But reading doesn't seem like much of a concern for most of them. I'm amazed at how few people, when given this uninterrupted, hour-plus to read, don't exploit the time for reading purposes. I'm always reading something. But for most, well, I think they'd just be happy sitting in the dark.