You Can Tell a Lot About a Person by What They're Reading, but You Can Tell More About a Person by What They Say About What They are Reading

If you have it before you, flip quickly past the Perry Ellis, Dolce & Gabbana and Fendi advertisements on the single- and double-digit page numbers of the new, March 2008 Vanity Fair, and come to rest on p. 232, the seventh in the always-revealing "FANFAIR" section. Here we find, in the lower right-hand corner that is the third of a half-page, "Night-Table Reading," that lovely little monthly viewer into the literary lives of those somebodies most subscribers only know televisually. This month's interviewees: Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, and Martha Stewart (or, simply summarized, "The Talk-Show Hosts").

C.O. - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - "I'm enjoying this book because it confirms just about everything I have learned after 20 years of working in television: humans have bad brains, and nobody - especially anyone in a position of authority - knows what the hell they are talking about. I also like the pretty bird on the cover."

J.L. - Equations of Motion: Adventure, Risk, and Innovation - "Bill Milliken is an engineer, and he wrote the book at age 95. He was practically there when Lindbergh took off. It's just a fascinating look at motion through the 20th century."

M.S. - Out Stealing Horses - "I am currently reading a fabulous novel that I can't put down, by Norwegian novelist Per Peterson. The book is beautifully written, different, heartbreaking, and evocative."

So what can be said about C.O., J.L., and M.S. from reading what they said about what they are reading?

O'Brien is self-deprecating, as per usual and especially on the last note which is, of course, a failed joke and seemingly has to be so, but balances this expectation of humor by demonstrating an awareness of the macroish rewards of reading, how the prose of another can confirm long-held notions of the self and the world. All of this, however, seeps irony, as C.O. assumes a position of authority when speaking about such awareness, and thus does not, according to his own belief, "know what the hell [he] is talking about." Proof in forty-nine words and two numerals that Conan is the smartest working entertainer on television.

Leno's a grease-monkey and a serious car collector with a serious amount of knowledge about what he collects. So this selection is not surprising; in fact, it is altogether fitting and believable that he really is reading this book every night before bed. Moreover, his enthusiasm is clear, and he succeeds and informing the interviewer exactly why this random choice is so very exciting: Milliken wrote it at 95, the age at which most of us are dead; this guy was "practically there when Lindbergh took off," and is, as such, a front-row dispatch from the century that took machine-initiated motion to a level hitherto unheard of.

If Stewart wrote this blurb, I'll be damned and not hesitate to repudiate my cynicism by buying every cookbook she's ever published. (Five-to-one that the lowest of low-level interns was assigned to reply to the bothersome (but importantly bothersome in that it keeps "us" in the magazines of high-society thus retaining our fleeting sense of relevancy that started to drain just prior to feeling that horrific sensation of cold hand-shackles) email from whatever low-level intern at Vanity Fair was assigned to send out.) Even so, I'll remain the victor, as this dumbest of answers affirms M.S.'s self-infatuation and subliteracy. Count the cliches: "fabulous novel," "can't put down," "beautifully written," "heartbreaking and evocative." These constitute nearly half of the answer, and when unpacked say nothing. I'm bored just writing about her words, of which the first sentence she spends telling us what we already know and tries to name-dropping-of-a-foreign-author-ly impress us, while beating us to death in the second sentence with a lack of original thought - a fact conveyed quite clearly by those less-than-descriptive adjectives that read suspiciously as though they were lifted from a fifth-grader's book report.