Julian Assange has become a literary influencer. When the WikiLeaks founder was dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London last Thursday, haggard and hirsute, he was brandishing a copy of Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State. His choice of reading material, held cover-up for the cameras, was strategic. It reinforced Assange’s narrative that he is a victim of the US’s oppressive security apparatus. It also sparked a reading frenzy: Assange’s supporters are buying the 2014 book – a compilation of conversations between Vidal and the journalist Paul Jay – in droves. It has become an Amazon bestseller and many of the recent online reviews are tributes to the Australian.
Assange isn’t the only public figure to have used reading material performatively. Last year, Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to New York authorities while carrying a biography of the director Elia Kazan, who was blacklisted by colleagues when he snitched on suspected Hollywood communists during the McCarthy era. Kazan’s legacy has since been defended by Martin Scorsese and others. Arguably, Weinstein was trying to convey that he believed his own professional achievements would, in the end, be considered more important than his disgusting behaviour.
Dominic Raab is another example. Last year, the Tory MP sat awkwardly between two stacks of books for a BBC interview. Either Raab can’t afford bookshelves and is forced to store economic textbooks and biographies of Nixon on his windowsill, or he hoped that the tomes would speak volumes about his intellect. (They did not.)
Pete Buttigieg, the Democrat who launched his US presidential run on Monday, has also used books to build his brand. He recently shared his 10 desert-island titles, which made for incredibly pretentious reading. He claims two of his faves are The Odyssey by Homer (not exactly a beach read) and James Joyce’s Ulysses. The latter also happens to be a favourite of Jeremy Corbyn and the most insufferable person you knew at university.
