(via Tim Challies)
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read is a book by Pierre Bayard, a professor of French literature at the University of Paris. In what is a bit of a provocative book and one that relies on more than a small measure of wit, Bayard argues that not having read a book does not need to serve as an impediment in having an interesting and intelligent discussion about it. He goes so far as to argue that in some cases the worst thing you can do, the thing that would most dishonor a book, is to read it.
"Reading is first and foremost non-reading," he says. "Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and opening a book masks the countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of not picking up and not opening all the other books in the universe." Therefore even the most prolific reader does far more non-reading than he does reading and makes far more decisions not to read than to read. Non-reading is a genuine activity as much as reading is a genuine activity. It is not just the mere absence of reading; it is a choice not to read particular works. And yet, he argues, non-reading should not prohibit us from having intelligent and guilt-free discussion about books we have chosen not to read.
So tell me. What do you think of his book?
1 comment:
Bayard conceives of the library as an accoutrement of the cosmopolitan life: we read, not to accrue knowledge or sift through arguments, but rather to adorn ourselves with their ambient enculturation.
To amass a credible library is, therefore, culturally superior than amassing a considerable understanding from books lent by a library. The latter enriches the mind; the former enriches the reputation.
For Bayard, if books did not exist, reviewers would need to invent them -- with the wry knowledge that the works themselves are merely a pleasant fiction upon which the urbane can hang their hat. Books exist, not to be read, but to be owned and discussed.
Not, of course, to be dissected: this is an arduous task. Rather, the book exists as catalyst, and armed with a summary or review, the intelligent non-reader is ready to attach his own notions to the work and express strongly worded opinions of any treatise with those holding equally strong, if contradictorily inclined, views of the unread work.
The true masterpiece of the modern era, then, is the book whose very title is a conversation piece. This cuts out the middleman and permits bibliophilic discourse to begin at once, the overeager being cautioned to take careful notice of the work's release date to avoid embarrassing faux pas.
Were I charged with identifying a model of the type, a book that artfully permits, even encourages, discussion without the tedious drudgery of reading, I should pick, perhaps, "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read."
Which, incidentally, I haven't read.
Post a Comment