Pierre Bayard. 2007. How to talk about books you haven't read. Bloomsbury.
This is a clever little volume. Bookish. Impish. Imminently readable. The topic is what all book-people never admit, but characteristically practice: non-reading. The thesis is that relationships other than reading, of which there are many, often obtain between people (even seriously bookish people) and books.
But, looking around for some intelligent ideas about non-reading -- what it is, what it isn't, what it could be, what it should be -- the interested and ingenuous non-reader winds up finding relatively little on which to hang the non-reading hat and with which to defend the notorious, but common, practice.
Enter Bayard and How to talk about books you haven't read. Using as both example and authority a range of books (all "literary" -- some read, some unread, at least by Bayard), Bayard explores the varieties of non-reading: books one doesn't know at all, skimmed books, books one has heard of, books once read but now forgotten. Indeed, finding our modern great multitude of books, even the most optimistic reader must despair of serious reading, if by serious we mean comprehensive. Further reflection by an serious reader yields that of the small fraction of books once encountered, most have already been forgotten. And what is the difference between a book forgotten and a book never read at all? One must conclude that books both read and ready-to-mind are only the rarest of books at all and that non-reading, therefore, is no eclectic practice, an option exercised by few readers and then only occasionally. Rather, non-reading is typical. It is the commonest of relations between readers and books in general, and between any specific reader and her specific books in particular.
Curiously, though, Bayard has missed one important category of non-reading: books partly read. Indeed, it is with this category of books that I often find myself in the most questionable positions. Is it acceptable to remark on a book mostly read? Sometimes I have read all but the very end. After absorbing the argument, one likes to stop before the delight is tarnished by some lacklustre denoument. Or sometimes once simply doesn't want the joy to end. And though the maximum extent of this joy is proportional only to the time the reading requires, its end can be postponed indefinitely. One need never read that last word. Je n'ai pas fini! To other books I intended and still intend to return, when it is the right mood and with nothing more pressing. But here, too, what is postponed for a time is often postponed forever, for moods are fickle and some moods are irrecoverable -- to say nothing of when there will be a time with nothing more pressing. I must admit, I am a non-reader.
Suppose, then, we accept non-reading and we wash it (in at least some of its forms) of its questionable reputation. How then shall we talk about books? After all, of all literary confrontations, the private one between reader and book is only a small part. Once again Bayard is prepared to rescue the unrepentent reader. The second part of How to talk about books you haven't read is about how to talk about books you haven't read. With detailed instructions for "encounters in society", "encouters with professors", "encounters with the writer", or "encounters with someone you love", the careful reader will be prepared to negotiate all manner of non-private literary confrontations. (A non-reader will have to be more careful still, to extract these life lessons. There is a reflexive problem here, but since I have read these chapters I will have to wait until I more fully forget them to again be in the relation of non-reading and to puzzle over that quandary).
Thus, we have categories of non-reading and ways to talk about books not read. What else is there, but the gentle reader herself? We must therefore conclude by considering private literary confrontations -- the confrontation of the non-reader with her non-reading self -- what Bayard calls "ways of behaving". For non-reading of necessity must bring with it a kind of cognitive dissonance that can be dissipated only with utmost seriousness. Bayard, for one, holds that "the first condition for speaking about a book you haven't read is not to be ashamed". This is a negative stance, and so he complements it with a positive one. From where do ideas come (if there are any) in the activity of non-reading? The answer: from you, the non-reader. (Of course. From where else could they have come?) For in the end, the non-reader can find in books only that which she herself has put there. And what else is there to reading, except reading itself? In the end, then, Bayard (the author), and the reader (but not the non-reader, except on extremely rare coincidence), find with Oscar Wilde that the literary encounter "is primarily a pretext for writing your autobiography". No doubt, for some, How to talk about books you haven't read is that precisely.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
This is a clever little volume. Bookish. Impish. Imminently readable. The topic is what all book-people never admit, but characteristically practice: non-reading. The thesis is that relationships other than reading, of which there are many, often obtain between people (even seriously bookish people) and books.
But, looking around for some intelligent ideas about non-reading -- what it is, what it isn't, what it could be, what it should be -- the interested and ingenuous non-reader winds up finding relatively little on which to hang the non-reading hat and with which to defend the notorious, but common, practice.
Enter Bayard and How to talk about books you haven't read. Using as both example and authority a range of books (all "literary" -- some read, some unread, at least by Bayard), Bayard explores the varieties of non-reading: books one doesn't know at all, skimmed books, books one has heard of, books once read but now forgotten. Indeed, finding our modern great multitude of books, even the most optimistic reader must despair of serious reading, if by serious we mean comprehensive. Further reflection by an serious reader yields that of the small fraction of books once encountered, most have already been forgotten. And what is the difference between a book forgotten and a book never read at all? One must conclude that books both read and ready-to-mind are only the rarest of books at all and that non-reading, therefore, is no eclectic practice, an option exercised by few readers and then only occasionally. Rather, non-reading is typical. It is the commonest of relations between readers and books in general, and between any specific reader and her specific books in particular.
Curiously, though, Bayard has missed one important category of non-reading: books partly read. Indeed, it is with this category of books that I often find myself in the most questionable positions. Is it acceptable to remark on a book mostly read? Sometimes I have read all but the very end. After absorbing the argument, one likes to stop before the delight is tarnished by some lacklustre denoument. Or sometimes once simply doesn't want the joy to end. And though the maximum extent of this joy is proportional only to the time the reading requires, its end can be postponed indefinitely. One need never read that last word. Je n'ai pas fini! To other books I intended and still intend to return, when it is the right mood and with nothing more pressing. But here, too, what is postponed for a time is often postponed forever, for moods are fickle and some moods are irrecoverable -- to say nothing of when there will be a time with nothing more pressing. I must admit, I am a non-reader.
Suppose, then, we accept non-reading and we wash it (in at least some of its forms) of its questionable reputation. How then shall we talk about books? After all, of all literary confrontations, the private one between reader and book is only a small part. Once again Bayard is prepared to rescue the unrepentent reader. The second part of How to talk about books you haven't read is about how to talk about books you haven't read. With detailed instructions for "encounters in society", "encouters with professors", "encounters with the writer", or "encounters with someone you love", the careful reader will be prepared to negotiate all manner of non-private literary confrontations. (A non-reader will have to be more careful still, to extract these life lessons. There is a reflexive problem here, but since I have read these chapters I will have to wait until I more fully forget them to again be in the relation of non-reading and to puzzle over that quandary).
Thus, we have categories of non-reading and ways to talk about books not read. What else is there, but the gentle reader herself? We must therefore conclude by considering private literary confrontations -- the confrontation of the non-reader with her non-reading self -- what Bayard calls "ways of behaving". For non-reading of necessity must bring with it a kind of cognitive dissonance that can be dissipated only with utmost seriousness. Bayard, for one, holds that "the first condition for speaking about a book you haven't read is not to be ashamed". This is a negative stance, and so he complements it with a positive one. From where do ideas come (if there are any) in the activity of non-reading? The answer: from you, the non-reader. (Of course. From where else could they have come?) For in the end, the non-reader can find in books only that which she herself has put there. And what else is there to reading, except reading itself? In the end, then, Bayard (the author), and the reader (but not the non-reader, except on extremely rare coincidence), find with Oscar Wilde that the literary encounter "is primarily a pretext for writing your autobiography". No doubt, for some, How to talk about books you haven't read is that precisely.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
