How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read / Pierre Bayard

 

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Why would you want to talk about books you haven't read? There are myriads of reasons. Maybe you're just discussing life and literature in general with a friend. It's nice to discuss a book that they've enjoyed even if you haven't. Maybe you need to sound knowledgeable during a course or to not let your book club know that you never got around to this month's book. (There's a book club example of a woman trying to fake it, unsuccessfully, early in The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires).

I am a retired library cataloguer and have needed to determine the subject matter of many a book that I have only skimmed. There's no time for detailed reading. I would study the dust jacket, the table of contents, the introduction or first paragraphs, and the conclusion. Maybe an index if present. From those elements I could generally make a good estimate of the book's innards. Sometimes I felt like a priestess, trying to divine the future from some unfortunate animal's liver, but it seemed to work. And of course there's always Google and Wikipedia, if you need more input. (How did we catalogue before the internet?)

I've recently been debating with myself the question of whether I can count as “read" a book which is so far in my past that I can't remember a single detail. Books that I read in my teens and early twenties, for example. I can recall enjoying some of them, but no details come to mind. If I can't discuss the book, can I truly say that I have read it? I think this author would say ‘yes.’
Then there are those books that I do remember, but when talking with someone else they start rhapsodizing about an aspect that doesn't ring ANY bells with me. Did we read the same book? Sometimes I'm driven to re-read a book, just to compare their emphasis versus mine. The explanation according to this author is that we each interpret a book through the lens of our inner libraries. Just like eye witness accounts, what you see depends on your angle, your previous knowledge and experience, and how much you identify with what's going on.

I must confess that I don't subscribe to the idea that not having read some “classic" book is somehow shameful. With about 130,000,000 books published, we will each have read only a tiny fraction of what's available. I've never read Moby Dick, but I know what someone is talking about when they refer to a particular pursuit as someone's “white whale.” Maybe someday I will attempt this huge whaling epic, but I don't think its completion measures my worth as a reader or as a person. Of course, things are different if you have a reputation as an academic or a critic to protect. Then it might be necessary to muddy the waters about what you have or haven't read.

Authors who get overly involved in reviews of their books should definitely read the penultimate chapter of this book about the role of the critic. Criticism is its own art form according to this author via Oscar Wilde. Wilde states that the critic should refrain from reading the work in question. I can see where he's coming from since my own reviews are more about me than the book. They are about my thoughts, feelings, and reactions more than they are about the book itself.

For those of us who are just ordinary readers, with no particular position to defend, we can just enjoy reading what suits us.




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