How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read

I actually did read this book, which, according to its arguments, probably hinders my ability to think and talk about it usefully. Because it’s not just a how-to on bluffing your way through “awkward literary confrontations”; it’s a philosophical examination of the dangers of reading, and thinking about reading as actually an obstacle to understanding a specific book and books generally.

Here’s the nutshell, from the review by Jay McInerney:

Bayard’s hero in this enterprise is the librarian in Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities (a book I seem to recall having read halfway through, and Bayard claims to have skimmed), custodian of millions of volumes in the country of Kakania. He explains to a general seeking cultural show more literacy his own scheme for mastery of this vast, nearly infinite realm: “If you want to know how I know about every book here, I can tell you! Because I never read any of them.” If he were to get caught up in the particulars of a few books, the librarian implies, he would lose sight of the bigger picture, which is the relation of the books to one another—the system we call cultural literacy, which forms our collective library. “As cultivated people know,” Bayard tells us, “culture is above all a matter of orientation. Being cultivated is a matter of not having read any book in particular, but of being able to find your bearings within books as a system, which requires you to know that they form a system and to be able to locate each element in relation to the others.”

(There is a better review, by Hilary Mantel. She’s somewhat skeptical.)

Moreover, reading any particular book actually means unjustifiably privileging it in a way that can hinder your understanding of the whole of books. In the end you’d be more cultivated if you only read this newsletter and no actual books.

He also introduces and hilariously deploys a useful notation system describing every possible relationship with a book:

UB (book unknown to me)
SB (book I have skimmed)
HB (book I have heard about)
FB (book I have forgotten)

This notation is followed by one or two pluses or minuses:

++ (extremely positive opinion)
+ (positive opinion)
- (negative opinion)
-- (extremely negative opinion)

For instance, at the mention of his own book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? he gives it an FB+.

It’s very French in a jokey-philosophical way. Funny, smart, and, to the extent he might be on to something, unsettling. show less

Is there really a book we have read? How so, if we immediately start forgetting when we read it? Is there a difference between a book we have not read and a book we have forgot?

These are no trifle questions; for this book is not to be taken lightly. This is not a self-help book. This is a treatise on literature, on culture as a whole.

If you want to find your way through the endless rows of the collective library of humankind, if you want delve deeper into whatever thing happens to be your thing, you obviously need books, lots of books; problem is: there are simply too many of them, and there's not enough time or life that would make that task feasible; game over; better quit. So what to do when you are faced with those inevitable show more situations where you will have to exchange information contained on that library, on all those books you failed to acquaint yourself?

Well, you simply have to start doing what the author here proposes, meaning you have to engage in more meaningful conversations while not bothering about reading books. It's not as scandalous as it sounds at first, for as the author himself points out, "what is essential is to speak about ourselves and not about books, or to speak about ourselves by way of books".

So do yourself a favor and read this book; or, better still: do not. Skim it. Get the general feeling of it. If the task is impossible, free yourself from the constraints. Cherry pick; enjoy, all the while you continue (or start) talking about the books you have not and will not read. Be creative. Reboot your attitude toward books. show less

Have you ever felt culturally inferior when conversation turns to literature and you haven’t read or can’t remember the books being discussed? Maybe you’ve heard of them but fear that offering an opinion will be found out as unsubstantiated by direct reading experience. This amusing book will help you to see it in a new light.

I picked up this hardback book (new) for €6. The gems you find at market stalls! This is one for book lovers. It tells us why we do’t need to read books … indeed we are better off not reading them … but even as we nod and agree with the arguments, it reminds us of why we’ll continue to go on reading. Although his message is serious, his tone is light and mocking.

Bayard divides our knowledge of books show more into unknown, skimmed, heard of and forgotten. None actually qualify as read. Since we can’t read more than an infinitesimally small fraction of the world library, we are all effectively non-readers and even the most erudite among us spend most of their time bluffing about what they have read. In those small number of cases where we have actually turned the pages of the book, we have forgotten so much and overlaid the rest with so much personal interpretation that we are essentially bluffing still. This is what he says:

“Being cultivated is a matter not of having read any book in particular, but of being able to find your bearings within books as a system, which requires you to know that they form a system and to be able to locate each element in relation to the others … The distinction between the content of a book and its location [in the system] is fundamental, for it is this that allows those unintimidated by culture to speak without trouble on any subject.”

In the first part of the book, he discusses how we (don’t) read. He provides advice from Robert Musil on why to avoid reading at all costs … to avoid favouring one book over another; from Paul Valéry on how to criticise after merely skimming a book (not to mention the subtle art of doling out faint praise); from Umberto Eco on how to deduce content without reading the book (with an amusing aside on how the accumulation of error points to truth); and from Montaigne on why our memory of books we think we read is suspect in the least. On memory, he concludes:

“Indeed, if after being read a book immediately begins to disappear from consciousness, to the point where it becomes impossible to remember whether we have read it, the very notion of reading loses its relevance, since any book, read or unread, will end up the equivalent of any other … As agonizing as it may be, Montaigne’s experience may nonetheless have the salutary effect of reassuring those to whom cultural efficiency seems unattainable.”

He goes on to describe literary confrontations, those occasions when we find ourselves called on to defend our reputation as cultured people. show less

In this charming book, Bayard shows that there’s nothing more gauche than talking about a book you’ve read. You want to say what happened, share your favorite quotes, etc. But doing so risks setting the book in stone forever. It’s far better, he argues, to talk about books you haven’t read! First of all, there are so many of them. Plus, anything might yet occur in them. A book you haven’t read is never shut once and for all, it always stays with you, changing as your conversations change—and as you do. I committed the faux pas of reading Bayard’s book, but I can’t wait to forget it so I can really start talking about it.

I’ll get to the why of it. I think literature is wasted time, I don’t think there’s anything good about it. It’s not a moral project except in this profound aspect of wasting time. — Eileen Myles, For Now

Not-Useless

There's something humorous in the use of copious literary reference to substantiate an argument against (certain kinds of) reading. Bayard here recalling those lectures against physical possessions from wealthy Roman Stoics, or, more precisely, lectures against gambling from those who have made a living betting it all on Red. This text is, in another sense, the opposite of the game Humiliation presented within: In that game you earn points for not having read books that others have. (As of this moment, I also have show more not read Hamlet). Compared to the fictional professor who wins a round of Humiliation by admitting to never having read the Bard (and subsequently loses his position), it's evident our author keeps at least one eye fixed on the sinecure (but we forgive him).

The main thrust of argument appears to be essentially correct: for most discussions of famous books (e.g. Ulysses) you typically don't need to know more about them than the few factoids floating around in the Zeitgeist. In this sense, certain books are "not worth reading" since you don't get much more out of them. This is a somewhat "straightforward" statement, yet it implies something radical. In Bayard's tacit admission that reading books isn't an "embiggening" process, he's approaching the radical critique of literature excerpted from Eileen Myles i.e. "Literature is wasted time, I don’t think there’s anything good about it."

Such statements are at the heart of a conundrum for those who are somewhat serious about reading. On one hand there's the (self-congratulatory) assertion that every good book you read becomes part of your personal project of continuous self-improvement; on the other hand, the more books you read the more apparent it becomes that books aren't worth anything. Yet those of us who imagine ourselves so world-weary to think the latter is the case (e.g. "how many billions have died not having read Hamlet and none the worse for it,") we somehow continue reading as if secretly (under cover of dreams) we still believed in the Liberal project. This is perhaps one for those psychoanalysts of (semi) unconscious drives . . . o O ((Only on the analyst's couch would I admit that I prefer my translations of Eugene Onegin in mediocre verse to Nabokov's unimpeachable prose.))

In brief, the reason this collection is "not useless" (to me) is because it parallels so precisely my own rating system, in which most things go into the (one-star) dustbin of "everything you don't have to read." Certainly there are works in there of perfectly acceptable quality, yet (when I read them) I didn't think they were "not-useless" (triple negative), except, of course, for your own (useless) reading-pleasure. (I'm thinking particularly of Umberto Eco, the quintessential "one-star" author, who is always writing things of excellent scholarly quality, but perhaps may never have had an idea in his life. You can get all of him from Wikipedia). Yet — and this one of the joys of reading — any work, even the worst, has the potential to resonate with me enough to earn a promotion (from not-not-useless to not-useless; this is the beneficial aspect of knowing all literature is already useless), even so, I wouldn't say this text still reaches the three-star category of things I would call "Not-Humiliating." show less

It is clear to me, after reading Pierre Bayard's treatise on the art of "non-reading," that my circle of friends and acquaintances, which I had until now considered to be fairly literate, must surely be lacking the elevated cultural sensibility that seems to pertain in Parisian academia. I freely confess it: there are any number of towering works of genius, pillars of the literary canon, which I have never so much as cracked. But despite the complete candor with which I discuss the subject, I cannot recall the last time someone greeted my non-reading of a text with shock or ridicule. I must either present an astonishingly formidable visage to the world, or have been extremely lucky. Of course, anyone so unwise as to express such show more sentiments to me would be met with astonished pity, as it is my firm conviction that too inflexible an investment in any given canon is a sign, not of high cultural achievement, but of intellectual error.

Now perhaps Professor Bayard's tome simply didn't sit well with my own "inner book," but I found myself continuously irritated by his efforts to assuage insecurities I do not feel. His assumption that the social dynamic he has observed in some of his own circles is somehow universal, and his insistence upon reducing every interaction to some sort of psychological power-play, while perhaps unsurprising in a psychoanalyst, did little to endear him to me. My reading experience was not enhanced, moreover, by the author’s prose, which some have found witty, but which struck me as insufferably self-congratulatory - every point presented as if it were some breathtakingly original discovery.

That said, I find myself in agreement with the basic premise of the book, which is that the activities of "non-reading;" which Bayard expansively defines to include skimming, reading & forgetting (un-reading), and "hearing of" books; are all perfectly legitimate ways of interacting with a text, and more than sufficient for intelligent discussion. His ideas about the three kinds of library - the collective, inner, and virtual - and the ways in which they converge, and at times come into conflict, are intriguing. I am also in agreement with the idea that any given text must not be treated as some sort of isolated document, but part of a larger cultural whole, in which we must strive to locate it.

In short: what can be understood of this book is not be quarreled with, and therein lies its second weakness. Although Bayard manages to express himself quite clearly when summarizing his major points, the great bulk of his work - when not given over to literary quotations - is a confusing morass of self-contradiction and "cultured" cynicism. Perhaps I am too eager to take a page out of the professor's book, but it strikes me that he is the one crippled by fear. Almost from the opening of the book I was struck by the author's assumption that "mastery" of the whole (as in, overall cultural literacy) is the only possible goal of reading, and social interaction its only meaningful arena. The enrichment of the inner self, the transformative potential of new ideas or viewpoints, the restorative power of beauty, the strengthening (or weakening) nature of truth, are all subordinate here to the value books have for us as cultural commodities. Here everything is directed outward, as if we were nothing but social actors.

A man, confronted with the vast storehouse of human knowledge, itself only an infinitesimal fraction of what can be known, acknowledges that he will never be able to absorb it all. But perhaps, he tells himself, he can see the "whole picture," he can understand the "totality" of it. Or is it all just a clever game he has made up, so as to avoid facing his human limitations and imperfections, his smallness? How original... a man rebels against his mortality... show less

Funnily enough, I actually ended up reading this whole book, which seems its inherent irony, and then talking about it while I was attending the Yeats seminar.

First of all, this is a book tailor made for book academics -- so if you are in the engineering field or have otherwise never made it through a literature seminar on either side of the table, you can skip this book. But for those English grad students and, better yet, professors and authors out there, this little book is a gem. Here's what happens every few pages:

1. Laughing out loud ("ah hahahahaha!")
2. A pause ("oh, wait...")
3. Realization and acknowledgement ("actually, that's quite true")

I genuinely laughed at the witticisms, the tongue-in-cheek situations, the deliberately show more skewed allusions (the author admits that he has not "read" all of the books from which he has quoted in this volume)... but inevitably there were moments of pause, in which I realized that real scholarship was being snuck in under the radar, and that the really, really funny stuff was also true. Bayard's expansion on the idea of the "screen book" or the construct of memory that is a particular book to a particular individual -- he threads out some solid cultural theory here, in explaining how each of us has our own mental library of said constructs which we draw from when interacting with others on the subject of books -- is both fascinating and useful. I pondered as much as I chuckled, and came away from this text with a lot to think about in terms of how people read, remember, and discuss literature.

Not to mention some handy excuses for not "reading" required course books. :) show less