How to write about a book we haven't read? Such a challenge isn't too
out of the ordinary, but this case is special. The book is How to Talk
About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard, translated by Jeffrey
Mehlman (Bloomsbury, $19.95, 9781596914698/1596914696), to be published
next month.
Accompanying material assures us that the author is a French literary
scholar and that this work has been "a sensation and bestseller in his
home country." (Not wanting to read much inside the book, we assume his
home country is France.) He argues that "the key to appreciating the
classics is the quick skim, not deep immersion; cover to cover isn't
merely impractical, it's downright passé."
Bayard also quotes Umberto Eco, Graham Greene, Montaigne and others on "the art of being well read without reading well" and Bayard says proudly that "there is no shame in asserting your pseudo-literacy."
Also we do enjoy the opening quotation from Oscar Wilde: "I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so."
To help the inveterate nonreader, Bayard has developed a code for book classification:
Accompanying material assures us that the author is a French literary
scholar and that this work has been "a sensation and bestseller in his
home country." (Not wanting to read much inside the book, we assume his
home country is France.) He argues that "the key to appreciating the
classics is the quick skim, not deep immersion; cover to cover isn't
merely impractical, it's downright passé."Bayard also quotes Umberto Eco, Graham Greene, Montaigne and others on "the art of being well read without reading well" and Bayard says proudly that "there is no shame in asserting your pseudo-literacy."
Also we do enjoy the opening quotation from Oscar Wilde: "I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so."
To help the inveterate nonreader, Bayard has developed a code for book classification:
- UB: book unknown to me;
- SB: book I have skimmed;
- HB: book I have heard about;
- FB: book I have forgotten.
For us, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read went quickly from a UB to an HB to an SB. Sadly because we have followed the author's advice and not read it, the title will likely become an FB soon. But at least it provided LOLs in the meantime.--John Mutter