How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard
Bayard suggests an active pursual of “non-reading” – that is, engaging intelligently in discussion with peers or professors about books you have not read is a plausible (and almost essential) phenomenon in society. Analysing reading in the social, rather than private realm, Bayard speaks of situations where tentative discussion about literature may lead you to feelings of anxiety when asked to comment on books you have not read.
He outlines limitations to intense reading in the same way “non-reading” has, essentially through an impaired ability to maintain a perspective of how we can place the text in relation to other books. Through the activity of not reading, he suggests, one adopts ‘a stance in relation to the immense tide of books that protects you from drowning’ (p.13).
The solution lies in the systematizing of books citing the case of the librarian in Musil’s The Man Without Qualities who, foregrounded in an extreme “love” of all books, intriguingly decides not to read any fearing of loving one more than another. Bayard suggests this is which, ‘incites him to remain prudently on their periphery, for fear that too pronounced an interest in one of them might cause him to neglect the others’ (p. 8). The librarian acts as Bayard’s hyperbolic example for the absolute “non-reader,” demonstrating their capacity to feel comfortable discussing a wide body of literature. He remarks one can speak of Joyce’s Ulysses without even having picked it up, engaging effectively in intellectual discussion by its “location” – positing the text among other obligatory canonical works enabling the “non-reader” to speak of Ulysses even if they may know a limited means of its content.
Bayard’s book elicits an all-too-familiar fantasy of being able to know everything, suggesting the borders between knowledge and meta-knowledge, utilising “non-reading” to act as a bridge between the two. We are reminded of the capacity of humans as finite beings who will simply not posses the time to read the fathomless number of books that exist. In consequence, the readers are placed in a dialectical position – to read or not to read? It seems Musil’s non-reading librarian is Bayard’s humourous extremity – surely if you loved books so much you couldn’t help yourself but read as many books in your capacity? On the other side of the spectrum, as the librarian calculates, it would take tens of thousands of years to read all the books one may covet.
Bayard’s point in How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read focuses on the ability of readers to engage in an insightful discussion about books they have not read. It seems in this day and age it is inevitable you will be placed in a discussion of literature where you may feel anxious having not read, or only skimmed over the book in question. Bayard’s “how-to” text creates a platform to express potentially discomforting milieu, which we would rather not admit to. His playful honesty and negotiable solutions inspired many writers to offer advice of their same experiences, including Henry Hitchings and his follow up to Bayard in 2008, How to Really Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.
