but I’ve never really wanted to be one of those people who just blog for the sake of blogging. I haven’t got time for that kind of stuff (OK, I don’t want to, I make the time only when I’m trying to procrastinate…). Anyway, other than noting my continued absence from my blog, I thought I’d share a rather interesting article with you:
February 05, 2007
Viewpoint
Sarah Vine
Well, zut alors! A distinguished French literary professor has become a surprise bestselling author by writing a book explaining how to wax intellectual about tomes that you have never actually read.
Pierre Baynard, 52, specialises in the link between literature and psychoanalysis, and says it is perfectly possible to bluff your way through a book that you have never read — especially if that conversation happens to be taking place with someone else who also hasn’t read it. All of which just goes to confirm what I’ve always thought about French academics, which is that mostly they are oversubsidised frauds.
Obviously I haven’t read Mr Baynard’s book; but it is in the spirit of his oeuvre that I shall proceed to write about it anyway. The first thing to say about Comment Parler des Livres que l’on n’a pas Lus ( How to Talk About Books that You Haven’t Read) is what a wonderfully French concept this is. The French take great pride in their intellectual patrimony, considering themselves to be pretty much the inventors of most forms of high art, something that irritates other nations, especially the Italians, a great deal. For them it is crucial to be able to hold their own in a literary conversation, a mark of cultural honour that is the very essence of French-ness. The trouble is, in these busy times, who apart from Alain de Botton has time to really get to the bottom of Proust?
Bayard himself confesses to never having finished Ulysses, by James Joyce. Personally, I have a theory that there is a very good chance that Joyce himself didn’t even finish writing the book, since I have never actually met anyone who has read the thing cover to cover. Perhaps Joyce was just having a laugh — perhaps Ulysses is just one great big literary irony, a book purposely made unreadable by the author just to expose pseuds. Or perhaps the real ending in the book — the one that no one knows about because nobody has actually ever read it properly — is that they all live happily ever after in an executive home. Yes yes and yes, as Molly Bloom herself might have said.
See? Now you don’t know whether I’ve read it or not. Don’t worry, I haven’t; nor have I read Proust (I like a nice biscuit, though) or Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, although I think I’ve got one of their old LPs somewhere. Nor do I care that you now know that, since I am British, and therefore suffer from a pathological need to downplay any intellectual prowess I may or may not possess. The British dislike a Noam-know-it-all; we like our intellects to be approachable, unpretentious, fancy-a-pint-down-the-pub types. Which is in itself, of course, just as pretentious as wanting everyone to know you’ve read Dante (not just the Inferno, though — everyone has read that, ha ha — but Paradiso, too, which is terribly dull, being as it is entirely devoted to the Heavenly Host and utterly devoid of the colourful descriptions of torture that made Inferno such a blockbuster in its day).
The book that I’d part company with hard cash to get is this: How to Avoid Talking About Books You Shouldn’t Have Read — But Have. Such as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, or anything by Jackie Collins, or Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus — or the ultimate literary embarrassment, The Da Vinci Code. I don’t know anyone with an ounce of intellectual pride who will confess to having read it, and yet statistically some of them must be lying. Maybe I should start a Da Vinci Anonymous association. All welcome, even French professors.
-http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1334436.ece
So true, so true. Actually, I only ever read books I want to, and I won’t pretend to read something I haven’t. I don’t think any better or worse of people for having read a particular book. In fact, I freely admit to hating Shakespeare and the only things I’ve read that were written by him were things that I was forced to read either for school or uni. Have things really gotten so bad that we need to pretend to have read things we haven’t? If you want to seem intelligent, do the work. Because believe me, someone will work out what you’re doing otherwise. You’ll only get so far faking things…
