Archive for Students

It’s been a while

14 February 2007 at 3:10 pm · Filed under French, Random Mumbles, Students, Uni

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…

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How to Know Everything

25 October 2006 at 2:12 pm · Filed under Law, Random Mumbles, Students, Uni

or at least look like you do:

I have recently been spending excessive amounts of time with fellow law students. You know the ones, they spend all their time making everyone else look stupid, then gloating when they’ve finally succeeded. And I - subversive, perverse creature that I am - have decided to ruin all their fun. I’m outing them. They don’t really know any more than anyone else does. They’ve just perfected the art of seeming to. In fact, I’ve discovered that even I have been used to make them look good, and get good marks while they’re at it. Here’s a few of their favourite tricks:

  • Ask a question you already know the answer to. Wait a bit while everyone discusses it, then interrupt and answer the question yourself. Most people have forgotten by that stage who asked the question to begin with, so you look smart for answering the question. Unfortunately, people who aren’t busy trying to make themselves look good tend to notice this trick and find it extremely irritating.
  • Make outrageous claims about anything, then when people start to disagree, claim you were only being an agent provocateur (always throw in a foreign language where possible), or a devil’s advocate (if you’ve forgotten the French). Never mind the fact that you’re not really an agent provocateur, few people know its proper meaning, and it sounds good. I had a law tutor who loved the word, and never considered the fact that there might be some students in her classes with more accurate vocabularies than hers. Although in a few cases, it might actually be true, depending on what you’re pretending to know everything about. I prefer devil’s advocate myself, since I can casually throw in words in several other languages in any given conversation, so have no real need of the foreign-sounding option. Not that I’m ever either of them, since I leave all that to those with self esteem issues.
  • Speaking of self esteem, you can seem to know everything so long as you do it with confidence. If you say anything forcefully, loudly and often enough, people will just give up and not try to argue with you, thereby making you look more intelligent. Of course, you may come up against someone else trying to do the same thing, in which case it will turn into a screaming match, entertaining those around you. But you still won’t look stupid, because you obviously have a strong opinion and are sticking to it.
  • Another trick is to surround yourself with smart people. When anyone asks a question, give a small, introductory-type answer to the question, and wait for one of the actually smart people to step in and provide a fuller explanation (the disadvantages to this are obvious: firstly, the people might just be pretending to be smart; secondly, they might not step in to answer, either because they’re not listening, or they don’t like you and have worked out what you’re up to).
  • In a classroom situation, simply sit with your textbook open in front of you, keeping up with whatever the teacher/tutor has to say. Whenever a question is asked, simply read from the textbook. The trick here is to make it look like you’re not reading, which can be more difficult than it sounds.

Not that I condone any of this. But for those of us up against sleazy know-it-alls, any background and/or inside information we can get is necessary. I just wish that they didn’t try to make everyone else look bad so that they can look good (another of their favourite tricks that I refuse to put on the above list, since I think it’s just plain mean…)

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