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How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: parallel action, collective library, inner book, New York, David Lodge, Oscar Wilde (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"It may well be that too many books are published, but by good fortune, not all must be read.... A survivor's guide to life in the chattering classes...evidently much in need." --New York Times --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Review

Praise for How to Talk About Books You Havent Read:
 
"I probably shouldn't bring any of this up, but Mr. Bayard holds that one of the best reasons for reading a book is that it allows you to talk about yourself. How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read is an amusing disquisition on what is required to establish cultural literacy in a comfortable way. Lightly laced with irony, the book nonetheless raises such serious questions as: What are our true motives for reading? Is there an objective way to read a book? What do we retain from the books we've read?"--Joseph Epstein, Wall Street Journal
 
“Witty and charming and often fun.”—Sam Anderson, New York Magazine
 
"I read and adored Pierre Bayard’s book. It's funny, smart, and so true—a wonderful combination of slick French philosophizing and tongue-in-cheek wit, and an honest appraisal of what it means, or doesn't mean, to read."--Clare Messud, author of The Emperor’s Children

“It may well be that too many books are published, but by good fortune, not all must be read…A survivor’s guide to life in the chattering classes…evidently much in need.”—New York Times

"In this work of inspired nonsense -- which nevertheless evokes our very real sense of insecurity about the gaps in our cultural knowledge -- reading is not only superfluous, it is meaningless. Our need to appear well-read is all."--Sarah Gold, Chicago Tribune

“In this hilarious and elaborate spoof, Bayard proves once again that being almost ridiculously erudite and screamingly funny are by no means mutually exclusive." —Booklist
 
“Brilliant…A witty and useful piece of literary sociology, designed to bring lasting peace of mind to the scrupulous souls who grow anxious whenever the book-talk around them becomes too specific.”—London Review of Books
 
“With rare humor, Bayard liberally rethinks the social use [of literature] and the position of the reader…Read or skim How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Or simply listen to what people say about it so that you can talk about it with ease. In either case, you may not be able to forget it.”—Les Inrockuptibles
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 208 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; 1st Edition, 1st Printing edition (October 30, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1596914696
  • ISBN-13: 978-1596914698
  • Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #131,104 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Pierre Bayard
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's Pierre Bayard Page
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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parallel action, collective library, inner book, unread books
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New York, David Lodge, Oscar Wilde, Laura Bohannan, Philip Swallow, Zane Grey, Phil Connors, Paul Valéry, Anatole France, Umberto Eco, Robin Dempsey, The Name of the Rose, Graham Greene, Aristotle's Poetics, Rollo Martins, Pierre Siniac
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Customer Reviews

36 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (36 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "The virtues of non-reading.", November 9, 2007
Pierre Bayard's "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read," translated superbly from the French by Jeffrey Mehlman, comes at a time when a number of experts declare that reading in America is on the decline. Since the 2004 report from the US National Endowment for the Arts documented that Americans are reading less and less, there are more distractions than ever that keep people away from bookstores and libraries. The Internet, cable television, and other forms of entertainment, as well as the pressures of work, family, and social responsibilities quickly gobble up our days. For some people, a lack of erudition presents no problem. However, for those who would like to appear knowledgeable (even if they are anything but), Bayard comes to the rescue.

The author, a Professor of French Literature and a psychoanalyst, assures us that "it is sometimes easier to do justice to a book if you haven't read it in its entirety--or even opened it." Whew, what a relief! In addition, Bayard informs guilt-ridden non-readers that they are in very good company, since "mendacity is the rule" when it comes to reading. Few individuals who wish to be taken seriously by their peers will admit to never having read certain "canonical texts," so they simply lie and pretend to have read them. The whole spectrum of non-reading is covered here: books we've never cracked open, those we've merely skimmed, books that we've never laid eyes on but have heard about from others, and those that we read years ago and have long since forgotten. When books fade from our consciousness, we might as well not have read them at all, Bayard asserts. In many cases, "Our relation to books is a shadowy space haunted by the ghosts of memory...." Therefore, if you are a non-reader, fear not; you have nothing to be ashamed of and you are certainly not alone.

The author quotes works both well-known and obscure, such as Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose," Graham Greene's "The Third Man," and Balzac's "Lost Illusions" to support his thesis. He uses intricate and arcane philosophical arguments that are almost mathematical in their precision, to "prove" that one can and should avoid delving too deeply into books. He even uses his own jargon (some of which is borrowed from other disciplines) to describe ways in which non-readers relate to unread books and to one another: screen books, inner books, phantom books, virtual libraries, and the collective library.

Although to the casual reader Bayard may seem to be playing it straight, "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read" is brilliant and subtle satire. Amazon reviewers should take special note of the Oscar Wilde quotation that serves as the book's epigraph: "I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so." Comments such as these that demonstrate how foolish it is to actually read the books that we talk about are so absurd (although they appear logical on the surface because they are couched in such ornate language), that Bayard ends up strengthening the opposite viewpoint. Those steeped in literature, even if they do not recall every word they have read, are generally people worth knowing; they are far more interesting to talk to than those who spout empty phrases devoid of precision or depth; people's lives are richer because of their intimate knowledge of books. They do not have to worry about surviving professional and social situations on a wing and a prayter, hoping never to be exposed as frauds who profess to have literary knowledge that they lack. Ironically, Bayard ultimately demonstrates the power of books to evoke passion, sway hearts and minds, subvert the social order, and change our lives. "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read" is provocative, thought provoking, and great fun. Rather than pretending to read it, read it!
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Non-reading as an art, November 21, 2007
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Pierre Bayard's new book, "How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read", is a bestseller in his native France and after reading/skimming it, he certainly encourages thought. From sections on "Ways of Not Reading" to "Literary Confrontations" to "Ways of Behaving", Bayard has laid out methods for making non-reading practically essential to the discourse of books. I can only imagine how book groups would dissect all of this.

Thank heavens it's a relatively short book for much of it dissolves into minutiae following routes to curious ends. The author gets tangled up in himself quite a bit and these are the easily skimmable parts. Yet he makes some terrific contributions along the way including the very core of his work....how to discuss books you haven't read. It's an anti-intellectual approach made to sound just the opposite but his humor conquers the day. My favorite chapter is one called, "Encounters With the Writer", where he persuades us that even the best writers don't know much about their own works. Bayard saves one of his best tidbits of wisdom for the end of that chapter when he says..."to those who find themselves having to talk to an author about one of his books without having read it: praise it without going into detail." Sensible advice for anyone in that situation.

Pierre Bayard has offered readers a thoughtful, if often uneven book, and I thought twice about what he says regarding critics as I write this review. But he does provoke one to think and encourage us to make those candid observations on our own. To that end, the author has succeeded.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Written in Language that Discourages Reading from Cover to Cover, December 14, 2007
By B. Evans (Chicagoland) - See all my reviews
Because I love satire, wit and above all "well-honed prose," the editorial reviews of this book had me salivating. Unfortunately, Bayard's writing turned out to be so turgid that HOW TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS YOU HAVEN'T READ was anything but a "hilarious" or "fun" or even compelling read. So tedious was it, in fact, that to describe the book as "witty" is a stretch. It was only because I found Bayard's approach to the subject so novel that I slogged on to the end through page after page of passages such as the following:

1) "As cultivated people know (and, to their misfortune, uncultivated people do not), 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. The interior of a book is less important than its exterior, since what counts in a book is the books alongside it."

2) "Most statements about a book are not about the book itself, despite appearances, but about the larger set of books on which our culture depends at that moment. It is that set, which I shall henceforth refer to as the collective library, that truly matters, since it is our mastery of this collective library that is at stake in all discussions about books. But this mastery is a command of relations, not of any book in isolation, and it easily accommodates ignorance of a larger part of the whole. It can be argued, then, that a book stops being unknown as soon as it enters our perceptual field, and that to know almost nothing about it should be no obstacle to imagining or discussing it."

3) "The difference between talking about books and reading them is a function of the fact that the former implies a third party, whether present or absent. That implied third party has palpable effects on the act of reading as well, by suggesting that an outside presence might be able to change how our reading unfolds. As I have attempted to show in the previous sections...our discussion of books is the stage for a conflict in which our relationship with the Other, whatever its nature may be, ultimately wins out over our relationship to the text--which is itself inevitably affected by the struggle.

In fairness, I should add that Bayard is not quite as verbose when he is relating examples from others' writing, yet even then his prose remains wooden.

As for the overarching question-- Is Bayard really serious, or is he laughing all the way to the bank at those who think he is? Readers who are allergic to ponderous prose should take him at face value at least long enough to do a guilt-free read of the opposing views of his book on Amazon and/or of the following ones on the web. Reading about this book may prove to be all that many need or want to do.

-"Faking It" (J. McInerney, New York Times)
-"To Read or Not to Read" (G. Hovannisian, National Review)
-"French Twist: How to Talk About Books..." (S. Anderson, New York)
-"A Satirical Defense of Intellectual Laziness" (S. Gold, Chicago Tribune)

Note: A reprint of Bayard's preface to the book can be found in the comment Robert Ross added to his 4-star Amazon review, "An Interesting Book to Skim. . ."
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful
Pierre Bayard has produced a wonderful short critique of literary criticism by arguing that the critic often does not so much as review books as she reviews the milieu in which... Read more
Published 6 months ago by L. King

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but not amusing
While based on a clever premise, this book is overwrought and ultimately far from the witty work it's being billed as. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Bruce Watson

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and Liberating: A Must-Read for Readers (and Non-Readers)!
This is among the very best books I've ever read, and is so packed with profound insight that I'm not sure how to review it, even after having read the print version a few months... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Irfan A. Alvi

5.0 out of 5 stars Cure your neurosis by not reading the Russian realists
The premise of this book might sound like a joke, but the author is actually serious. He thinks the need to be well-read is oppressive and that the alleviation of the guilt over... Read more
Published 9 months ago by M. E. Llorens

3.0 out of 5 stars A divergent view of intellectual book discussion, (details)
Author Pierre Bayard is a professor of French literature and a psychoanalyst. He clearly must have a sense of humor to have written this unusual work... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Patrick W. Crabtree

5.0 out of 5 stars Mischievous Literary Theory
I saw one review that referred to this as a "mischievous book," and that sums this book up nicely.

I laughed out loud at several points. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Michael P Mccullough

1.0 out of 5 stars How to talk about this book without reading it
To talk about this book without reading it, you can just basically say it is not good, not funny, and a waste of time.
Published 14 months ago by C. Callahan

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthy Read
I began reading Bayard's book expecting and hoping for a good laugh. I was disappointed. Not by the merit of the book but because it is, in fact, very serious in tone. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Toni Ann Loiacono

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't read this review
Translated from the French by Jeffrey Mehlman

Writing a review of this book after reading it is somewhat problematic for several reasons. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Todd Stockslager

4.0 out of 5 stars Clever & Entertaining Scholarship
Just a few chapters into this book reflected both the scholarship and the creativity of the author. I expected it to be a little LESS "scholarly" for the Average Joe & Jane... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Robert Simon

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