Where there is a will, there is a way—as far as talking about books one hasn’t read is concerned.
By Zafar Anjum
19 Jan 2009
Thank God, most people don’t read books. Imagine how drab a conversation would be if it were only about books—unless those involved were writers or literature students. At least in Singapore, what I have seen during my MRT train rides or on buses is not very intellectually threatening—most people either read The Bible or self-help guides or get-rich-quick books, the Rich Dad, Poor Dad kind of books. Looking at the titles of these books, you know these are not garrulous folks—they want some peace of mind and soul or want to get ahead in life. Nothing wrong with that.
But if you happen to find yourself in an unpleasant situation (with a pleasant person, let us say a person of the opposite sex you can’t ignore or a person of power you have to make a deal with) of talking about a book that you haven’t read, worry not. There is help. There are ways to come out of the situation unscathed, even sounding impressive and intelligent.
You don’t believe it. Roger that. Neither did I in the first place.
But this piece of reassuring wisdom came to me during the last happy holidays season when I hit upon a book by Pierre Bayard. It is called How to talk about books you haven’t read. Yes, you read it right. That is the title of the book. I had read a review of the book in The New York Times sometime ago but hadn’t had the opportunity to lay my hands on the book until now. I read it and I was convinced.
Simple theory
Now before you dismiss the book as another tricky treatise, let me tell you who Bayard is. Bayard is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and a psychoanalyst. Impressed?
Bayard’s theory is simple: There are millions of books in the world and it is not possible for a single individual to read all of them. In our culture, books are put in certain categories and having read a few of them would qualify you to talk about all those books in a particular category that you haven’t read. For example, read a few books from the Victorian era and you are qualified to talk about any book from that category.
And you can do it without shame. Here is what Bayard says: “To speak without shame about books we haven’t read, we would thus do well to free ourselves of the oppressive image of cultural literacy without gaps, as transmitted and imposed by family and school, for we can strive towards this image for a lifetime without ever managing to coincide with it.”
In Bayard’s opinion, saying that you haven’t read a particular book or taking about it is the same. “As long as you have the courage, therefore, there is no reason not to say frankly that you haven’t read any particular book, nor to abstain from expressing your thoughts about it,” he says. “The experience of not having read a book is the most common of scenarios, and only in accepting our non-reading without shame can we begin to take an interest in what is actually at stake, which is not a book but a complex interpersonal situation of which the book is less the object than the consequence.”
Author’s place
According to Bayard, any book is not important per se. It’s the author’s place in the literary system that makes the book more or less valuable (just like a film is not important by itself, but if it is made by someone like Steven Spielberg, we immediately attach a certain kind of value to it). Quoting an example from a Balzac novel Lost Illusions, Bayard proves that “it is the author’s value, his place in the literary system, that determines the value of the book”. Also, he says: “An author’s place in the literary system is eminently malleable, moreover, which means that the value of the book is malleable as well.”
And read this. This would comfort you: “In a world where opening a book in order to talk about it is laughable, any opinion is fine as long as you can defend it. The book itself, reduced to pure pretext, has, in a sense, ceased to exist.”
Bayard’s discussion in his book mainly centres around examples from literature and cinema but I think we can extend his logic to management literature too. Read the book if you can and you will know. Next time, if someone asks you about Blink or The Outliers, you will feel confident in taking your conversation partner to a corner of the room and giving him or her a piece of your mind without sounding foolish or unimpressive.
Zafar Anjum is the online editor of MIS Asia portal.
