On Unread Books

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From The Paris Review:

I recall, though my recollection may be faulty, a magnificent article by Giorgio Manganelli explaining how a sophisticated reader can know whether a book is worth reading even before he opens it. He wasn’t referring to the capacity often required of a professional reader, or a keen and discerning reader, to judge from an opening line, from two pages glanced at random, from the index, or often from the bibliography, whether or not a book is worth reading. This, I say, is simply experience. No, Manganelli was talking about a kind of illumination, a gift that he was evidently and paradoxically claiming to have.

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, by Pierre Bayard, a psychoanalyst and professor of literature, is not about how you might know not to read a book but how you can happily talk about a book you haven’t read, even to your students, even when it’s a book of extraordinary importance. His calculation is scientific. Good libraries hold several millions of books: even if we read a book a day, we would read only 365 a year, around 3,600 in ten years, and between the ages of ten and eighty we’ll have read only 25,200. A trifle. On the other hand, any Italian who’s had a good secondary education knows perfectly well that they can participate in a discussion, let’s say, on Matteo Bandello, Francesco Guicciardini, Matteo Boiardo, on the tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, or on Ippolito Nievo’s Confessions of an Italian, knowing only the name and something about the critical context, but without ever having read a word.

Link to the rest at The Paris Review and thanks to Dave for the tip.

PG tries to avoid being a harrumphing lawyer, but gently cautions that unread contracts are not a good idea.

Contracts have a way of being terribly boring until they suddenly become very important.

6 thoughts on “On Unread Books”

  1. Most literature classes could, in my honest opinion, be “taught” by simply distributing the Cliff Notes, since that seems to be the highest level of knowledge prevalent among the “professors.”

    • You might enjoy this article, “The Rising Tide of Educated Aliteracy.” The writer is concerned about the number of people who can read, but deliberately refuse to (aliterate vs. illiterate), and he’s concerned that college professors are now cheerfully, shamelessly aliterate.

      …But he was livid. “If they,” … “think I’m going to waste any part of my weekend reading all that shit, they can think again!”

      The piece is focused on Canada and Britain’s literary scene, but it seems applicable here. It seems a lot of professors don’t want to read. The same goes for professional book critics, who oddly don’t let their refusal to read a book stop them from savaging it.

      • I had a Shakespeare professor who quizzed us on Henry V(?). She asked what some guy put on his hat, and who ate it. For some reason, everyone who read it knew the answer was “Leeks.” The rest of us just guessed wrong.

        The professor said she had a collection of such questions, all time tested, and rotated them over the years. She most enjoyed reading the guesses.

  2. Ignorance is not only bliss, it is now sanctified by pretentious academics and phony intellectuals.

    If you didn’t read the book, say so. Some of us who did read certain books can’t remember them very well, and I’m honest about that, too. But at least I tried.

    One of many problems with this guy’s argument is that proud no-nothing-ism is already widespread. Many times, on hearing snotty comments about romance novels, I’ve asked the speaker if he/she ever actually read one. The answer has always been “No,” and my response has been, “I can tell.”

    In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t read Pierre Bayard’s book. And clearly, taking his advice, I don’t need to.

  3. I go back to Sir Francis Bacon’s “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

    I flatter myself that, with practice, I’ve gotten better at quickly sorting books out. It is a matter of knowing yourself and how books are put together. On the other hand, there’s no fool like an old fool and I may be both missing a lot and wasting my time on stuff that is not that good.

    Oh well. It’s a life we live.

    • and a learning life that we love: Sovereignty in reading.
      Your quote on Sir FB is a good one.

      I’ve often wondered what would happen if ‘the canon’ fell to dust. Who would rise to those positions.

      I remember such astonishing writers required back ‘in the day’, like the new radical voice of james baldwin, the marshall mcluhan [sp] opus, the weisel [sp] chronicles, dorothy day, the outsider, the lonely crowd, the buke… others. The 10% that hit hard, including malcolm x, MLK, keasey, moby dick with its incredible study of a crew from many ethnic backgrounds and beliefs, and others.

      The other 90%, force fed. Boring and long, short and boastful, essentially a narrow point of view that disincluded most, whether fict or non. I realize now that it appears our required reading, even though we were in the outback, was chosen by whomever ny chose to publish, chose to press on university textbook committees, chose to keep in print.

      Im with you Democritus… it’s a huge world. Take your time. So many books are feasts in so many different ways.

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