I had intended to write a review of Pierre Bayard’s new book, How to Talk About Books You
Haven’t Read; but with work, the holidays and the quotidian
demands of family life, I haven’t been able to read it.
It seems like a book I should read. A lot of people are reading
it or at least talking about reading it. I turned up 550,000 hits
when I typed the book’s title into Google.
The Economist magazine’s reviewer, who, presumably, read Bayard’s book,
describes it as a “witty and provocative meditation on the nature,
scale, and necessity of non-reading,” which is the primary way
people relate to the thousands of books published every year.
Evidently, Bayard is extremely minimalist in his view of what
one gains by actually reading any given book. “Even as I read,”
says Bayard, “I start to forget what I have read.”
Not having read Bayard’s book, I scanned the reviews on Amazon’s
website. There you will find a fragment from Joseph Epstein’s
review in the Wall Street Journal in which he says that
this book “is an amusing disquisition on what is required to
establish cultural literacy in a comfortable way.” I’ll say.
Literacy through illiteracy. George Orwell, call your office. My
high regard for Mr. Epstein keeps me from wondering if he actually
read the book.
I guess this is the kind of stuff that passes for scholarship,
or at least humor, at the University of Paris where Bayard teaches.
It is so postmodern, so ironic, so…French.
THERE ARE WORSE THINGS than not reading a book. Buying a book and
not reading it would be one of those. That is a real tale of
woe.
Pity the poor bibliophile who caves in to every temptation to
buy a book whenever a new catalogue arrives in the mail, when he
strolls through the local bookstore or surfs Amazon.com or the
numerous websites of publishing companies or university presses. He
knows every discount catalogue by name and saves all the
promotional coupons from every chain bookstore in town.
He has probably read a review of a book, no, many books, by
someone he respects. Or maybe he has really, truly read another
book by the same author and was duly impressed. He might even have
read a book on the same subject and harbors a theoretical resolve
to deepen his knowledge on the subject.
And imagine if this same book lover has a good friend or
relative who works for a publishing house or bookstore with ready
access to various publications that are, if not exactly free,
substantially reduced in price. At this point a vigilant, loving
spouse must step in, put her foot down, and insist that the
marriage can only be saved if the clandestine shipments stop
immediately. About one in five of all such interventions succeed, I
am told.
So the books keep piling up. First, every inch of every
bookshelf is filled. After that, the books are stacked up on top of
the bookcases. Then books are placed sideways in front of the books
on the shelves. Books get stacked up on chairs, under side tables,
on the floor in corners, even under the bed or dresser. They
accumulate in boxes and in every nook and cranny in the house.
The bibliophile, not unlike a stealthy alcoholic, starts
sneaking books into the house and stashing them away, sometimes
wrapping them up as Christmas gifts with a card indicating they are
from some other random member of the household.
There is no way that all those books are going to get read
despite the reader’s endless promises to himself, no doubt sincere,
that his lifetime reading plan will allow him to eventually plow
through every single one of them, come hell or high water.
So many books, so little time.
I VAGUELY RECALL A PASSAGE in Winston Churchill’s delightful little
book, Painting as a Pastime (1948), in which he actually
discusses how a reader or owner of a substantial library should get
to know his books even if he has not read them through. I am not
sure about this passage. I only skimmed the book since I am not a
painter.
In any event, Churchill said the reader should pick up his
books, page through them, scan the table of contents, and read
parts of them. Basically, you should make friends with the volumes,
knowing where to find them when you need them. This seems
reasonable — if you are Winston Churchill and not a compulsive
book-buyer who cannot afford the moving costs of books he purchases
over the course of his life.
Thomas Jefferson had collected something like six or seven
thousand books (the precise number escapes me). But neither
Jefferson nor Churchill had to cope with TV, DVDs, CDs, PTAs,
little league, and all the distractions of modern life that keep
your modern bibliophile from actually reading all those books he
buys, be they new or used. (The hunt for used books is another
interesting mutation of the disease that will have to wait for
another time.)
The final stage of this disease is the legacy phase. The
bibliophile convinces himself that he is accumulating a library for
his children, the local public library, or the boys’ prep school he
attended. “Yeah, that’s the ticket. I am doing it for the
children.”
It is all so sad, a library of unread books.
