Is your New Year’s resolution to read more? You could always bluff it, argues Pierre Bayard.
These lies we tell to others are first and foremost lies we tell ourselves, for we have trouble acknowledging even to ourselves that we haven’t read the books that are deemed essential. And here, as in so many other domains of life, we show an astonishing ability to reconstruct the past to better conform to our wishes.
I consider the lies we tell
I consider the lies we tell ourselve to be the greater sin “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. ”
If you have the audacity to presume to teach literature you should at least have read the books. If knew that my lecturers hadn’t bothered to read the texts I would have been incensed. I don’t think this man is clever or that his falsehood should earn him an income let alone sell books. We should not reward duplicity.
Wheels Within Wheels
The Guardian article is a short, translated, excerpt from Bayard’s book which was a best-seller in its original French in 2006. An article on Bayard in the International Herald Tribune (dated February 28, 2007) quotes Bayard saying that the book “is told by a fictional personality who boasts about not reading and is obviously not me. This is not a book written by a nonreader.” The article goes on to say that he chose this device, “because he wanted to help people conquer their fear of culture by challenging the way that literature is presented to both students and the public at large in France.”
The Guardian article provides none of this background. It appears, of course, as if it were a brief, not necessarily tongue-in-cheek, article that was just recently written for the Guardian, rather than what it actually is — a teaser for the recently published English edition of the book.
The result, ironically, is that commenter Joanne finds herself in the position of expressing her exasperation about a book that she hasn’t actually read.
Yes I can see T Scott’s
Yes I can see T Scott’s point. I was not actually commenting on the book itself, but what appeared to be an interview with the author, as the article failed to make clear the context for the passage that was translated. I must say that I don’t generally comment on books I have not read. Its a shame this article didn’t make itself clearer as I now feel that my comment was wasted.