How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard
(translated from the French by Jeffrey Mehlman – Granta, 2007)
Boring Books by Louis Theroux (The Idler-Issue 10 -July/August 1995)
Pierre Bayard’s book is a columnists dream. Here we have the paradox of a professor of literature in Paris proposing non-reading as a legitimate academic strategy.This isn’t as whacky as it first sounds.
It’s an undeniable fact that even the most erudite scholar can only scratch the surface of the world’s literature. In our short lifetimes there are only so many books it is possible to read.It follows that we will often find ourselves in situations when we are called upon to express an opinion on works we have only a scant knowledge of, or in extreme circumstances haven’t even heard of. Continue reading
