How to talk about books you haven't read

[SFG75]

It's a real title of a book, I'm not kidding. The author argues that there is no possible way you could keep up and quite frankly, skimming through a few is the only necessary requirement as you won't rememberthe entire thing anyways. One of the more interesting observations:

Readers who worship too intensely at the altar of other people's books will probably never write their own – or even have a truly original reaction to someone else's work. "The paradox of reading is that the path toward ourselves passes through books, but that this must remain a passage," he explains. "It is a traversal of books that a good reader engages in – a reader who knows that every book is the bearer of some part of himself and can give him access to it, if only he has the wisdom not to end his journey there."

Hmmmmm, definitely a weird angle on this topic. He wouldn't make it past the B&R gauntlet about reading and it's demise in society

 

[sparkchaser]

I am speechless.

 

[abecedarian]

Huh? Words escape me.

 

[beer good]

Relax, folks. The guy's a professor of literature. The book is a satire, a devil's advocate argument meant to address WHY reading is important.

Article in the NY Times

“We are taught one way of reading,” he said. “Students are told to read the book, then to fill out a form detailing everything they have read. It’s a linear approach that serves to enshrine books. People now come up to me to describe the cultural wounds they suffered at school. ‘You have to read all of Proust.’ They were traumatized.”

“They see culture as a huge wall, as a terrifying specter of ‘knowledge,’ ” he went on. “But we intellectuals, who are avid readers, know there are many ways of reading a book. You can skim it, you can start and not finish it, you can look at the index. You learn to live with a book.”

So, yes, he conceded, his true aim is to make people read more — but with more freedom. “I want people to learn to live with books,” he said. “I want to help people organize their own paths through culture."

Then why, he was asked, did he write a book that seems to justify nonreading?

“I like to write funny books,” he said. “I try to use humor to deal with complex subjects.”

And this is where I would have to bite my tongue to not have to point out the irony of people criticizing the book without having read it...

 

[abecedarian]

Thanks BG! I'm glad there was more to this story than first appearances indicated. I just couldn't imagine a literature professor seriously telling people not to read. Of course, if he had been serious, I had every intention of ignoring him and doing things my way anway

 

[silverseason]

And yet....

We've all been pushed by school requirements to read books we weren't ready for or which were totally out of tune with whatever melody our life was playing at that time. Or we had the juice sucked out the experience by dry analysis. That may not be a good metaphor. Can dry analysis suck juice. Maybe it evaporates it.

The books that have stayed with me the longest were mostly ones I found myself or that were recommended by friends.