PIERRE BAYARD & UMBERTO ECO
with Paul Holdengraber: How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read (17/11/ 2007)
http://fora.tv/2007/11/17/Bayard_and_Eco_How_to_Talk_About_Books_You_Havent_Read
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/pep/pepdesc.cfm?id=3641
Umberto Eco insists that he read Pierre Bayard's book, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read or at least skimmed it. In the July 26th edition of L'EspressoEco writes, “The most intriguing part of this pamphlet, lessparadoxical than may first appear, is that we forget a high percentageof the books we actually read, in fact, we conjure a virtual image ofsorts, not so much of what the book said, but of what it made us thinkabout.“
Bayard's seemingly paradoxical book makes the case for literary laziness. In How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read,Bayard argues that the key to appreciating the classics is through aquick skim, not deep immersion; cover to cover isn't merelyimpractical, it's downright passé.
Quoting Eco himself—he isthe subject of a chapter in Bayard's treatise entitled "Books you haveheard of in which Umberto Eco shows it is wholly unnecessary to haveheld a book in your hand, to be able to speak about it in detail, aslong as you listen to and read what others say about it"—Bayard remindsus all that there is no shame in asserting your pseudo-literacy. Hedescribes the varieties of “non-reading”—from books that you've neverheard of to books that you've read and forgotten—and offers advice onhow to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creativebrilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Readis in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspectiveon how we read and absorb books, the art of being well read withoutreading well.
“A high-low treatise that will remind some readers of Wayne Koestenbaum(a writer I talk about even though I've never read him . . . this slimvolume manages to deceive the reader in 185 pages. You think you'regoing to be told how to act at a cocktail party when someone opinesabout a book you don't know—and you are; but at the same time you'regoing to learn enough about the book to discuss it . . . It's a romp,in other words but a romp of the most decidedly literary variety. Atleast I think it is. Because of course, I haven't read it." —Sara Nelson, "Faking It," Publishers Weekly
This event is co-sponsored by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy
About Pierre Bayard
Pierre Bayard is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and a psychoanalyst. He is the author of Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? and many other books.
About Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco teaches Semiotics and is the President of the Scuolasuperiore di Studi Umanistici at the University of Bologna. In 1980 Ecodebuted as a novelist with The Name of the Rose for which he received the Strega Award. He is the author of the History of Beauty. His new books are On Ugliness and Turning Back The Clock, Hot Wars and Media Populism.
About Paul Holdengräber
Paul Holdengräber is the Director of Public Programs—now known as "LIVEfrom the NYPL"—for The Research Libraries of The New York PublicLibrary.