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How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read

Omissions and admissions

by Pierre Bayard, translated by Geoffrey Mehlman
Granta, 176pp, ££12,

Philip Hensher

Wednesday, 9th January 2008

Philip Hensher reviews How to Talk about Books

It might be thought that a book reviewer needs instruction in the skill specified in the title of Pierre Bayard’s book about as much as a moose needs a hat-rack. But cynics should know that the few people who are guaranteed to read a book are, in fact, the last people to be paid to do so. After the agent, the editor and the copy editor, the book reviewer picks up a book like this and reads it carefully from beginning to end, making notes as he goes.

None of those people, however, are reading in any kind of normal way; during the industrial process of book production, the level of intricate attention paid to the text produces an experience which is nothing like real reading. A good copy editor will be acutely aware of the words, the sentences, consistencies of plot and so on in a way very few, if any, subsequent readers will ever emulate. But the questions of the larger effects of the book, its longueurs and excitements, will enter into his head only in a marginal way. He has not really read it at all. Only a degree of carelessness and neglect is ever going to produce a real reader. Not-reading, in short: and that is M. Bayard’s subject.

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Paul Perry (Melbourne Australia)

January 11th, 2008 11:42pm

As someone who does not own a television, I regularly find myself discussing programs that I have never seen.The fact that I am never caught out, must say something about TV - or the people who watch it.

Noleen Wyatt-Jones

January 18th, 2008 11:17am

Having read Mr Henshers lengthy and compelling review of Pierre Bayard's masterpiece I found myself braving the weather in order to obtain a copy - I am sure he will be delighted to know the potency of his words. It is indeed a wonderful book and one which will grace my bookshelves for years to come and I am sure it will prompt much lively debate round the dinner table and who knows, one day I may even get around to reading it!!