The unread

Perhaps only a French professor of literature could write a book entitled How to Talk About Books You Have Not Read. Professor Pierre Bayard’s book became a best-seller in France this year, and one can see why. After all, a book that promises to lift the oppressive guilt one feels at not having tackled many of the giant literary peaks has a lot to be said for it. At the very least this guilt leaves one feeling somewhat inadequate, especially when one compares the amount of reading done by one’s forbears (who admittedly didn’t have the distractions of television or cinema or a thousand other things and, equally, for the lucky few, could rely upon servants to relieve them from much of the drudgery of ordinary life. But still…)

As the TLS notes, Bayard suggests that:

“in order to . . . talk without shame about books we haven’t read, we should rid ourselves of the oppressive image of a flawless cultural grounding, transmitted and imposed [on us] by the family and by educational institutions, an image which we try all our lives in vain to match up to.