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A profile of Pierre Bayard
Bayard's best-known work in English prior to How to Talk
about Books You Haven't Read is a work of literary detection entitled Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, published in 2000. In this book, Bayard dares to suggest that Hercule Poirot's solution to one of Agatha Christie's best-loved mysteries, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is incorrect and that Christie has deliberately deceived the casual reader. On his way to fingering the real murderer, Bayard conducts a sustained investigation into the nature of detective stories and the blind spots they exploit in hiding their solutions in plain sight, which he extends to other literary genres as well. He writes, "Many readers of fictional texts have at times experienced the disagreeable impression that they are being kept in the dark." As in How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read, this book concerns itself with literature that "disturbs the transparency of reading." Reading, for Bayard, is never the simple transaction between author and reader that it would seem.
It is fitting that, though he is in the business of writing
about and teaching literature, Pierre Bayard would focus his attention on non-reading rather than reading. His background in psychoanalysis predisposes him to notice what is hidden or repressed, what our culture forbids, and the power that derives from such prohibition. He is interested, then, in the "widespread hypocrisy" that attends the discussion of such a taboo topic as non-reading, and says that he knows "few areas of private life, with the exception of finance and sex, in which it's as difficult to obtain accurate information."
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read was originally
published as Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? and was destined for the academic market but became an unexpected bestseller in France. American and British publishers avidly sought English rights and the book is now available on both sides of the Atlantic, accompanied by reviews that fully enter into the spirit of Bayard's game. Several reviewers claim to have written their reviews without having cracked the book's spine (such as
The Guardian and
The Times of London)
and all try to out-clever Bayard in their turns of phrases (one reviewer inNew York Magazine impishly deconstructs Bayard's author photograph, noting that "he appears to be sucking on something, perhaps the word oeuvre").
In employing this strategy, however, such reviewers respond more to the marketing surrounding the book, which positions it as a sparkling companion to the cocktail party circuit, and less to its substance, which is often fairly mordant about the risks of reading to one's very personality. Several reviewers somewhat alarmingly note that they’ll take Bayard's lessons on non-reading to heart, as in this concluding passage by John Sturrock in the
London Review of Books: "We all of us carry some sort of virtual library inside our heads that we have
every right to draw on without worrying whether it matches the virtual libraries of others or is especially faithful to the facts of the books we find ourselves discussing. I mean to be a whole lot less scrupulous about these things in
future."
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
Elif Batuman’s first novel The Idiot, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in the UK. She is also the author ofThe Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and... (more)
If you enjoyed:
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read
Try:
The Possessed
by Elif Batuman
Harold Bloom is a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than forty books include The Anxiety of Influence, Shakespeare: The Invention ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read
Try:
How To Read And Why
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