-How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, Pierre Bayard

Thank you Pierre Bayard! A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I have been freed from any number of unspoken complexes and secret fears. There may be a slight residual anxiety at the fact that I failed to read the original French version, but since I got the English translation as a stocking-filler I think I'm in the clear! Actually, the author's stylised irony works very well in English. Seemingly frivolous and lightweight, his rapier thrusts cut to the quick.

His basic point is almost embarrassingly obvious. Given the almost impossible number of books in existence, however many I read, I will barely be able even to scratch the surface. Books I have read thoroughly quickly return to the oblivion from which they emerged, books I claim to have read I only ever half-read, many books I just skimmed, and there are any number of books I have heard about and that's about all. Bayard maintains that, for other than specialists, this has to be the case for absolutely everyone, so there is no reason for cultural shame. He goes so far as to suggest that superficiality is indispensable to an overview, the sense of what fits in where, which is probably more important and useful than a detailed reading of what must necessarily be an extremely limited number of texts. He makes the ruthless point that most books are in fact "screen" books, upon which we project our own attitudes and prejudices. He goes so far as to suggest that books are far more "plastic" than we realise, their contents bending and stretching under the influence of discussion and debate.

...what is essential is to speak about ourselves and not about books, or to speak about ourselves by way of books (which is the only way, in all probability, to speak well about them)...

There is an amusing list of abbreviations at the beginning of the text, including:

UB book unknown to me

SB book I have skimmed

HB book I have heard about

FB book I have forgotten

And one particularly liberating paragraph:

To speak without shame about books we haven't read, we would thus do well to free ourselves of the oppressive image of cultural literacy without gaps, as transmitted and imposed by family and school, for we can strive toward this image for a lifetime without ever managing to coincide with it. Truth destined for others is less important than truthfulness to ourselves, something attainable only by those who free themselves from the obligation to seem cultivated, which tyrannizes us from within and prevents us from being ourselves.