{"id":14339,"date":"2017-10-12T13:37:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T20:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14339"},"modified":"2017-10-13T08:01:49","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T15:01:49","slug":"to-read-or-not-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/to-read-or-not-to-read\/","title":{"rendered":"To Read or Not To Read…"},"content":{"rendered":"

That is the question at hand in\u00a0How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read<\/em> by Pierre Bayard.\u00a0 I suppose I could hone in on the chapter\u00a0 about Groundhog Day, one of the best movies of the last 50 years, but there was a moment in my reading where I had to ask myself, did the author actually watch the movie or was he just talking about something he had not seen.\u00a0 I will explain myself with a video.<\/p>\n

Bill Murray on French majors (Groundhog Day)[640×480]<\/a><\/p>\n

In his discussion on Bill Murray’s character talking to his desired conquest Bayard says “Rita confides to him that her college studies did not initially incline her toward a career in television, and when Phil asks for details, she tell him, ‘I studied nineteenth-century Italian poetry'”[1] If you have watched my clip then you will know this is not what she said.\u00a0 He then goes on to say when Murray’s character does learn Italian (we know that it is French) he attributes a quote to the character which is not even in the film, “he is able to recite, with considerable pathos, excerpts form the libretto of Rigoletto, as the young woman looks on admiringly”[2]\u00a0 \u00a0This movie is quite possibly my favorite movie, so his butchering of such an important scene calls into question if he has ever seen it.\u00a0 I guess that is the point of the book.\u00a0 Most who read it will never question what he is talking about because they assume he is right.\u00a0 I will let that go for now.<\/p>\n

Instead, I want to focus first on chapter three, Books You Have Heard Of.\u00a0 I have not read Umberto Eco’s book\u00a0The Name of the Rose<\/em>, but I have seen the movie staring Sean Connery (yes Shawn that is how he spells his name;) and Christian Slater.\u00a0 The chapter focuses on books you may not have read but have heard enough about them to be able to talk about them.\u00a0 The book and movie center on an abbey that has had a questionable death.\u00a0 Connery’s character, William of Baskerville, along with a young monk who comes along with him is tasked with finding out what happened in the strange death.\u00a0 While they are there several more deaths occur and William starts to deduce there have been murders surrounding the existence of a book.\u00a0 The book turns out to be the second volume of Aristotle’s\u00a0Poetics<\/em> which has been lost not seen by very many people living at the time of the book.\u00a0 The book was on laughter and humor which an older monk. Jorge de Burgos, has taken upon himself to hide, and kill anyone who tries to access the book.\u00a0 He tells William the reason is because laughter and humor draw people away from God, there should only be solemn contemplation when it comes to God.<\/p>\n

The point of the chapter is this, by deducing that the book is from Aristotle, and knowing the first volume was not hidden, William is able to talk with Jorge about the book without ever having read it.\u00a0 It flows, according to Bayard, from logic.\u00a0 First it was an extension of what was already known, and by knowing the subject of volume one he can deduce the subject of volume two.\u00a0 The argument also follows if you know the works of an author, you can guess with a high degree of accuracy how a book not read with flow because authors tend to walk the same path.\u00a0 “All works by the same author present more or less perceptible similarities of structure, and beyond their manifest differences, they secretly share a common way of ordering reality.”[3]<\/p>\n

Bayard also discusses a third element that was necessary in this instance, the visceral reaction externally of Jorge.\u00a0 He discusses the changes that happen when we read an author and how it invokes our reactions.\u00a0 This is how William ascertains the subject and probably a great insight into what the books discusses.\u00a0 It had created such fear in Jorge, he decided it was God’s call on him to kill anyone who had read it, and to also dispose of the book so that it may never harm the faith of someone who read it.<\/p>\n

The sad part is Bayard points out that neither man would ever be able to read it because one was blind, Jorge, and one could not read it because of the poison put on its pages, William.\u00a0 Thus they only have illusions of what it could be.\u00a0 “To Jorge, Aristotle’s book is a locus for his anxieties about threats to the church, while for Baskerville it provides support for his relativistic reflections on faith.”[4]\u00a0 Bayard ultimately stays on the path that even if we are willing to risk our lives for something it may not even be what we expect it to be.<\/p>\n

I was also intrigued by the two chapters, Not Being Ashamed, and Imposing Your Ideas.\u00a0 These two chapters were at polar opposites on not reading a book.\u00a0 In Not Being Ashamed, talks about a character in two books\u00a0A Small World\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Changing Places<\/em>.\u00a0 The character is named Philip Swallow, and he is the object of anger in both books.\u00a0 In the first the character Robin Dempsey is conversing with what he thinks is a computer AI system that he seems to feel comfort in talking about his anger at Swallow for getting a position he feels is rightly his.\u00a0 He speaks ill of Swallow and then is confronted with the fact that someone is controlling the computer and having the discussion with him, not the computer’s AI.\u00a0 He has stated he has not read his rivals book and never intends to do so because he knows the writer, has contempt for him, and thus feels he knows the book is not worth his time.\u00a0 In the second book, the same man, Philip Swallows, introduces a game called Humiliation, where you win by admitting you have not read some great work, and others have read it.\u00a0 A professor, Howard Ringbaum, is the type of person who cannot lose, but to admit he has not read something kills him on the inside.\u00a0 He loses the first round because he chose a work that was very obscure and no one had read it.\u00a0 He is so angry at losing he chooses to go all in and yells Hamlet, no one believes an english professor has not read it and he reacts violently and they acquiesce in shock.\u00a0 The next thing we know Howard has lost his job as a english professor because, let’s face it, who wants an english professor who has not read Hamlet.\u00a0 His shame in losing cost him everything.\u00a0 The next chapter Imposing Your Ideas, goes just the opposite.\u00a0 A writer and critic finds out it is not what you have read but who you are as you review what you have not read that matters.\u00a0 In fact, reading is seen as below those who review books and the task is given to what seems to be a woman of the night.\u00a0 Both chapters seem to point to being honest with what you read, but not relying on just that.\u00a0 It seems in our quest to be well read, we have to understand who we are reading, why we are reading it and then jump to our own conclusions.<\/p>\n

This book was enjoyable and caused me to think about how I would read and then what would be the best way to interact with those who may or may not have read the same thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Pierre Bayard.\u00a0How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.\u00a0 <\/em>(New York:\u00a0 Bloomsbury, 2007), 106.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0Ibid, 107.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid, 40.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid, 45.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That is the question at hand in\u00a0How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard.\u00a0 I suppose I could hone in on the chapter\u00a0 about Groundhog Day, one of the best movies of the last 50 years, but there was a moment in my reading where I had to ask myself, did the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[903],"class_list":["post-14339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-how-to-talk-about-a-book-you-have-not-read","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14339"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14412,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14339\/revisions\/14412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}