{"id":14434,"date":"2017-10-13T16:26:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T23:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14434"},"modified":"2017-10-13T17:30:37","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T00:30:37","slug":"how-to-not-talk-about-books-you-havent-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/how-to-not-talk-about-books-you-havent-read\/","title":{"rendered":"How NOT to talk about books you haven\u2019t read\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to NOT<\/u><\/strong> talk about books you haven\u2019t read\u2026<\/p>\n

A little over a year ago a megachurch pstor was brought in to guest lecture as part of my Biblical Interpretation class that I was teaching (I did not have a say in the matter, although I was excited to share a small platform with him). It seems that the administration thought that as a pastor of one of the largest churches in America, he was automatically qualified to \u201cteach\u201d the art and science of hermeneutics. By the time this pastor was scheduled to show up and give his talks at this class, it was already halfway through the semester. As the pastor began teaching the class and describing how he goes about finding the meaning in scripture, some of the students began realizing that this pastor was saying things very different from what they had been reading\u00a0in the Textbook Grasping God\u2019s Word. <\/em>One of my students who was\u00a0very new to Christianity and church altogether (she had just been saved just a year prior) and was completely unaware (or didn\u2019t care) of the status of this pastor, came out and point blank asked him as she held up her text book, \u201cummmm\u2026 have you read this book?\u201d The pastor responded, \u201cNo. But I\u2019ve read this book!\u201d as he held up the Bible high into the air.<\/p>\n

And this is what makes me most nervous about the book How to Talk About Books you Haven\u2019t Read<\/em>. That some would take these ideas and use it as a pass to have a lack of intellectual integrity in what you were teaching. Perhaps the prime difference here is that there is a distinction between talking<\/u> about books you haven\u2019t read, and teaching<\/u> from books you haven\u2019t read. Also, the post and attitude one holds as they talk about any subject can obviously make an vast difference.<\/p>\n

But Pierre Bayard does not seem to be promoting a lack of integrity for academics, or anyone in anyway being hypocritical. Bayard\u2019s major claim is that just because you haven\u2019t ever read \u201csuch and such book\u201d doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t know anything about it. You actually might, depending on the book, know quite a lot about it! You might even know more than someone else who has seen the book. I struggled with this book for a few weeks as the ideas rolled around in my head. But what helped me finally be won over to Bayard\u2019s premise is by applying this same concept to many of the movies I haven\u2019t seen. As of this writing, so far in all of my adult life I have never seen, The Godfather (any of them), Silence of the Lambs, Mean Girls, Gone with The Wind, Moana, Apocalypse Now, most of the Harry Potters, 12 Angry Men, Schindler\u2019s List, or Psycho, just to name a few. But I honestly think I could hold an intellectual conversation about each of these movies because of how they and their ideas have been added into our culture. Many of these movies have references and idioms that are commonplace in our culture, that originate from these movies. This cultural injection us familiar with the ideas from the movies, without us actually having seen them. On the flipside, I know some people who have watched these movies, but have done so without any critical thinking and really have nothing to say about what that presentation was actually about.<\/p>\n

And so now it\u2019s easy to apply that same logic to the universe of books. There are many books I am familiar with, thanks to all of my others studies, as well as culture and even just regular conversation, which has enabled me to\u00a0engage in meaningful conversation about it. Bayard is challenging his reader to respect their own intelligence enough to engage with these books, even if they have not submitted to their entire process the author decided they should take by publishing their book. In the end, this book was a book with one of the most unorthodox ideas I have been exposed it. In that sense, it was one of the more challenging and impactful books I have ever read. Impactful because I think it continues to adjust the way I read and learn for the rest of life.<\/p>\n

Still though, one does risk the over speaking when it comes to attempting to talk about books you haven\u2019t read. Perhaps this clich\u00e9 is actually a valuable reminder to us, \u201cBetter to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt<\/em>.\u201d Or perhaps the Biblical wisdom from Proverbs 17:28 \u201cEven a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Works Cited<\/u><\/p>\n

Bayard, Pierre.\u00a0How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read<\/em>. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2009.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to NOT talk about books you haven\u2019t read\u2026 A little over a year ago a megachurch pstor was brought in to guest lecture as part of my Biblical Interpretation class that I was teaching (I did not have a say in the matter, although I was excited to share a small platform with him). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"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":[477,903,1017],"class_list":["post-14434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bayard","tag-how-to-talk-about-a-book-you-have-not-read","tag-lgp8","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14434","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\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14434"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14439,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14434\/revisions\/14439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}