{"id":9532,"date":"2016-10-06T21:38:37","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T04:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9532"},"modified":"2016-10-06T21:38:37","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T04:38:37","slug":"more-tips-on-getting-a-doctorate-without-reading-or-something-at-least-slightly-more-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/more-tips-on-getting-a-doctorate-without-reading-or-something-at-least-slightly-more-important\/","title":{"rendered":"More tips on getting a doctorate without reading or something (at least slightly) more important?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"What

What do you mean you haven’t read everything, ever?<\/p><\/div>\n

Through much of Pierre Bayard’s,\u00a0How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read\u00a0<\/em>I put this text alongside the other preliminary work (most notably Adler, How to Read a Book)\u00a0<\/em>we have been assigned as we ‘ramp up’ into the meat and serious study of our doctoral program. And to be clear, it definitely contains some helpful hints and tips when you find yourself in the position of needing to speak on a text that you haven’t read, not the least of which is the idea that it may in fact be easier, at least in some instances, to do justice to a book if you haven’t ever opened it (preface).<\/p>\n

On the face of it, it seems almost ridiculous to claim such a thing, but this is the first hint that Bayard gives that there is more going on in this book than a ‘cheat’ or ‘shortcut’ to skating through class discussions without ever having read the assigned text. \u00a0The point that Bayard is making is two-fold.<\/p>\n

First, we must assent to the fact that it is entirely possible to speak about a book, and to be clear – speak with some intelligence and even insight – without having read it. \u00a0Some of us will have already known this, either by intuition or, more likely, because we have found ourselves in situations at one time or another of having to do just this: comment on, discuss or address a text that we haven’t read. \u00a0(In fact, as you are read this blog post, you might wonder, have I even read this book?) \u00a0Once we have admitted that this type of discussion is possible, Beyard articulates the many ways in which this takes place, using a number of examples drawn from literature and the literary world. \u00a0The extracted bit of understanding here, is that using a combination of our cultural understanding, i.e. what we know about the world and culture into which the book was written, and other people’s reactions to this work, we can meaningfully comment on and sometimes even capture the essential essence of a text.<\/p>\n

Some of the most useful and interesting elements that Bayard introduces are the concepts of an\u00a0inner library\u00a0<\/em>and that of a\u00a0virtual library. \u00a0<\/em> Bayard says the inner library is ‘a subset of the collective library\u2014 around which every personality is constructed, and which then shapes each person\u2019s individual relationship to books and to other people.’ (p.72) \u00a0We all have our own inner libraries and in a very real way the contents of those libraries help us to ‘read’ or not read, but still talk about other books.<\/p>\n

The virtual library, is similar to the inner library, but instead of residing inside of ourselves it is shared among all of us as we participate in as we engage with each other in culture. \u00a0The virtual library is also different in that it is, for lack of a better term, more virtual, than our inner libraries in that it is less real. \u00a0It is made up, not of the actual collective works of literature that relevant or dominant in our culture, but rather our impressions of these works. \u00a0To borrow from an earlier post, the virtual library is sort of our collective and agreed upon ‘Cliff’s Notes’ to each of these works, but we have all agreed that we will never acknowledge the existence of the Cliff’s Notes we are all relying on.<\/p>\n

The second aspect of what Beyard is asserting here is something more profound. \u00a0The virtual library isn’t real, but not because people intentionally choose to make it false, but rather as soon as we have interacted with a text (or anything, really) our understanding of it is not an object in and of itself – it is, of course, wrapped up in all of those other texts in our inner libraries and our memories and our expectations and what we have already learned about the text from others. \u00a0 As Beyard says, ‘For we are more than simple shelters for our inner libraries; we are the sum of these accumulated books. Little by little, these books have made us who we are (p. 73). \u00a0Not only have the books made us who we are, but they are also the lens through which we see and understand all that we read going forward.<\/p>\n

For me, however, the most \u00a0profound aspect of this book is the direct and honest way that Bayard addresses the reason that we pretend we have read books we haven’t and why we pretend about so many other things as well: shame. \u00a0 We often find ourselves in situations where we feel like we ‘have’ to talk about books we haven’t read simply because we can’t stomach the idea of simply admitting the truth that we haven’t read something, or that we have – as Bayard describes it – ‘gaps’ in our cultural literacy.<\/p>\n

Bayard, in what feels to me like the real heart of his message, says this:
\nAs long as we strive for an image of cultural literacy that only serves to disguise us from others and ourselves, our more or less unconscious shame about the real nature of our interaction with books will weigh on all our relations with them and everything we say about them. If we really intend to find adequate solutions to our daily confrontations with our shortcomings, we need to recognize this shame and analyze its foundations. Only in doing so can we hope to survive the avalanche of fragments of books that threatens to engulf us, in the face of which our deepest identity is revealed to be in permanent danger (p.120)<\/em><\/p>\n

Bayard’s work may help us understand how and why we are able to talk about books when we haven’t read them, but as long as we refuse to address the root motivation for us to do so, robs us of the real benefit of being able to do talk about books without reading them.<\/p>\n

This is critical….. All of what we have learned from Bayard is well and good and some of it will no doubt – or possibly already has – come in handy, but we must always be honest with ourselves, and to ensure that honesty we must let go of the shame of having not read and stop pursuing the impossible to achieve ‘gapless cultural literacy’.<\/p>\n

I will end with Bayard’s own words:\u00a0Truth 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 (p.130)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

When we let go of the shame we face, we inch that much closer to the truth destined for ourselves, which is definitely something worth reading about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through much of Pierre Bayard’s,\u00a0How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read\u00a0I put this text alongside the other preliminary work (most notably Adler, How to Read a Book)\u00a0we have been assigned as we ‘ramp up’ into the meat and serious study of our doctoral program. And to be clear, it definitely contains some helpful hints […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"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":[477,796],"class_list":["post-9532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bayard","tag-lgp7","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532","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\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}