Read this book and be a literary expert

[Botnst]

point
Sarah Vine
Well, zut alors! A distinguished French literary professor has become a surprise bestselling author by writing a book explaining how to wax intellectual about tomes that you have never actually read.

Pierre Baynard, 52, specialises in the link between literature and psychoanalysis, and says it is perfectly possible to bluff your way through a book that you have never read — especially if that conversation happens to be taking place with someone else who also hasn’t read it. All of which just goes to confirm what I’ve always thought about French academics, which is that mostly they are oversubsidised frauds.

Obviously I haven’t read Mr Baynard’s book; but it is in the spirit of his oeuvre that I shall proceed to write about it anyway. The first thing to say about Comment Parler des Livres que l’on n’a pas Lus ( How to Talk About Books that You Haven’t Read) is what a wonderfully French concept this is. The French take great pride in their intellectual patrimony, considering themselves to be pretty much the inventors of most forms of high art, something that irritates other nations, especially the Italians, a great deal. For them it is crucial to be able to hold their own in a literary conversation, a mark of cultural honour that is the very essence of French-ness. The trouble is, in these busy times, who apart from Alain de Botton has time to really get to the bottom of Proust?

Bayard himself confesses to never having finished Ulysses, by James Joyce. Personally, I have a theory that there is a very good chance that Joyce himself didn’t even finish writing the book, since I have never actually met anyone who has read the thing cover to cover. Perhaps Joyce was just having a laugh — perhaps Ulysses is just one great big literary irony, a book purposely made unreadable by the author just to expose pseuds. Or perhaps the real ending in the book — the one that no one knows about because nobody has actually ever read it properly — is that they all live happily ever after in an executive home. Yes yes and yes, as Molly Bloom herself might have said.


Bookmanism
Or How to Appear Extremely Well-Read without Turning a Page
You don’t have to read a book to talk wisely about it
See? Now you don’t know whether I’ve read it or not. Don’t worry, I haven’t; nor have I read Proust (I like a nice biscuit, though) or Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, although I think I’ve got one of their old LPs somewhere. Nor do I care that you now know that, since I am British, and therefore suffer from a pathological need to downplay any intellectual prowess I may or may not possess. The British dislike a Noam-know-it-all; we like our intellects to be approachable, unpretentious, fancy-a-pint-down-the-pub types. Which is in itself, of course, just as pretentious as wanting everyone to know you’ve read Dante (not just the Inferno, though — everyone has read that, ha ha — but Paradiso, too, which is terribly dull, being as it is entirely devoted to the Heavenly Host and utterly devoid of the colourful descriptions of torture that made Inferno such a blockbuster in its day).

The book that I’d part company with hard cash to get is this: How to Avoid Talking About Books You Shouldn’t Have Read — But Have. Such as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, or anything by Jackie Collins, or Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus — or the ultimate literary embarrassment, The Da Vinci Code. I don’t know anyone with an ounce of intellectual pride who will confess to having read it, and yet statistically some of them must be lying. Maybe I should start a Da Vinci Anonymous association. All welcome, even French professors.

[Vronsky]

Books
Have you seen the French's new Presidential candidate, Segolene Royal:



Eat your heart out, Bot
Imagine: Hillary, Segolene, and Angela...
Looks like more global warming

[Botnst]

Attractive woman.

[t walgamuth]

oui!

tom w

[Mistress]

jus sui pardue (sp). There are enough BS artists in the world we need more people to read great works of literature and be able to discuss them at Forum Meets....one day me talk pretty.

[Carleton Hughes]

La Recherche du temps perdue is monumentaly boring and sententious.

I always go back to La Fontaine,Rabelais and the memoirs of the Duc De Saint-Simon,which,while somewhat inaccurate are highly entertaining.

[Mistress]

A book thread perhaps. this weeks suggested reading will be Yellow Silk.

[Carleton Hughes]

Originally Posted by Mistress

A book thread perhaps. this weeks suggested reading will be Yellow Silk.

No,no,no...The Perfumed Garden!or that 18th century favorite,Fanny Hill!

[Mistress]

Originally Posted by Carleton Hughes

No,no,no...The Perfumed Garden!or that 18th century favorite,Fanny Hill!

Holy crap I forgot about that book. I wonder if you can still get copies.

[Carleton Hughes]

Originally Posted by Mistress

Holy crap I forgot about that book. I wonder if you can still get copies.

It is but to ask,my Voluptuous Vamp

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&y=4&tn=the+perfumed+garden.&x=46

[Mistress]

That would make a nice Valentines Day Gift....that and a copy of poems by Cavafy.

[Carleton Hughes]

Originally Posted by Mistress

That would make a nice Valentines Day Gift....that and a copy of poems by Cavafy.

Yeah, but his stuff has a gay slant,akin to Wilde and some of the French symbolists,if you like that sort of thing.

My preference in erotic poetry leans toward the hetero angle.