Pierre Bayard

last updated 8 January 2015

Author of the week

Pierre Bayard

Pierre Bayard won’t mind if you don’t read his latest book, said Deborah Solomon in The New York Times. The University of Paris literature professor claims that nonreaders turned it into a best-seller in France—largely because they bought its message. How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read is only in part a tongue-in-cheek faker’s manual. Bayard’s main point is that most people have too many hang-ups about reading. They think they have to start on page one of a novel and ingest every word through the final period. Bayard says they should loosen up. “Between reading and nonreading there is a space that is quite important,” Bayard says. “You don’t have to feel guilty about it.” Bayard himself boasts of having given lectures on books he’s never cracked open, said Alan Riding, also in the Times. “There are other ways of reading,” he says. “You can skim books, you can just have heard of them.” Skimming strikes him as a particularly underrated skill. “If you want to fall in love with someone, it’s necessary to meet many people. You see what I mean?” Some of the benefits he sees in bluffing are even more surprising. When caught with nothing to say about the specific contents of a book, Bayard acolytes are advised to use what little they do know about the book as a bridge to talking about themselves. “To be able to talk with finesse about something one does not know,” he writes, “is worth more than the universe of books.”