SLICE OF LIFE
Why read books at all?
V. GANGADHAR
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Helpful advice on ways to look scholarly and well-read without actually reading through a page.
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OVERHEARD in a college campus: First student: Great Scott! I've forgotten who wrote Ivanhoe. Second Student: Don't worry, I'll tell you that if you tell me who the Dickens wrote The Tale of Two Cities. Well, students of the above-mentioned category need worry no more. Bookish knowledge can be acquired without even reading books.
Appearances
All of us like to be, or pretend to be, well read, take part in literary proceedings and pepper our conversations with quotes. Ever so often, we come across news items about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice being voted the best-ever novel or some pr ofessor from Harvard or Oxford University announcing his list of 100 great novels of the previous century. I can understand the feeling of dismay among those who are not familiar with even one of these hundred novels.
Every problem has a solution. So has this one. Prof. Pierre Bayard, Literature professor at Paris University, has come out with a unique solution to this problem in his best seller, How to Talk About Books Which You Haven't Read, which is now making waves all over Europe and getting translated into dozens of languages. Prof. Bayard says that his book can help remove guilt feelings among those who feel they have missed out on books. No one is obliged to read books, yet they could talk and argue about them, he points out. According to Prof. Bayard, he often lectures students on books which he has never heard, in fact, not even glanced through or opened the pages. Frequently, he has passionate literary exchanges on such books with those who have not read these books too.
The trick is to understand that even a slight familiarity with books and authors is enough to put on a show of enlightenment. By going through book covers, reviews and gossip about authors, anyone can confidently take part in any literary discussion. Throw in some quotations which you have picked up from school, and these will help a lot. The media controversy over Da Vinci Code was so intense that even without reading the book, we could get an idea of what it was all about.
Sensible approach
There is much common sense in what the Professor says. It is humanly impossible to read the hundreds of books which come out every week or month. But these are often discussed in public and the professor's strategy should be enough to mark you as a well-read person. I know many people who do it all the time and get away with it. When I was doing my Master's Degree in English Literature, I was originally stumped by the question which asked students to "show their acquaintance" with a series of books which included real toughies like Ulysses or the volumes of Marcel Proust. One of my classmates helped me out. "Go through the pages of Oxford Companion To English Literature" he advised me. "We are not expected to have read all the books which could appear in that question." Going through the previous six years question papers, I made a list of books, read about them from the Companion and tackled the question satisfactorily.
Certain words and phrases are embedded in our memory. At least everyone of my generation knew that Oliver Twist "asked for more" and A Tale of Two Cities started with the famous sentence, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Well, such a knowledge was more than enough to pull you through conversations with those who took their Dickens seriously. Why read in detail the entire texts of Shakespeare? Look pensive, walk around with hands held behind your back muttering the lines, "To be or not to be, that is the question", "All the world is a stage and all the men and woman players" or "The Quality of Mercy is not strained...." to make your mark as a scholar. I know of a scholar in English poetry, who gained his reputation as a man of letters with just one line of Thomas Gray, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave!" Coming to more modern times, one can be an authority on Ian Fleming, James Bond and the British Secret Service if one knew Bond favoured Vodka martinis with a slice of lemon peel, "shaken but not stirred".
Scholarly souls
Look, ordinary mortals simply cannot comprehend books like James Joyce's Ulysses or Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Yet, I have seen many of them at seminars and discussions on these two authors and trying to make intelligent conversation. Today, movies based on outstanding books have come as additional help. One can talk intelligently on southern lawyer Atticus Finch or racism in the U.S. after watching Gregory Peck in "To Kill a Mockingbird" without ever having read the Harper Lee classic on which the movie is based. Last year, at a seminar on the American writer, Truman Capote, most of the speakers spoke on the movie "Capote" and it was clear they had not read his masterpiece In Cold Blood or any of his other books.
Finally, I am amazed at some of our prolific literary critics, who review, without fail, books of 600 to 800 pages every week. Did they actually read the books or followed the advice given in by Professor Pierre Bayard?
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