
On Unread Books - pepys
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/02/on-unread-books/
======
svat
When I saw the title here, I immediately thought of the 2007 book _How To Talk
About Books You Haven 't Read_ by Pierre Bayard. And when I opened the
article, I find that it is indeed a review/summary of that book, by Umberto
Eco… which I guess goes to show something or the other.

Bayard's book is a masterpiece; I found it hilarious and recommended it to a
friend, who has taken to it so much he buys copies for others and often uses
“Bayardian” as an adjective. All the stuff surrounding the book only add to
its enjoyment (after you've read it), such as the fact that there was a
question mark in the original title which went away in the translation, the
author's coy refusal to say whether he was serious or joking, and his
insistence in interviews that the opinions in the book are not his own but
that of a fictionalized persona…

I think I found this book because it was highly rated on the interesting
_complete review_ site (its review of this book is here: [http://www.complete-
review.com/reviews/books/bayardp.htm](http://www.complete-
review.com/reviews/books/bayardp.htm)). Not everyone is likely to enjoy this
book (some found it pointless), but worth taking a look.

~~~
paganel
> When I saw the title here, I immediately thought of the 2007 book How To
> Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard.

I've started speaking about this book with my gf for about 2 or 3 years now,
even though I haven't read it (and will not read it in the near future, as my
to-read-next list is quite big and always growing). I find it's an excellent
book, and much more so as it's recommended by a writer like Eco, a guy who I
did actually read (even though that happened 20 years ago, so the details are
fuzzy) and who forever influenced my view on books and how to read and
interpret them.

I also heartily recommend Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of
Nantucket". I'm not from an English-speaking country so it wasn't required
reading for me while in school, but I nevertheless found its no-ending thingie
as the quintessence of modern literature. In fact, Eco has often talked about
the Gordon Pym story, one of the characters of one of his novels is named
exactly like that.

------
ukulele
Strategizing about how to discuss a book you haven't read has to be the
ultimate form of pretentiousness.

~~~
coldtea
Or mere utility/functionality (save time not reading some books AND advance
your scholarly/literary/etc career as someone who reads and knows them).

A con isn't "pretentious".

People who have actually read a book can be much more pretentious about it --
in the sense of acting as if this gave them some unique insight over other
mere mortals who haven't read it.

~~~
floofyfloofer
Any book worth reading should be worth reading because of that insight. Which
might be a way to say that most words aren't writing, and especially these.

------
platz
TLDR; the most important thing about a book is it's historical and social
context in the web of literature of it's time, so by understanding
relationships, peers, and authors, reading the actual text is not necessary

~~~
derefr
I never heard this about books, but this has always been my understanding of
modern art. An entirely-red canvas is meaningless and valueless on its own;
but in its _context_ as a response, in a specific cultural time and place, to
artistic trends of the time, one _particular_ entirely-red canvas is quite
valuable indeed.

It's much more akin to objects (including books!) signed by people: the value
of the object is that the object _participated_ in some part of history,
rather than anything about the object _per se_.

~~~
keiferski
1\. Modern art is an extremely vast field. I really wish this "modern art =
scribble drawings" meme would die. Not to mention that modern != contemporary.

2\. It's not really that complicated. Writing operates in the exact same way;
without the context of our societal language, a novel would just be
"meaningless and valueless" as it would simply be a bunch of black symbols on
a piece of paper. This would likely be more obvious if we lived in a visually-
based society and not a linguistic-based one.

~~~
derefr
> Modern art is an extremely vast field. I really wish this "modern art =
> scribble drawings" meme would die.

Is there a name for the specific kind of modern art that has red canvases,
soup cans, and splatter-painting as central examples? I'd be glad to change my
usage if there were a clearer term.

> Not to mention that modern != contemporary.

I'm not sure what you mean here; I was using "modern art" to refer
specifically to the works of the Modern Art movement—which tended to have a
lot of 'scribble-drawings'—rather than more generally to "art made in modern
times."

> It's not really that complicated. Writing operates in the exact same way;
> without the context of our societal language, a novel would just be
> "meaningless and valueless" as it would simply be a bunch of black symbols
> on a piece of paper.

This is silly; a book can tell you a story without you needing to know
anything about the time and place the book was written in. You need to know
the _language_ of the book, yes, but a book with a considerate author will
often subtly _teach_ you any jargon it uses, or the significance of cultural
signifiers it refers to, etc. This is why outsider protagonists in fiction are
so common.

And this is also the point of "annotated editions" of books: authors tend to
write assuming their audience will understand their own current cultural
milieu, but not that of other cultures or eras. A text that comes _from_
another culture has no value to a layperson from outside that culture, until
it is annotated with enough context to make it accessible.

Modern art (or whatever you'd call the subset of the movement that has
scribble-drawings as its central referent) is not self-contained in this way,
in the sense that people don't expect or require modern art to build in a lens
for interpreting it, to consider it "good."

In a world without the "people like owning signed copies of things" effect,
I'd expect art that is meaningless without inaccessible-to-laymen cultural
context to mostly fail, in the same way unannotated books from foreign
cultures fail; and I'd expect such works to succeed exactly to the degree to
which the author—or an intermediate, such as a museum curator—went to the
effort to create a more complete work that contains both the piece and its
cultural context. You know: really long wall tags. Or a documentary video
playing beside the exhibited piece.

You do see these, but not very often. Why? Because "art lovers" value _being_
the ones to explain the cultural context to their friends, and value works
(and curatory paradigms) that enable this, by avoiding annotation and leaving
the works illegible. Thus neatly explaining how the scribble-drawings cluster
of works ever achieved popularity at all. "Art snobs", who enjoy—to coin a
phrase—artsplaining.

~~~
keiferski
_Is there a name for the specific kind of modern art that has red canvases,
soup cans, and splatter-painting as central examples? I 'd be glad to change
my usage if there were a clearer term._

No, because there is no broad "type" that does such things.

 _I 'm not sure what you mean here; I was using "modern art" to refer
specifically to the works of the Modern Art movement—which tended to have a
lot of 'scribble-drawings'—rather than more generally to "art made in modern
times."_

I'm not sure how you are aware of the Modern Art movement but somehow equate
it to scribble drawings. You consider Picasso's work to be "scribble
drawings"? Art made in the past ±30 years is not considered "modern art", it
is considered "contemporary art."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art)

 _This is silly; a book can tell you a story without you needing to know
anything about the time and place the book was written in. You need to know
the language of the book, yes, but a book with a considerate author will often
subtly teach you any jargon it uses, or the significance of cultural
signifiers it refers to, etc. This is why outsider protagonists in fiction are
so common._

You're missing my point. The language of the book (English) corresponds to the
language of art. A lot of contemporary art is a reaction to things within its
own field and cannot be really understood without understanding its context.
If you don't understand its context (and have a hostile "they're just art
snobs" attitude toward it) then no, you probably won't appreciate it. Not to
mention the fact that again, contemporary art is truly a _massive_ field
filled with every possible variety of artist and intent, ranging from
political statements to pure works of craftsmanship, and everything in
between.

Ultimately, contemporary art has its own vocabulary. If you don't bother to
learn it, don't expect to understand it. Furthermore, understanding a piece
doesn't mean you like it or think it's a good piece of art. Whether
contemporary artists should or should not aim to have their work intelligible
to laymen is another question entirely.

------
everyone
Imo a lot of literature has 0 novel content, so this is not suprising.

Additional: I'm always shitting on the humanities in the comments here. I dont
have anything against them, I both produce them and consume massive quantities
of them. My point is simply that they are trivial. If all art suddenly
disappeared it wouldnt really matter. If knowledge about, and/or the fruits of
STEM stuff disappeared it would be a huge setback, it could cause civilization
to collapse.

Additional additional: It bugs me how large a percentage of our resources we
plow into entertainment.

eg.

"On a global scale, the entertainment and media market was worth 1.72 trillion
U.S. dollars in 2015 and is set to rise to 2.14 trillion by 2020"

NASAs current yearly budget is about 18.4 billion

~~~
lj3
Arts aren't just entertainment. They're a reflection of the soul of a culture
and exist long after that culture is dead. If you look at every culture ever
recorded in human history, you'll note there is a direct correlation between a
culture's progression in art and a culture's progression in science and
technology.

That said, I agree with you that most written literature has very little to
offer most people. Most pieces of literature bear that designation because
they are "teachable" in one form or another. Some are chosen because they
perfect one very specific aspect of the craft of writing. Others, like
Finnegan's Wake, are like P vs NP in that they provide an infinitely complex
problem for intelligent minds to spend lifetimes chewing on without ever
reaching a conclusion.

Something else to keep in mind: the medium is the message. The medium a piece
of art chooses is significant. TV and movies will rot your brain regardless of
whether it's The Big Bang Theory or Citizen Kane. Reading will improve your
brain, regardless of whether you're reading Danielle Steel or Chaucer.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> TV and movies will rot your brain regardless of whether it's The Big Bang
> Theory or Citizen Kane.

I cannot agree with that at all. A great deal of cinema is heavy enough on
information to be educational. Think about how much you can learn about
history, literature, economics, or politics from watching Jean-Luc Godard’s
output from 1962-1968. Even if the medium has flaws in the depth of its
presentation, its compilation of citations to important literature that can
then be followed up, can be invaluable.

And aren't plays reading? And do they really lose the goodness they have as
"reading" when they move from the written page to a performance that just
happens to be captured on film instead of before a live audience?

~~~
lj3
You're talking content. I'm talking neurobiology.

~~~
everyone
Can you elaborate? post some links or references? Sounds interesting.

~~~
lj3
Here's a decent article to start with: [https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-
books-and-television-af...](https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-books-and-
television-affect-your-brain-differently-according-to-science-82c3b14f789b)

If you do some searching, you'll find lots of ink spilled on the subject of
"does TV rot your brain" and the cognitive benefits of reading.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
The article you link to speaks about television, not cinema. Furthermore, its
claim that the visual medium encourages passivity:

"you can just sit back and watch everything unfold without effort on your
part. You’re less likely to pause to reflect on what’s happening."

does not apply to the considerable number of filmmakers (and occasional
television content producers) who employ Brechtian alienation techniques.

~~~
lj3
Don't be dense. That sentence is from the reporter trying to make a study
easier to understand to the common folk. Actually read the study referenced.
There are also other studies that compare content and find it doesn't make a
difference on the impact of the brain.

~~~
everyone
Just an idea,, Maybe all TV input _looks_ the same to us, as regards its
effect on the brain, but in reality its not.. Our tools for measuring anything
to do with the brain/cognition are extremely crude currently.

eg. [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-
brain/ignobe...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-
brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/)

To use computers as an analogy. If you were to examine it only physically, a
hard drive filled with random garbage would look the same as one filled with
our greatest works.

~~~
lj3
What's your motivation behind this comment? Do you really want to live in a
world where some of humanity's greatest achievements are seen the same as
random garbage? In any case, current brain scans are crude, but they measure
function, not data. It's like putting an ammeter over an ethernet cable.
You're not going to be able to see the data flowing over the wire, but you'll
definitely be able to tell that data isn't flowing when it should be. You can
also physically inspect a computer and see when a capacitor has blown.

------
nkhodyunya
I don't always enjoy the books I've read, but i always enjoy those that I
haven't. People never ask me for recommendations. In spite of this, I
generously provide my unwanted opinion.

------
gallerdude
I've felt a very small version of this in watching certain movies. When I saw
_Stand By Me_ , I understood _Stranger Things_ and _Super 8_ a lot more.

~~~
sanderjd
For sure, context can have a multiplicative effect on the value of a text.
This article seems to be arguing that context is the value itself, which
doesn't quite ring true to me.

