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Bluffing your way through books you never 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.

I think Cliff Notes indirectly wrote the book on pretending to know something about books you never read. While they’ve been derided I’ve read the Cliff Notes of a book after I’ve read it and they’re actually very good at providing some insights that a reader may have missed.  I’ve never read the entire Dante’s Inferno, but I did have to read a large excerpt for an English class. As a poor writer myself I have to give Dante credit for his skill at prose, but as for the conent, pure delusional rantings. It was popular in its day  an age when there was a distinct lust for Hell porn and the Inferno probably satisfied that fetish quite well. I’m also another one of those people that has never finished James Joyce’s Ulysses. I’ve gotten a little over half way through. The first fifty pages are worth taking the time to read just to see Joyce take the English language and juggle it like no other writer of English ever has. I tried reading it on a long plane trip once and the flight attendant spoke to me like I was a lost child the entire trip, constantly checking back to see if I needed more soda. She probably felt sorry for me. To me it seems a waste of one’s allowable allowance of small lies to fudge on the extent of one’s reading. It is best to say that you haven’t read it and don’t make excuses.

The Mission Can’t Be Accomplished — It’s Time for a New Strategy

Realigning our diplomacy and military capabilities to achieve order will hugely reduce the numbers of our enemies and gain us new and important allies. This cannot happen, however, until our forces are moving out of Iraq. Why should Iran negotiate to relieve our pain as long as we are increasing its influence in Iraq and beyond? Withdrawal will awaken most leaders in the region to their own need for U.S.-led diplomacy to stabilize their neighborhood.

If Bush truly wanted to rescue something of his historical legacy, he would seize the initiative to implement this kind of strategy. He would eventually be held up as a leader capable of reversing direction by turning an imminent, tragic defeat into strategic recovery.

Bush’s plan is to leave the quagmire for the next guy/gal to clean up. Then whoever it is will get the blame for doing what Bush should have done and didn’t have the intelligence or moral courage to do.