The New York Times‘ Sunday Magazine interviewed University of Paris French Literature professor Pierre Bayard about his book How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. The interview is great, but here’s a tickler.
Q. Then why are you so willing to devalue the experience of close reading in favor of skimming? You seem to believe that knowing a little bit about 100 literary classics is preferable to knowing one book intimately.
A. I think a great reader is able to read from the first line to the last line; if you want to do that with some books, it’s necessary to skim other books. If you want to fall in love with someone, it’s necessary to meet many people. You see what I mean?
Q. You suggest in your book that schools destroy a love of literature, in part because they don’t allow skimming.
A. Yes. Sometimes I help my son write book reports. Guillaume — he’s 14. It’s terrible. The questions are so specific about the names of characters, dates and towns where the heroes went that I am unable to answer the questions. It is the model of reading in France. A kind of scientific reading, which prevents people from inventing another kind of reading, which should be a form of wandering, as in a garden.
