[Umberto Eco. L'Espresso , July 20, 2007]
know of a book report with the books out more often means not having read it.
remember (but, as we shall see, not necessarily good memories), a beautiful article by Giorgio Manganelli, in which he explained as a fine player knows that a book you should read before you open it. He was not speaking of that virtue which often requires the reader to the profession (or the amateur of taste), they can decide by an incipit, two open pages at random from the index, often from literature, if a book is worth or not worth to be read . This, I would say, it's just business. No, Manganelli talking about a kind of enlightenment, which ostensibly and, paradoxically, claims the gift.
'How about a book without having ever read' (Excelsior) Pierre Bayard (psychoanalyst and professor of literature) is not about how you have to know if you do not read a book, but of how one can safely speak of a book unread, even by teacher to student, and even if it is a book of extraordinary importance. The its calculation is scientific, good libraries collect several million volumes, even to read a daily read only 365 in one year, 3600, in ten years, and between ten and eighty, we would have just 25,200 beds. Trifle. On the other hand, anyone who has had a good high school education knows to hear a speech, say, on Bandello, G., Boyar, many tragedies of Alfieri, and even 'The Confessions of an Italian' having only learned in school the title and critical position, but without ever having read a line.
and placement is critical of the critical point for Bayard. He says without shame that he never read the 'Ulysses' by Joyce, but to discuss it, alluding to that is a reprise of the 'Odyssey' (even if he admits he never read in its entirety), which is based on the monologue, which takes place in Dublin in a day, and so on. Thus he writes: "So I happen frequently in my classes, without batting an eye, often referred to in Joyce." Know of a book report with the books Read more often means that not having read it.
Bayard shows how, when there arises to read certain books neglected for some time, we realize that he knows very well the content because in the meantime if they were read others talking about it, cited them, or moved in the same order of ideas. And (as does some hilarious analysis of various literary texts in which they are never read books by Graham Greene in Musil, Valéry by Anatole France, and David Lodge) I am honored to dedicate an entire chapter to my 'The Name of the Rose', where William by Baskerville shows to know very well the contents of the second book in the 'Poetics' of Aristotle, although he is picking up for the first time, simply because it relies on other pages Aristotelian. We will see at the end of these bags that do not cite this quote by mere vanity.
The most intriguing part of this pamphlet, less paradoxical than it seems, is that we forget too high a percentage of the books we read really, or rather they we compose a sort of virtual image made not so much of what they said, but of what we have done comes to mind. So if someone who has not read a book, there cites passages or situations exist, we are very ready to believe that the book talked about it.
is that (and here comes out the psychoanalyst rather than the teacher of literature) Bayard is not so much interested in the people who read the books of others, but rather the fact that each reading (or non-reading, reading or imperfect) should have a creative aspect, and that (to put it in simple terms) in a book the reader should first put its. Much to hope for a school where, as talk of unread books is one way to know yourself, the students 'invent' the books that will not have to read.
