How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read (11 page)
In this public lecture, then, a writer who has not read the books on which he is expected to speak confronts an audience that has not read those he has written. We have before us a perfect example of what is conventionally called a
dialogue of the deaf.
14
While this scenario is taken to the extreme in the case of the lecture in
The Third Man
, it occurs more commonly than you might think in our conversations about books. First, often the various interlocutors will not have read the book they are talking about, or will only have skimmed it, in which case they are each actually talking about a different book.
Second, in the more unusual case in which each person has held the book in his or her hands and truly knows it, the discussion is less about the book itself than about a fragmentary and reconstituted object (as we have seen in Umberto Eco, for example), a private screen book unrelated to the screen books of the other readers and unlikely, as a result, to overlap with them.
But what is at stake here transcends the case of any individual book. The dialogue of the deaf is a function not only of the divergence between the two authors Martins is speaking about, but also of the fact that the parties present are attempting to conduct a dialogue on the basis of two sets of books, or, if you prefer, two distinct and adversarial libraries. It is not simply two books that are in play, but two irreconcilable lists of names (Dexter and Dexter, Grey and Gray), as a result of the profound difference, indeed the incompatibility, of the two cultures confronting each other.
We might use the term
inner library
to characterize that set of books—a subset of the collective library—around which every personality is constructed, and which then shapes each person’s individual relationship to books and to other people.
15
Specific titles figure in these private libraries, but, like Montaigne’s, they are primarily composed of fragments of forgotten and imaginary books through which we apprehend the world.
In this case, the dialogue of the deaf arises from the fact that the inner libraries of Martins and of his audience don’t overlap, or do so only to a limited extent. The conflict is not limited to any particular book, even if certain titles are mentioned, but bears more broadly on the very conception of what a book, and literature, may be. For this reason, achieving communication between the two libraries will not be easy, and any attempt to do so will inevitably create tension.
Thus it is that in truth we never talk about a book unto itself; a whole set of books always enters the discussion through the portal of a single title, which serves as a temporary symbol for a complete conception of culture. In every such discussion, our inner libraries—built within us over the years and housing all our secret books—come into contact with the inner libraries of others, potentially provoking all manner of friction and conflict.
For we are more than simple shelters for our inner libraries; we
are
the sum of these accumulated books. Little by little, these books have made us who we are, and they cannot be separated from us without causing us suffering. Just as Martins cannot bear to hear criticism of the novels written by his heroes, comments that challenge the books in our inner libraries, attacking what has become a part of our identity, may wound us to the core of our being.
1
. “Everyone who has passed the Matriculation examination at the end of his school studies complains of the obstinacy with which he is pursued by anxiety-dreams of having failed, or of being obliged to take the examination again, etc. In the case of those who have obtained a University degree this typical dream is replaced by another one which represents them as having failed in their University finals; and it is in vain that they object, even while they are still asleep, that for years they have been practicing medicine or working as University lecturers or heads of offices. The ineradicable memories of the punishments that we suffered for our evil deeds in childhood become active within us once more and attach themselves to the two crucial points in our studies—the
dies irae
,
dies
illa
of our stiffest examinations.” Sigmund Freud,
The Interpretation of Dreams
, translated by James Strachey (New York:Avon, 1965), p. 308.
2
. UB++. UB-.
3
. UB
4
. Graham Greene,
The Third Man
(London:Heinemann, 1950), p. 83.
5
. Ibid., p. 86.
6
. UB++.
7
. Greene, op. cit., pp. 83-84.
8
. Ibid., p. 84.
9
. Ibid.
10
. Ibid., p. 85.
11
. Ibid.
12
. Ibid., pp. 85–86.
13
. Before arriving in Vienna, Martins makes a stop in Frankfurt, where he is also mistaken for the other Dexter and where his frank answers are also taken to be humorous:
A man he could recognize from twenty feet away as a journalist approached his table.
“You Mr. Dexter?” he asked.
“Yes,” Martins said, taken off his guard.
“You look younger than your photographs,” the man said [ . . . ] “What about views on the American novel?”
“I don’t read them.”
“The well-known acid humor,” the journalist said. (Ibid., p. 13.)
14
. Concerning this notion, see my
Enquête sur Hamlet: Le dialogue de sourds
(Paris:Minuit, 2002), FB-.
15
. The second of the three libraries I am introducing in this book, the
inner library
is a subjective part of the
collective library
and includes the books that have left a deep impression on each subject.
(in which we confirm, along with the Tiv tribe
of western Africa, that it is wholly unnecessary
to have opened a book in order to deliver
an enlightened opinion on it, even if you
displease the specialists in the process)
A
S A TEACHER,
it is my lot more often than average to find myself obligated to speak to a large audience about books I haven’t read, either in the strict sense (having never opened them) or the attenuated sense (having only skimmed them or forgotten them). I am not sure I have dealt with the situation any better than Rollo Martins. But I have often attempted to reassure myself with the thought that those who are listening to me are no doubt on similar ground and are probably no more confident about it than I am.
I have observed over the years that this situation in no way unsettles my students, who often comment about books they haven’t read in ways that are not only relevant, but indeed quite accurate, by relying on elements of the text that I have, involuntarily or not, conveyed to them. To avoid embarrassing anyone in my place of employment, I shall choose an example that is geographically remote, to be sure, but close to our subject: that of the Tiv tribe of West Africa.
If the Tiv are not comparable to students in general, a group of them did find themselves in such a position when an anthropologist named Laura Bohannan undertook to acquaint them with that classic entry in the English theatrical canon
Hamlet
,
1
which they had never heard of.
The choice of Shakespeare’s play was not entirely disinterested. In response to a British colleague who suspected that Americans did not understand Shakespeare, Laura Bohannan, who is American, had countered that human nature is the same everywhere; he challenged her to prove it. Thus she left for Africa with a copy of
Hamlet
in her luggage, in the hope of demonstrating that human beings are fundamentally the same across cultural differences.
Welcomed by the tribe, with whom she had stayed once before, Laura Bohannan set up camp within the territory of a knowledgeable elder, who presided over some 140 people all more or less related to him. The anthropologist had hoped to be able to discuss the meaning of their ceremonies with her hosts, but most of their time was taken up with drinking beer. Isolated in her hut, she devoted herself to reading Shakespeare’s play and eventually came up with an interpretation that seemed to her to be universal.
But the Tiv noticed that Laura Bohannan was spending a great deal of time reading the same text and, intrigued, suggested that she recount to them this story that seemed to fascinate her so much. They asked her to supply them with the necessary explanations as she went along and promised to be indulgent about her linguistic errors. She was thus given an ideal opportunity to verify her hypothesis and prove the universality of Shakespeare’s play.
It is not long before problems arise. In describing the beginning of the play, Bohannan tries to explain how, one night, three men standing guard outside a chief ’s compound suddenly see the dead chief approaching them. This is the first source of disagreement, because for the Tiv, there is no way the shape perceived by the men can be the dead leader:
“Why was he no longer their chief?”
“He was dead,” I explained. “That is why they were troubled and afraid when they saw him.”
“Impossible,” began one of the elders, handing his pipe on to his neighbor, who interrupted, “Of course it wasn’t the dead chief. It was an omen sent by a witch. Go on.”
2
Shaken by the self-assurance of her interlocutors, Bohannan nonetheless continues her tale and recounts how Horatio addresses Hamlet the elder to ask him what must be done to give him peace, and how, when the deceased fails to respond, he declares that it is up to the son of the dead chief, Hamlet, to intervene. At this there is a new stir of surprise in Bohannan’s audience, since for the Tiv this kind of matter is not the business of the young, but of the elders, and the deceased has a living brother, Claudius:
The old men muttered: such omens were matters for chiefs and elders, not for youngsters; no good could come of going behind a chief ’s back; clearly Horatio was not a man who knew things.
3
Bohannan is then further disconcerted by finding herself unable to say whether Hamlet the elder and Claudius had the same mother, a distinction that is crucial in the eyes of the Tiv:
“Did Hamlet’s father and uncle have one mother?”
His question barely penetrated my mind; I was too upset and thrown too far off balance by having one of the most important elements of Hamlet knocked straight out of the picture. Rather uncertainly I said that I thought they had the same mother, but I wasn’t sure—the story didn’t say. The old man told me severely that these genealogical details made all the difference and that when I got home I must ask the elders about it. He shouted out the door to one of his younger wives to bring his goatskin bag.
4
Bohannan then turns the discussion to Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, but this goes no better. Whereas in Western readings of the play, it is customary to insist on the slightly indecent rapidity with which Gertrude remarries after the death of her husband, the Tiv are surprised that she waited so long:
