How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read (14 page)

For Gastinel, these generalities about the two children or the setting shared by the two works are the only safe territory. On the few occasions when the conversation does become less vague, incomprehension starts to blossom between Dochin and the program host, and Gastinel is obliged to intervene, offering comments that are ambiguous enough to set both parties at ease:

“You’re going to make yourself enemies.”

“So much the better—we love a good fight. In any event, since our success we’ve already had our share. We’ve even turned away a few.”

“The references to . . . certain people in prominence at the time . . . go pretty far, at moments . . .”

“That’s not at all my opinion,” said Dochin. “You must have misread.”

“We never really attack people,” said Gastinel. “No more than, say, a few discreet jabs.”
⁷

The problem facing Gastinel is that he has to find phrases simultaneously befitting the book Dochin has read—the one he wrote—with which the program host is unfamiliar, and the book that the host has in his hands, whose existence is unknown to Dochin. Whereas Dochin’s manuscript shows no interest in complicating matters for newly respectable ex-collaborators, Céline’s is a full-blown attack on her former accomplices. The expression “discreet jabs” is a compromise formation, in the Freudian sense, between the two books being discussed simultaneously on the program. So it is that live, in front of millions of viewers, Gastinel finds himself compiling fragments of a joint book that might offer an acceptable reconciliation to both parties, within which each reader will be able to identify his own text.

But the television host is not the only one experiencing difficulties in having a coherent conversation with Dochin. The same holds for Céline and for other critics, who talk to him constantly about a book in which he finds it hard to recognize himself.

If Céline, to her misfortune, is familiar with Dochin’s book, having been obliged to type it out daily, she can’t tell him what she really thinks of it and is forced to talk to him about an imaginary book that he has difficulty superimposing onto his own. He is stupefied by Céline’s wildly enthusiastic observations during the period when she is transcribing the manuscript, remarks that understandably seem a bit off the mark to him in that she is really addressing herself:

“Frankly, this is a lucky time for me. It’s so hard to find a good writer, especially these days. All the great ones have taken leave . . . and never returned! ‘I leave you my books—enjoy!’ Céline . . . Aragon . . . Giono . . . Beckett . . . Henry Miller . . . Not to mention Marcel [ . . . ] And when I think that there are crossed out sentences that can no longer even be deciphered because you’ve drenched everything with strokes of your pen! When by some miracle I manage to read what you’ve slashed out, I’m dumbfounded. You’ve eliminated true gems! I start wondering what you could possibly have been thinking when you got rid of all that.”

The smile beginning to form on my lips must have expressed an outraged skepticism.

“One small question: are you sure you read my manuscript?”
⁸

What is being described in this passage to the point of caricature is an experience familiar to all writers, in which they realize that what is said about their books does not correspond to what they believe they have written. Every writer who has conversed at any length with an attentive reader, or read an article of any length about himself, has had the uncanny experience of discovering the absence of any connection between what he meant to accomplish and what has been grasped of it. There is nothing astonishing in this disjuncture; since their inner books differ by definition, the one the reader has superimposed on the book is unlikely to seem familiar to the writer.

This experience is unpleasant enough with a reader who has not understood your book’s project, but it is perhaps paradoxically more painful when the reader is well-intentioned and appreciates the book and grows passionate when he begins talking about it in detail. In his enthusiasm, he resorts to the words most familiar to him, and instead of this bringing him closer to the writer’s book, it brings him closer to his own ideal book, which is so crucial to his relation to language and to others that it is unique, and not transcribable into any other words. In this case, the author’s disillusionment may be even more pronounced, since it arises from the discovery of the unfathomable distance that separates us from others.

It might then be said that the chances of wounding an author by speaking about his book are all the greater when we love it. Beyond the general expressions of satisfaction that tend to create a sense of common ground, there is every likelihood that trying to be more precise in our exposition of why we appreciated the book will be demoralizing for him. In the attempt, we force him into an abrupt confrontation with everything that is irreducible in the other, and thus irre- ducible in him and in the words through which he has attempted to express himself.

In Siniac’s book, this painful experience of incomprehension is heightened by the real dissociation between the book the writer believes he has written and the one the others believe they have read, since in this instance there are two materially distinct books. But beyond the surface intrigue, it is indeed this crisis of impossible communication between the writer’s inner book and those of his readers that is played out here, in an almost allegorical manner.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that the question of the double is such an obsession in Siniac’s novel. Dochin is a participant in a process of doubling in that he does not recognize himself in what others say about his book, just as other people’s comments often make writers feel that they are dealing with a text that is
other
(which is effectively the case). The doubling is produced by the presence in us of the inner book, which can be transmitted to no one and superimposed on no other. For the inner book, the manifestation of everything that makes us absolutely unique is the expression within us of the incommunicable itself.
⁹

What, then, are we to do when facing the writer himself? The case of the encounter with the author of a book we haven’t read at first seems to be the thorniest case, since the author is assumed to be familiar with what he wrote, but it is revealed in the end to be the simplest of all.

First, it is far from evident, despite what you would expect, that the writer is in the best position either to speak about his book or to remember it precisely. The example of Montaigne, unable to identify the cases in which he is being quoted, serves as evidence that after we write a text and are separated from it, we may be as far from it as others are.

But second and most especially, if it is true that the inner books of two individuals cannot coincide, it is useless to plunge into long explanations when faced with a writer. His anxiety is likely to grow as we discuss what he has written, along with his sense that we are talking to him about another book or that we have the wrong person. And he is even in danger of undergoing a genuine experience of depersonalization, confronted as he is with the enormity of what separates one individual from another.

As may be seen, there is only one sensible piece of advice to give to those who find themselves having to talk to an author about one of his books without having read it: praise it without going into detail. An author does not expect a summary or a rational analysis of his book and would even prefer you not to attempt such a thing. He expects only that, while maintaining the greatest possible degree of ambiguity, you will tell him that you like what he wrote.

1
. SB+. UB-.

2
. UB

3
. Pierre Siniac,
Ferdinaud Céline
(Paris:Rivages/noir, 2002), p. 18.

4
. Ibid., p. 20.

5
. Ibid., p. 11.

6
. Ibid., p. 17.

7
. Ibid., p. 23.

8
. Ibid., p. 81.

9
. The author of neither the book he wrote nor of Gastinel’s crime, Dochin will also end up taking responsibility, under duress, for the murder of Céline, committed by the French secret service.

VIII
Encounters with Someone
You Love

(in which we see, along with Bill Murray and his
groundhog, that the ideal way to seduce someone
by speaking about books he or she loves
without having read them yourself would
be to bring time to a halt)

C
AN WE IMAGINE
two beings so close that their inner books come, at least for a while, to coincide? Our last example of literary confrontation brings up quite another kind of risk from that of appearing to be an impostor in the eyes of a book’s author: that of being unable to seduce the person you have fallen for, because of not having read the books he or she likes.

It is a commonplace to say that our sentimental life is deeply marked by books, from childhood onward. First of all, fictional characters exert a great deal of influence over our choices in love by representing inaccessible ideals to which we try to make others conform, usually without success. But more subtly, too, the books we love offer a sketch of a whole universe that we secretly inhabit, and in which we desire the other person to assume a role.

One of the conditions of happy romantic compatibility is, if not to have read the same books, to have read at least some books in common with the other person—which means, moreover, to have non-read the same books. From the beginning of the relationship, then, it is crucial to show that we can match the expectations of our beloved by making him or her sense the proximity of our inner libraries.

It is a strange adventure indeed that befalls Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray), the hero of Harold Ramis’s film
Groundhog Day
.
¹
The star weatherman of a major American television station, Connors is sent in the dead of winter, accompanied by the program’s producer, Rita (played by Andie MacDowell), and a cameraman, to cover an important event of American provincial life, Groundhog Day.

The day takes its name from a ceremony, widely reported in the media, that happens in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, every year on February 2. On that date, a groundhog named Phil ( just like Phil Connors) is pulled from his hutch, and based on his reactions, it is determined whether the winter is about to end or will continue for six more weeks. The groundhog consultation ceremony is rebroadcast throughout the country, alerting the nation to whatever bad weather is in store.

Having arrived on the eve of the ceremony with his crew, Phil Connors spends the night in a bed-and-breakfast. The next morning, he goes to the spot where the segment is to be shot and provides his commentary on the behavior of the groundhog, which indicates that winter will continue. With little desire to steep in small-town life any longer than necessary, Phil Connors resolves to head back to Pittsburgh that very day, but the crew’s vehicle gets stuck in a blizzard as they try to leave town, and the three journalists are forced to resign themselves to spending another night in Punxsutawney.