Wie schön, dass es noch Intellektuelle gibt
Hier ein cooler Franzose, der ein Buch darüber geschrieben hat, dass man Bücher nicht lesen muss, und damit eine Lanze für ein kulturell aktives Leben bricht. Ein unglaublich lustiger Typ. Und nebenbei erfährt man natürlich, was der richtige Zugang zum Lesen eines Buches ist.
Ein weiterer Aspekt, der mich schon lange fasziniert: Die Zugehörigkeit zu einer bestimmten Klasse prägt heute noch entscheidend, mit welchem Gefühl man bestimmten Bereichen des Lebens begegnet, und wie souverän man sich dort bewegt. So gibt es in Frankreich den Intellektuellen, der per definition, ab Geburt, kultiviert ist. Entsprechend lässig kann er mit Kultur umgehen — und aus dieser Souveränität heraus ist sein Zugang natürlich so, dass er wirklich kulturelle Kompetenz erwirbt. Eine positive selbsterfüllende Prophezeihung also. Schade nur, dass so viele Menschen davon ausgeschlossen bleiben.
Ähnlich scheint es sich auch in Deutschland mit upper-class Umgangsformen zu verhalten. Mit denen aufgewachsen zu sein und zu wissen, wann man sie auch brechen darf, ist die Kompetenz, von der Aufsteiger immer wieder ausgestochen und entlarvt werden.
Aber hier endlich zu den schönen Ausschnitten eines Interviews mit besagtem französischen Intellektuellen:
“How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read?” has become a best seller here, with translation rights snapped up across Europe and under negotiation in Britain and the United States. “I am surprised because I hadn’t imagined how guilty nonreaders feel,” Mr. Bayard, 52, said in an interview. “With this book, they can shake off their guilt without psychoanalysis, so it’s much cheaper.”
Mr. Bayard reassures them that there is no obligation to read, and confesses to lecturing students on books that he has either not read or has merely skimmed. And he recalls passionate exchanges with people who also have not read the book under discussion.
Domestic life is another potentially hazardous zone. People often want their spouses and partners to share their love of a particular book. And when this happens, Mr. Bayard said, they can both inhabit a “secret universe.” But if only one has read the book, silent empathy may offer the best way out. Students, he noted from experience, are skilled at opining about books they have not read, building on elements he may have provided in a lecture
“To be able to talk with finesse about something one does not know is worth more than the universe of books,” he writes.
“This is not a book written by a nonreader.” But he chose this device, he said, because he wanted to help people conquer their fear of culture by challenging the way that literature is presented to students and the public in France. “We are taught one way of reading,” he said. “Students are told to read the book, then to fill out a form detailing everything they have read. It’s a linear approach that serves to enshrine books. People now come up to me to describe the cultural wounds they suffered at school. ‘You have to read all of Proust.’ They were traumatized.” “They see culture as a huge wall, as a terrifying specter of ‘knowledge,’” he went on. “But we intellectuals, who are avid readers, know there are many ways of reading a book. You can skim it, you can start and not finish it, you can look at the index. You learn to live with a book.” So, yes, he conceded, his true aim is to make people read more — but with more freedom. “I want people to learn to live with books,” he said. “I want to help people organize their own paths through culture.”
Read It? No, but You Can Skim a Few Pages and Fake It — New York Times