{"id":290,"date":"2004-12-19T12:16:14","date_gmt":"2004-12-19T20:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/?p=290"},"modified":"2012-03-16T10:32:54","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T17:32:54","slug":"on-books-ive-never-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbaraguggenheim.com\/bg\/on-books-ive-never-read\/","title":{"rendered":"On Books I’ve Never Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Everyone claims to be perusing Proust, but who are they kidding? Confessions of a literary faker.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Barbara Guggenheim<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s a recurring nightmare. Dewar’s calls. They’re interviewing me for\u00a0a whiskey ad and everything’s going well until the final question:\u00a0“What’s the last book you’ve read?” If I were telling the truth, I’d\u00a0have to mention Jackie Collins. But I’m ready with a list: Hawking’s\u00a0A Brief History of Time,<\/em> Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past<\/em> and\u00a0Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore’s The Medium is the Massage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Have I read any of these? Absolutely not. Faking what you’ve read is a\u00a0widespread offense, and I’m a serial offender.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Over a Cobb salad at Bameys, I asked my friend Marie, “Reading anything good?” I was leaving the next day for Mexico and desperate for a\u00a0book I could sink my teeth into. “Schopenhauer,” she said, giving me a\u00a0superior smile.\u00a0<\/strong>My response was knee-jerk: “l read him in college.” Marie\u00a0countered, “In German? It’s soooo much better in the original.” I clenched\u00a0my teeth and forced a smile.<\/p>\n

On my way out of the restaurant, it hit me. There was no way Marie was\u00a0reading Schopenhauer – not in German, not in English, not even in comic\u00a0book form. Why would she fake it with me, one of her closest friends?\u00a0Worse still, \u00a0why did l fake it back? I hadn’t read Schopenhauer in college – at least not that I could remember.<\/p>\n

Do you know anyone who’s read Remembrance of Things\u00a0Past?<\/em> Not just\u00a0Swann’s Way<\/em> – the whole thing. It’s thousands of pages long and would\u00a0take two years if you did nothing else. But Proust is everyone’s bellwether.\u00a0Asking “Have you read Proust?” is a way of taking someone’s intellectual\u00a0and cultural temperature. Having read\u00a0part of Swann’s Way,<\/em> this is one I can\u00a0answer honestly. “Un peu,’<\/em>‘ I say.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons people lie about\u00a0their reading habits. If you’re\u00a0a young guy trying to get a\u00a0girl, I can understand. When my\u00a0husband arrived at\u00a0Harvard Law School, having\u00a0spent his teenage years as a\u00a0surfer in L.A. his first date – a\u00a0Radcliffe girl – said he\u00a0reminded her of Senlin. He\u00a0had no idea what she was\u00a0talking about. The following\u00a0day he plunged into a volume\u00a0of 20th-century poetry and\u00a0was able to begin their next\u00a0date with, “I’ve just stepped\u00a0off that ‘swiftly tilting planet,'” quoting from the Conrad\u00a0Aiken poem she’d alluded to.\u00a0After that, he was rarely caught\u00a0without a line of poetry he\u00a0could sneak into the conversation. I suppose it was foreplay.<\/p>\n

Many people fake it because they\u00a0just don’t have the time ro read. l started down\u00a0that dangerous road in college. With five courses and an after-school job,\u00a0Cliffs Notes were the answer\u00a0<\/strong>to my prayers. Maybe if didn’t get to experience the joy of reveling in fine prose (can you do that at 18 anyway? ), but at least I\u00a0passed my lit classes. I fantasized about a day when I would have the time to\u00a0lie around all day reading. The day never came.<\/p>\n

I went on to work in the art world, which is rife with unreadable books.\u00a0Even the glossy magazine Artforum<\/em> seems deliberately opaque. My husband\u00a0once took a copy into the bathroom with him, determined to keep it there\u00a0until he understood every article. Three years later, the magazine is still there.<\/p>\n

At a recent interview for an art-consulting assignment, I was asked by the\u00a0head of a large conglomerate to name the journals I regularly read. What if I\u00a0hadn’t said Foreign Affairs<\/em> and the New York Review of Books?<\/em> What if I’d\u00a0told the truth – People<\/em> and In Style?<\/em> The interview might have taken a turn for the honest: “Do you think Camilla and Charles will ever marry?” Then again, I\u00a0might not have\u00a0gotten the job.<\/p>\n

Sometimes people fake it because they don’t want to be left out. That’s why\u00a0I joined a book club. If I read some best-sellers, I reckoned, I’d have more\u00a0interesting things to say at cocktail parties. Right away I could tell that my friend Susie was faking all the reading. She’d skim a few pages, and the night\u00a0before the meeting, she’d call around, parching together some plot details and\u00a0stylistic observations. I told her it would be quicker to read the damn book\u00a0than to go through all her machinations, but she never bothered – and during\u00a0the discussions she always managed to make the most insightful observations.<\/p>\n

It drove the rest of us crazy.<\/p>\n

The more you lie, of course, the greater\u00a0the risk you’ll get caught. Someday I know\u00a0I’ll run into the one vicious person in a\u00a0thousand who’ll spring the fake\u00a0follow-up question. When he\u00a0asks me if I liked the scene at\u00a0the beach restaurant, I’ll say,”Yes, wasn’t it beautifully written?”\u00a0And he’ll say, “<\/strong>There\u00a0was no such scene.”<\/p>\n

I rushed to Brentano’s\u00a0after leaving Marie. Maybe it\u00a0was time I read War And Peace<\/em>\u00a0for real – all 1,185\u00a0pages. As I walked the aisles,\u00a0I saw, for the first time since\u00a0college a rack of Cliffs\u00a0Notes – all shiny, yellow and\u00a0black. And there it was: War And Peace,<\/em> a mere 120 pages. I\u00a0glanced furtively over my\u00a0shoulder to make sure no one\u00a0I knew was looking. Should I\u00a0or shouldn’t I?<\/p>\n

For good measure I also\u00a0grabbed Anna Karenina.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone claims to be perusing Proust, but who are they kidding? Confessions of a literary faker. By Barbara Guggenheim It’s a recurring nightmare. Dewar’s calls. They’re interviewing me for\u00a0a whiskey ad and everything’s going well until the final question:\u00a0“What’s the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15,11],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-humor","category-magazine-articles-by-barbara","tag-w-magazine"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t