Pierre Bayard

Fun fact, Shakespeare does not reach all people. Leave it to a French person to point that out. Needless to say, the English program at my university did not require this book. The author points out the obvious, you cannot read every book. And then they point out the other obvious problem, sometimes that can be a detriment. Even if we've read the book, chances are we will at best mis-remember many parts. But there are times that we are put in situations in which we must at least make out as if we know the contents of the book. I recommend this to anyone who is serious about reading, and any student who really wishes they could get out of reading some of the absolute trash our literature profs put on the reading lists.… (more)

Okay, this is actually kinda great. Bayard's other book on this subject - [b:Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles|3476806|Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles|Pierre Bayard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312050651l/3476806._SY75_.jpg|3518135] - rubbed me the wrong way because I simply don't believe that characters have lives outside the page, or that any useful literary theory can come from that. Here, he's much more analytical. From Oedipus to Agatha Christie, Bayard is clearly using these texts as discussion points for his broader thoughts on textual authority, and his mastery of the subject shines through.

The first section is a detailed recap of the plot of Christie's famous The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The second is an examination of Christie's oeuvre from the point of view of both rational investigation and literary criticism. The third section is a broader discussion of truth and authorial voice. The final section returns to Ackroyd to put forward arguments why Hercule Poirot may have got it wrong - and finally an allegation against a different character entirely.

This is not heady academic stuff. Bayard is a populist critic at best, although he is pretty darn good at translating dense subjects for a general audience. It's worth noting that the book contains spoilers for roughly every single Christie novel without warning, so you'd better be either indifferent or well-read in the subject.

This book will interest people with a broader enthusiasm for literary theory but especially crime fiction fans. While his solution for the Ackroyd murder was rather obvious (it was my assumption from page one), his broader points about how we interpret texts, and the purposes of crime fiction, are salient. Occasionally borderline absurd, but salient!… (more)

Gosh, this book is an absurd flight-of-fancy, irritatingly smug, and sits at the opposite end of the literary theory spectrum to myself. It is also, incidentally, well-written and coherent within its own framework.

Bayard adopts the viewpoint of the 19th century school of literary theory (somewhat back in vogue) that characters can have a life beyond the page. He argues forcefully for the fact that we all play some role in bringing characters to life, interpreting the gaps and lacunae in the author's descriptions and bringing our own biases with us. He takes this theory further, arguing that it is dull to accept what the author tells us, and we must instead fashion our own work out of that on the page. An intriguing theory that doesn't sit well with my New-Criticism-cum-New-Historicism viewpoints, but I'm willing to let other opinions stand.

Without spoiling anything, Bayard's ultimate conclusion about what really happened in [b:The Hound of the Baskervilles|8921|The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes, #5)|Arthur Conan Doyle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1355929358l/8921._SY75_.jpg|3311984] is quite clever, really. He makes a convincing case that Holmes' faulty reasoning and preconceived notions led to an incorrect conclusion, and he argues forcefully that readers' love of Holmes since his conception goes beyond that of fans and a character. That, in a sense, Conan Doyle created a character who outgrew him, who outgrew the world of fiction.

Undeniably this work (in translation) would have been better as a long essay than an entire volume. The first 53 pages are a retelling of Conan Doyle's novel, which seems excessive. The section on Conan Doyle's relationship with his character is entirely filler, if interesting historically. Nevertheless, this is the book that we have, and thus it's the book I'm reviewing.

Much of your feeling on this book will depend on how you take Bayard's own attitude. Is he being wryly self-aware or does he truly believe his own argument? Evidently a lot of Goodreads reviewers are frustrated by the theorist arguing that characters experience lives we are not a part of. I suspect Bayard knows exactly what he's doing, and is having fun with his own conceit. He knows, as well as we do, that this is not possible, and that if Conan Doyle had intended for Holmes to get the case wrong, he would have made that clear. Thus, we must approach the whole work within Bayard's own framework or there is no point reading it at all.

From this point of view, the book is rather good. On reflection, even the seemingly excessive chapters (such as a deep analysis of the eponymous hound's mindset) are relevant to the central argument. This is a book that can inspire great literary debates - as indeed it has in my friendship circle - and for that we should be grateful. (Although the fact that Bayard has written three such books as this - another on Hamlet and one on Agatha Christie's Roger Ackroyd - may annoy literary elitists like myself, who would rather theorists devote themselves to exploring the texts themselves rather than making a career out of the spaces in between!)

What am I saying? If the work is one long con, it's a damn good one. If it's completely serious, it's trash. If it's somewhere in between, I suspect it's a cunning little argument that helped earn a writer some royalties, and it needn't be any more than that.… (more)

This book is very well written (and translated), is witty, elegant and honest especially if we consider that the one who's admitting he doesn't completely read all books is a literature professor. Nonetheless, the title was promising probably more than a collection of examples taken from literature on from authors' biographies. The best thing about the book is definitely its peculiar list of abbreviations: https://p.twimg.com/AwoK-gcCQAA3ohU.png:large… (more)