How to Talk About Places You’ve Never Been: On the Importance of Armchair Travel by Pierre Bayard – review

The academic is on familiar ground with this irreverent, occasionally jargon-heavy, bluffer’s guide

In 2007 the French academic Pierre Bayard, a professor of literature, had a surprise hit with How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. As the title implies, it was a provocative and entertaining piece of pop criticism with a serious message at its heart: literary debate is often about the debate itself, rather than the initial work, and needn’t be any less valid for that. It argued further that for some of the most famous works, primary knowledge of the text could be actively unhelpful. Bayard’s mischievous tone rendered the whole thing more readable than it ought to have been. At least one reader found its teachings very useful during preparation for his undergraduate English exams.

Related: Review: How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard

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