“THERE is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all.” Thus begins Pierre Bayard's witty and provocative meditation on the nature, scale and necessity of non-reading. With thousands of books published every year, it is, he points out, the primary way people relate to books. And even those books they do get round to opening remain in a sense outside their knowledge. “Even as I read”, he observes, “I start to forget what I have read.”
“不读书的办法不止一种，最彻底的办法就是干脆不打开。”皮埃尔•巴亚德（
Pierre Bayard
）针对何谓“不读书”、如何“不读书”以及为何“不读书”所撰写的诙谐而又颇富争议的思考录如是开头。他指出，每年有许许多多的书出版，是人们接触书本的主要途径。他还指出，即便是那些人们无暇打开的书，也具有某种人们无法理解的意义。“就连我在看书的时候，也会渐渐忘记看了些什么，”他说。
The first section explores the four categories of unread books, into at least one of which Mr Bayard places every book he mentions. These are the “books unknown to me”, the “books I have skimmed”, the “books I have heard about” and the “books I have forgotten”. No exceptions are admitted, even for books he himself wrote.
第一部分探讨了四类未读之书，巴亚德将他提到的每一本书都至少划入其中一类。这四类分别是“我不知道的书”、“我扫过一眼的书”、“我听说过的书”和“我不记得的书”。他认为这四类涵盖了所有的未读之书，甚至包括他自己写的那些。
Each category is illustrated with anexample from literature. The librarian in Robert Musil's “The Man Without Qualities” explains that reading any particular book distracts from what istruly important: the relationship between all books. Paul Valéry, who eulogised Marcel Proust despite brazenly admitting he had only skimmed the writer's work, claimed this critical distance better enabled him to comment on it. Umberto Ecostructured “The Name of the Rose” around a lost book which none of thecharacters had read, but about which each nonetheless had strong views. Montaigne, who was so forgetful that he took to annotating each book he read with a brief summary, felt that this passage to oblivion was an essential part of making a book's contents his own.
每一类均以文学作品为例进行了阐述。在罗伯特•穆西尔（
Robert Musil
）的《无德之人》（
The Man Without Qualities
）中有一位图书馆员，他说，人们光读某一本书，就会忽视真正重要的东西——书与书之间的联系。保罗•瓦莱里（
Paul Val
é
ry
）对马塞尔•普鲁斯特（
Marcel Proust
）大加褒扬，却大言不惭地承认仅仅扫过普鲁斯特作品一眼，还说这个距离（意指不细读——译注）至关重要，能让他更好地对其作出评价。乌姆伯托•艾科（
Umberto Eco
）的《玫瑰之名》（
The Name of the Rose
）是围绕一本遗失之书构思的，其中的人物没有一人读过这本书，但每个人却都对这本书有着坚定的见解。健忘的蒙田（
16
世纪法国著名思想家和散文家）在读过的每一本书上都要写上一小段摘要。他认为，要想将书的内容消化掉，趁还没忘记之前这么做是很有必要的。
The second section describes social encounters during which it becomes essential to talk about unread books. Mr Bayard, who is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris (his book was a bestseller in France earlier this year), says airily that he must often talk about books he has at best skimmed, at worst not even opened—sometimes even with the books' authors. Should you happen to meet the writer of a book you could be expected to have read, you might find useful the advice proffered here: “While maintaining the greatest possible degree of ambiguity...tell him that you like what he wrote.”
第二部分谈到了社交问题，当人们邂逅之时，讨论没有读过的书往往是必不可少的。巴亚德是巴黎大学法国文学教授（他的作品今年早些时候是法国的畅销书）。他满不在乎地说，他必须经常说一些他最多不过是走马观花的书，有的压根都未曾打开过，而同他说话的有时甚至就是书的作者。假如你碰巧遇见一本书的作者，而他又可能期望你读过这本书，下面这个建议你会觉得很有用：告诉他你喜欢他的书……同时要尽可能地做到含糊其辞。
The third and final section contains the book's meat: the “various means of extricating ourselves from these situations with grace”. The first requirement is a lack of shame; the second is the courage to impose one's own ideas on books. Then there is the most radical of all: to revel in one's freedom as a non-reader to recreate each book to one's own ideal. In any conversation about a book, says Mr Bayard, both parties are talking about different texts, “caught up in an endless process of inventing books”. Someone who finds the courage to embrace this process will find that “in that moment, he becomes a writer himself”.
