I found these Rights of the Reader in a book by a French author and former high school teacher, Daniel Pennac.
The right not to read
The right
to skip pages
The right
not to finish a book
The right
to re-read
The right
to read anything
The right
to bovarysme
A
textually transmitted disease
The right
to read anywhere
The right
to browse
The right
to read out loud
The right
to remain silent
I look them over now and then to reassure myself that I am
indeed living or at least reading by them.
The right not to read
Like a bazillion other women, it seems to be mostly women, I
belong to a book club. In fact I belong to two. I have been in more but have
learned that two is my limit. One has been meeting for close to 25 years. The
other is rather new: just 10 years.
Frequently I feel that what I read has been taken out of my
hands and become a consensus of the group.
I found that more than two book clubs and I don't have time
to read the stuff I want to read on my own. I read a lot. And I read real books.
I take the eBook thing with me on trips to save luggage space but I just don't
care much for the experience. I keep feeling like I would like to actually read
the book. I have the feeling I am reading over somebody’s shoulder.
Here are the two books my groups have chosen for this month:
Forever, by Pete
Hamill, about a guy who can live forever if he never steps foot outside of
Manhattan. Nice book - with historic and supernatural elements. I love the
history and there isn’t too much of the supernatural stuff to annoy me.
The other club has chosen a book by Nabokov, Pale Fire. I don't know how to pronounce
his name and the reviews use the terms postmodern, metafiction, and hypertext. I
am afraid. Very afraid. After all words like these made me switch from English
to History as an undergraduate major.
The right to skip
pages
Neither of these is a book I would have picked on my own.
But I am dutifully reading both of them. But I certainly haven’t given up the
right to skip pages.
The right not to
finish a book
An agreement made between members of a book club is to
actually read the whole book or else give up the right to talk about it. This
right is more often honored in the breach as the bard observed. If we made the
people who didn't actually read the whole book stay silent there wouldn't be
much discussion. It’s surprising how much a person can say about book she hasn't
read. Which leads me to another book I highly recommend titled How to Talk About a Book You Haven’t Read. The author is quite sincere in
his premise that most of us don't really remember what we have read even when
we think we do.
The right to re-read
The best book is one you want to re read. Maybe you never
will but it is so wonderful when a book selected by your book club is one you
have already read. Even if you didn't like it.
The right to read
anything
This right especially appeals to me. I have discovered that
there are whole categories of books I blithely cross off. Like books about
animals. If there is an animal in the story it is probably going to die. And
nowadays it’s going to be gruesome. Think
The Life of Pi in which the tiger
eats everything except Pi. I can handle the sorrow but not the gore.
Books about oppressed people have to be really good for me
to tackle. I have read a few that everyone else seemed to love but I hated. I
disliked The Kite Runner. The hero was
a sorry excuse for a human being in my opinion. I have spent a lot of time
listening to other peoples’ conviction that it was a truly great book. You can’t
argue with taste and you shouldn't.
One of my own rules for being a member of a book club is to
keep your mouth shut about whether or not you like or dislike a book. Nothing
is more off-putting than to have someone enter the room saying how much she
loved or hated the book this takes you into the realm of taste. My taste is
better than yours etc.
Also don't attack my book choice I will get really testy
about it. Or worse my favorite authors. Don't tell me you hate Colette. Just
don't. Henry James I understand because he takes a lot out of you especially
his later works.
But not Colette. If you don't like her and tell me I will go
on at some length about how she is superb, exquisite and how you don't know
beans about good writing
Which leads me to the:
Right to bovaryisme.
This is not the right to read Madame Bovary, which would be the right to get really depressed, in
my opinion, but the right to read the kind of trash Mme B read herself.
Flaubert seems to me to say that this was the true cause of the tragedy.
I love a book that is so well written I want to say "how did
she do that?' How is it possible to wring so much out of the language as to make
me see, feel and taste a description. I want to ponder why Isabel Archer went
back to that creep Osmond. I want to cry
at the mere sentence “I had a farm in Africa”. There are books so tremendously
moving and beautiful I want to spend my reading time pursuing them.
Or I choose Italian mysteries. I want to read about Inspector
Brunetti’s meals as he solves cases in magical Venice. Or Montalbano solving
the crimes of an unbelievably beautiful Sicily. He also loves to eat. Zen and
Marshal Guarnaccia not so much. But I find Italian mysteries soothing to my
soul, like Italy. I think chick lit is underrated. Who wants to work at reading
all the time?
So what have I learned? I’ve learned what I like and do not.
I am free to choose whatever I wish.
The right to read
anywhere
This is a strange one. I suppose it’s meant to defend
students who prefer to read a book rather than listen to a lecture. But a
person should read wherever she likes even at the table, as long it’s not too
rude to the other diners who might actually want to have a conversation with
you. But what’s better than a book with breakfast?
The right to browse
This is the right to spend lots of time in books stores
looking over their offerings. This of course is getting harder and harder to do
since bookstores are disappearing at an alarming rate. You can still browse in
a library and I suppose the online booksellers really want to encourage it.
Although they seem to be too intent upon analyzing your buying patterns. Most
of us need new ideas not regurgitations of genres we have read before.
The right to read
aloud
OK. I guess I agree although don't do it in my presence. I
hear enough of other people’s telephone conversations on public transportation
to even remotely want to listen to someone reading out loud. If you want to read
a passage to me that’s great. As long as I can read one of my own to you. But
let’s not get carried away. Maybe this is a vindication of audio books. Some people say that hearing a book is not same as reading it and even that it doesn't count as reading. 'Come on,' I say, 'Give me a break.'
And
The right to remain
silent
I wish more people would take advantage of this one.
Including me.
Books cited
Pierre Bayard. How To
Talk About a Book You Haven’t Read,
Bloomsbury USA, 2009.
(Comment Parler des
Livres Que l’on N’as pas Lus? Minuit, 2007.)
Pete Hamill. Forever.
Back Bay Books, 2003.
Vladimir Nabokov. Pale
Fire. G.P. Putnam’s, 1962
Daniel Pennac. Reads
Like a Novel, Quartet Books, 1994. (Comme a Roman, Gallimard, 1992; The Rights of the Reader, Translator
Sarah Adams, Candlewick Press, 2008.)
Books mentioned
Andrea Camilleri. Inspector
Montalbano mysteries.
Colette. Collected
works.
Michael Dibdin. Aurelio
Zen mysteries.
Isak Dinesen. Out of
Africa.
Gustave Flaubert. Madame
Bovary.
Khaled Hosseini. The
Kite Runner.
Henry James. Portrait
of a Lady.
Donna Leon. Inspector
Brunetti mysteries.
Yann Martel. Life of
Pi.
Magdelen Nabb. Marshal
Guarnaccia series.
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