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Imposing Your Ideas
(in which Balzac proves that one key to imposing your point of view on a book is to remember that the book is not a fixed object, and that even tying it up with string will not be sufficient to stop its motion)
AS LONG AS you have the courage, therefore, there is no reason not to say frankly that you haven’t read any particular book, nor to abstain from expressing your thoughts about it. The experience of not having read a book is the most common of scenarios, and only in accepting our non-reading without shame can we begin to take an interest in what is actually at stake, which is not a book but a complex interpersonal situation of which the book is less the object than the consequence.
Books are not insensitive to what is said around them, in fact, but may be changed by it in just the time it takes us to have a conversation. This mobility of the text is the second great uncertainty of the ambiguous realm that is the virtual library. It compounds the kind of uncertainty we have just examined—our uncertainty about how well those who talk about books actually know them—and will be crucial to our delineation of what strategies to adopt in these situations. These strategies will be all the more relevant in that they will not depend on an image of books as fixed objects, but instead assume that the participants in a fast-moving discussion, especially if they have the strength to impose their own points of view, can change the text itself.
Lucien Chardon, the hero of Balzac’s novel Lost Illusions,1 is the son of an apothecary from Angoulême who dreams of retrieving the aristocratic name of his mother, who was born de Rubempré. Having fallen in love with a woman of the local nobility, Madame de Bargeton, he follows her to Paris, leaving behind his best friend, the printer David Séchard, who has married Lucien’s sister Eve. But he is also heading for the capital with an eye to making his name in the world of letters, and he brings with him his first texts, a collection of poems called Les Marguerites2 and a historical novel called L’Archer de Charles IX.3
In Paris, Lucien finds his way into the small circle of intellectuals in control of publishing and the press and quickly discovers the reality—far removed from his illusions—of the milieu in which literature and art are produced. Its true nature is brutally revealed to him in a conversation with one of his new friends, a journalist named Étienne Lousteau. Lousteau, short of money, is forced to resell several books to a bookseller named Barbet. The pages of several of them turn out to have not even been cut, even though Lousteau has promised reviews of them to the editor of a newspaper:
Barbet looked over the books, carefully examining the edges and the covers.
“Oh! They’re in perfect condition!” exclaimed Lousteau. “The leaves of Travels in Egypt4 aren’t cut, nor the Paul de Kock, nor the Ducange, nor the one on the mantelpiece, Reflections on Symbolism.5 I’ll throw that one in, the mythology in it is so boring. I’ll give it to you so that I needn’t watch thousands of mites swarming out of it.”
“But,” asked Lucien, “how will you write your reviews on them?”
Barbet gave Lucien a glance of profound astonishment and then looked back at Lousteau with a snigger. “It’s plain to see that this gentleman hasn’t the misfortune to be a man of letters.”6
Surprised that one might devote an article to a book one hasn’t read, Lucien cannot resist asking Lousteau how he plans to honor his promise to the newspaper editor:
“But what about your review article?” asked Lucien as they drove away to the Palais-Royal.
“Pooh! You’ve no idea how they’re dashed off. Take Travels in Egypt: I opened the book and read a bit here and there without cutting the pages, and I discovered eleven mistakes in the French. I shall write a column to the effect that even if the author can interpret the duck-lingo carved on the Egyptian pebbles they call obelisks, he doesn’t know his own language—and I shall prove it to him. I shall say that instead of talking about natural history and antiquities he ought only to have concerned himself with the future of Egypt, the progress of civilization, the means of winning Egypt over to France, which, after conquering it and then losing it again, could still establish a moral ascendancy over it. Then a few pages of patriotic twaddle, the whole interlarded with tirades on Marseilles, the Levant and our trading interests.”7
When Lucien asks what Lousteau would have done if the author had discussed politics, his friend replies without missing a beat that he would have reproached the writer for boring his reader with political talk, rather than concerning himself with Art by focusing on the picturesque aspects of the country. In any event, he relies in the end on another method: he gets his girlfriend, Florine, an actress and “the greatest reader of novels in the world,” to read the book. Only when she declares herself bored by what she calls “author’s sentences” does he start to take the book seriously and ask the bookseller for a new copy so that he can write a favorable article.
Here we encounter once again some of the varieties of non-reading that we have already identified, in which we either surmise what a book is about without knowing it at all; skim through it; or base our opinions on the opinions of others. Lucien, nonetheless, is a bit surprised by his friend’s critical method and confesses his astonishment to him:
“Great Heavens! But what about criticism, the sacred task of criticism?” said Lucien, still imbued with the doctrines of the Cénacle.
“My dear chap,” said Lousteau. “Criticism’s a scrubbing-brush which you mustn’t use on flimsy materials—it would tear them to shreds. Now listen, let’s stop talking shop. You see this mark?” he asked, pointing to the manuscript of Les Marguerites. “I’ve inked a line in between the string and the paper. If Dauriat reads your manuscript, he certainly won’t be able to put the string back along the line. So your manuscript is as good as sealed. It’s not a bad dodge for the experiment you want to make. One more thing, just remember that you won’t get into that sweatshop by yourself and without a sponsor: you’d be like those young hopefuls who go round to ten publishers before they find one who’ll even offer them a chair . . .”8
Thus does Lousteau pitilessly pursue the task of disillusioning his friend, advising him, before Lucien submits his poetry manuscript to one of the most important publishers in Paris, to devise a test—a piece of ink-stained string that binds the book shut—of not only whether Dauriat has read it, but whether he has even opened it.
When Lucien returns to see Dauriat and asks whether he’s read the poems, Dauriat gives him hardly any hope of being published:
“Indeed I have,” said Dauriat, leaning forward in his armchair like an oriental potentate. “I’ve glanced through the collection of poems and got a man of taste, a good judge, to read them, for I don’t claim to be a connoisseur in poetry. I, my friend, buy ready-made reputations as an Englishman buys ready-made love. You are as great a poet, my boy, as you are a handsome youngster. On my word as an honest man—I don’t mean as a publisher, mind you— your sonnets are magnificent and you’ve put good work into them, a rare enough thing when one has inspiration and verve. In short, you know how to rhyme—one of the qualities of the modern school. Your Marguerites make a fine book, but there’s no money in them, and I can only go in for very big undertakings.”9
While he rejects the manuscript and does not claim to have read it all the way through, Dauriat nevertheless maintains that he has gained some acquaintance with the book; he is even able to make a few stylistic remarks, on the quality of the rhymes, for example. But Lousteau’s precaution of sealing the manuscript enables the two friends to take a closer look:
“Have you the manuscript with you?” asked Lucien, coldly.
“Here it is, my friend,” repled Dauriat, who was now adopting singularly sugary tones with Lucien.
Lucien took the scroll without looking to see the position of the string, so certain it seemed that Dauriat had read the Marguerites. He went out with Lousteau without appearing either dismayed or discontented. Dauriat walked through the shop with the two friends talkin
g about his newspaper and that of Lousteau. Lucien was unconcernedly toying with the manuscript of the Marguerites.
“Do you believe Dauriat read your sonnets or had them read?” Étienne whispered to Lucien.
“Yes,” said Lucien.
“Look at the ‘seals’!”
Lucien perceived that the ink-lines and the string were in a state of perfect conjunction.10
Despite not having opened the manuscript, Dauriat has no trouble elaborating on his initial opinion of the anthology and providing further details:
“Which sonnet did you most particularly notice?” Lucien asked the publisher, turning pale with suppressed rage.
“They are all worthy of notice, my friend,” Dauriat replied. “But the one on the marguerite is delicious and ends with a very subtle and delicate thought. By that I divined what success your prose is bound to obtain.”11
That it is not necessary to read a book to speak about it is illustrated a second time as Lucien and Lousteau continue their dialogue. Lousteau proposes to his friend that as revenge against the publisher’s insult, Lucien should write an incendiary article attacking a book by the writer Nathan, an author championed by Dauriat. But the quality of the book is so patently apparent that Lucien has no idea how to begin criticizing it. Laughing, Lousteau explains that it is time for Lucien to learn his trade, and with it the acrobatic ability to change the beauties of a book into defects—that is, to transform a masterpiece into an “insipid bit of stupidity.”12
Lousteau then shows him how to denigrate a book that one holds in the highest regard. His method is to make an opening statement in which one tells the “truth” and praises the book. The public, pleased by this positive beginning and inclined to be trusting, will judge the critic to be impartial and prepare to follow his lead.
At this juncture, Lousteau endeavors to show that Nathan’s work is characteristic of a trend within which French literature has become trapped. This literary trend is characterized by an overreliance on description and dialogue—an excess of images, in other words—at the expense of thought, which has historically dominated the great works of French literature. To be sure, Lousteau argues, Walter Scott is remarkable, but “there’s room only for truly original minds,” and his influence on his successors has been deleterious.13
This opposition between a “literature of ideas” and a “literature of images” is then turned against Nathan, who is but an imitator and has only the outward trappings of talent. If his work is deserving, it is also dangerous, since it opens literature up to the mob by spurring a multitude of minor authors to imitate this facile form. As a counterpoint to this decadence, Lousteau suggests, Lucien should invoke the struggle of those writers resisting the romantic invasion and continuing in the footsteps of Voltaire by defending ideas against images.
And by no means is this the only method in Lousteau’s arsenal for dispatching a book. He demonstrates to Lucien other solutions as well, such as the “leading article” that entails “smothering the book between two promises.”14 According to this strategy, the article starts off by announcing a commentary on the book, then loses itself in general considerations that necessitate postponing the real critique to a subsequent article, which will never appear.
The example of Nathan’s book would seem to be a departure from the previous ones we have studied, since Lucien is trying to discuss a book that he has in fact read. But the principle behind Lousteau’s strategy here is the same one that applies to Lucien’s unread poems or to Travels in Egypt: that the content of a book has little bearing on the commentary the book deserves. In this example from Balzac, it even becomes possible, in a kind of final paradox or hunger for provocation, to begin reading it.
In all three cases in Balzac—for Travels in Egypt, as well as for the books by Lucien or Nathan—the commentary is not related to the book, but to the author. It is the author’s value, his place in the literary system, that determines the value of the book. As Lousteau says explicitly to Lucien, it may at times even be just the publisher who is implicated: “What you’re writing here isn’t an article against Nathan, but one against Dauriat: that calls for a pickaxe. A pickaxe glances off a fine work, but it cuts right through to a bad one: in the first case, it hurts only the publisher; in the second case, it does the public a service.”15
An author’s place in the literary system is eminently malleable, moreover, which means that the value of a book is malleable as well. Lucien soon sees this for himself, for as soon as Dauriat reads his article on Nathan’s book, any difficulty about publishing Lucien’s book of poems vanishes. The bookseller even travels to his home to sign their peace agreement:
He pulled out an elegant pocket-book, drew three thousand-franc notes from it, put them on a plate and offered them to Lucien with the obsequiousness of a courtesan and said: “Does that satisfy you, Monsieur?”
“Yes,” said the poet. A wave of bliss hitherto unexperienced swept over him at the sight of this unexpected sum. He held himself in, but he wanted to sing, to leap up and down. He believed in the existence of wizards and Aladdin’s wonderful lamp; in short he believed he had a genius at his command.
“So the Marguerites will belong to me?” asked the publisher. “But you’ll never attack any of my publications?”
“The Marguerites are yours, but I can’t pledge my pen. It belongs to my friends, just as theirs belongs to me.”
“But after all, you are becoming one of my authors. All my authors are my friends. You’ll do no damage to my affairs without my being warned of any attacks so that I can forestall them?”
“Agreed.”
“Here’s to your future fame!” said Dauriat, raising his glass.
“Obviously you’ve read the Marguerites,” said Lucien.16
Dauriat is not at all affected by the allusion to his non-reading of Les Marguerites. His judgment of it has changed simply because the author of the work has changed:
“My boy, buying the Marguerites without knowing them is the finest flattery a publisher can permit himself. In six months you’ll be a great poet; articles will be written about you. People are afraid of you, so I need do nothing to get your book sold. I’m the same business man today as I was four days ago. It’s not I who have changed, it’s you. Last week I wouldn’t have given a fig leaf for your sonnets, but your position today turns them into something rich and rare.”
“Oh well,” said Lucien, being now in a mocking and charmingly provocative frame of mind since he felt all the pleasures of a sultan in possessing a beautiful mistress and in being assured of success. “Even if you haven’t read my sonnets, you’ve read my article.”
“Yes, my friend. Otherwise should I have come along so promptly? Unfortunately, it’s very fine, this terrible article.”17
Lucien has further disillusionments yet in store. The very evening his article is published, Lousteau explains to him that he has just met Nathan, who is desperate, and that it is too dangerous to have him as one’s enemy. He thus advises Lucien to “squirt showers of praise in his face.”18 Lucien is astonished that he is now being asked for a positive article about a book he has just criticized, while his friends once again find his naïveté hilarious. At this point, he learns that one of them had taken the precaution of going by the newspaper offices and changing the signature on his article to a minimally compromising letter C. Thus there is nothing to prevent Lucien from writing another article for a different newspaper, and signing this time with the letter L.
But Lucien can’t think of anything to add to his original opinion. It thus falls to Blondet, another of his friends, to demonstrate the reverse of the argument that Lousteau had previously offered, and to explain to Lucien that “every idea has its front side and its reverse side, and no one can presume to state which side is which. Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are two-sided. Janus is the tutelary deity of criticism and the symbol of genius.”19 Blondet thus suggests that in this second article, Lucien should att
ack the fashionable theory positing the existence of one literature of ideas and another literature of images, whereas clearly the most refined literary art assumes the obligation of combining the two.
As a final touch, Blondet even proposes to Lucien that he not limit himself to two articles signed “C.” and “L.” but compose a third, this time signed “de Rubempré,” which would reconcile the two others by demonstrating that the breadth of the debates about Nathan’s book are a sure sign of its importance.
These scenes from Balzac magnify the features of what I have called the virtual library to the point of caricature. In the intellectual milieu that Balzac describes, the only thing that matters is the social positions of the actors. Treated as mere shadows of their authors, the books themselves make no intervention, and nor does anyone make the effort to read them before issuing a judgment, whether as critic or publisher. Indeed, the books themselves are not at stake; they have been replaced by other intermediary objects that have no content in themselves, and which are defined solely by the unstable social and psychological forces that bombard them.
As in Lodge’s game, shame remains an essential component in the organization of the virtual library, but in this case its function is ironically reversed. Humiliation no longer threatens the individual who hasn’t read a book, but the one who has; reading is seen as a degrading task that may be left to a woman of the demimonde. But this space still remains organized around the feeling of shame, and the resulting world, beyond its apparent playfulness, is remarkably psychically violent.
In Balzac as in Lodge, the game is played for positions of power. The importance of power in the reception of texts is easy to perceive in Lost Illusions, for it is directly and immediately connected to a book’s literary value. A favorable review contributes to power, while inversely, power guarantees favorable reviews. It can even serve to confirm, as in Lucien’s case, the quality of the text.
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read Page 11
