How to Talk About Places You've Never Been: On the Importance of Armchair Travel

Pierre Bayard, Michele Hutchison (Translated by)

$25.00

Publication Date: January 26th, 2016

Publisher:

Bloomsbury USA

ISBN:

9781620401378

Pages:

208

Description

Written in the irreverent style that made How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read a critical and commercial success, Pierre Bayard takes readers on a trip around the world, giving us essential guidance on how to talk about all those fantastic places we've never been. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Places You've Never Been will delight and inform armchair globetrotters and jet-setters, all while never having to leave the comfort of the living room.

Bayard examines the art of the "non-journey," a tradition that a succession of writers and thinkers, unconcerned with moving away from their home turf, have employed in order to encounter the foreign cultures they wish to know and talk about. He describes concrete situations in which the reader might find himself having to speak about places he's never been, and he chronicles some of his own experiences and offers practical advice.

How to Talk About Places You've Never Been is a compelling and delightful book that will expand any travel enthusiast's horizon well beyond the places it's even possible to visit in a single lifetime.

About the Author

Pierre Bayard is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and a psychoanalyst. He is the author of Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, and many other books.

Michele Hutchison is a literary translator from Dutch and French into English. In 2020, she won the Vondel Translation Prize for her translation of Stage Four by Sander Kollaard and the International Booker Prize, together with the author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, for The Discomfort of Evening. She is also the coauthor of The Happiest Kids in the World: What We Can Learn from Dutch Parents.

Praise for How to Talk About Places You've Never Been: On the Importance of Armchair Travel

"Thoughtful and provocative." —Chicago Tribune

“Bayard puts forth some interesting ideas about the capacity of literature to take readers to other worlds and the possible superiority of these experiences to physical travel.” —Publishers Weekly

“I probably shouldn't bring any of this up, but Mr. Bayard holds that one of the best reasons for reading a book is that it allows you to talk about yourself. How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read is an amusing disquisition on what is required to establish cultural literacy in a comfortable way. Lightly laced with irony, the book nonetheless raises such serious questions as: What are our true motives for reading? Is there an objective way to read a book? What do we retain from the books we've read?” —Joseph Epstein, Wall Street Journal on How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read

“Witty and charming and often fun.” —Sam Anderson, New York Magazine on How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read

“It may well be that too many books are published, but by good fortune, not all must be read . . . A survivor's guide to life in the chattering classes . . . evidently much in need.” —New York Times on How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read

“In this hilarious and elaborate spoof, Bayard proves once again that being almost ridiculously erudite and screamingly funny are by no means mutually exclusive.” —Booklist on How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read