This Is Not The End Of The Book

Last evening, while at The Modern Book House in Trivandrum, I came across 'This is not the end of the book', a conversation between Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière curated by Jean-Phillippe De Tonnac.

Published by Harvill Secker, the book was translated from French by Polly McLean this year. 
I guess this conversation is what I will be preoccupied with this weekend. Here's a sample I came across in The Guardian (guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 May 2011). Going by the content, I guess this must be from the chapter 'All the books we haven't read':

Umberto Eco: There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by books we haven't read, that we haven't had the time to read. Who has actually read Finnegans Wake – I mean from beginning to end? Who has read the Bible properly, from Genesis to the Apocalypse?

And yet I've a fairly accurate notion of what I haven't read. I have to admit that I only read War and Peace when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then. The Mahabharata – I've never read that, despite owning three editions in different languages. Who has actually read the Kama Sutra? And yet everyone talks about it, and some practise it too. So we can see that the world is full of books that we haven't read, but that we know pretty well.

And yet when we eventually pick them up, we find they are already familiar. How is that? First, there's the esoteric explanation – there are these waves that somehow travel from the book to you – to which I don't subscribe. Second, perhaps it's not true that you've never opened the book; over the years you're bound to have moved it from place to place, and may have flicked through it and forgotten that you've done so. Third, over the years you've read lots of books that have mentioned this one and so made it seem familiar.

Jean-Claude Carrière: There are books on our shelves we haven't read and doubtless never will, that each of us has probably put to one side in the belief that we will read them later on, perhaps even in another life. The terrible grief of the dying as they realise their last hour is upon them and they still haven't read Proust.


Umberto Eco: When people ask whether I've read this or that book, I've found that a safe answer is, "You know, I don't read, I write." That shuts them up. Although some of the questions come up time and time again: "Have you read Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair?" I ended up giving in and trying to read it, on three different occasions. But I found it terribly dull.