Ontology, Modes and the Other: A Treatise on Exhaustive Literacy, or, It’s Hard to Let Go of Steve McQueen By Stoddard Smith       Pierre Bayard's ode to pedantry, Comment Parler des Livres que l'on n'a pas Lus, or How to Talk About Books That You Haven't Read is a unique experience. Upon completion of Bayard's work (one wonders if Bayard himself ever read his own book), I found myself first outraged, then confused, and finally, a little constipated. I though to myself, "How does this boorish Frenchman claim that a perfunctory flip-through of Anna Karenina should suffice for an understanding of St. Petersburg high society during that time—or Miami for that matter?" Can this Bayard be serious? Can we really talk—intelligently—about books we've never read? On the jacket cover of his aggravating book, Mr. Bayard leans against the banister of a staircase leading up to a whorehouse, staring at the reader as if to say, "Hey, I'm French—perhaps you'd be interested in some beignets after I'm done with these hookers." He also claims that he is a professor of literature at the University of Paris. As intellectuals, it's safe to assume that we've all been to Paris—but has anybody ever seen this alleged university? Not I. All I saw in Paris was a gift-shop full of chocolate Eiffel Towers at Orly airport, as nobody was kind enough to direct me to my time-share in the 23rd arrondissement, with what they assured me was a "first-class" view of the Bastille. It seems the French have a knack for deception. Bayard begins by making the ridiculous claim that readers may finally "shake off the guilt" of not having read the great books that shape our world.  Be careful with guilt, Mr. Bayard. Had you finished Paradise Lost, you might sing a different tune. Do you have any idea what happens at the end?  The bristling irony that clips at the thin threads of your argument?  I assure you, the culmination of tropes during the end game of Milton's opus is terrifying—truly something that stays with you, like a disease, or a small dog stapled to your leg, gnawing at your testicles (not always, but a lot of the time). Read the end of this, and you will rethink your gilded crap-ball ideas on guilt. "Speak well of them without entering into the details," drools Bayard of the books one hasn't read. What has become of literature without the details! For instance, regard this oft-overlooked stanza from Beowulf that reads, "Then over sea-roads Exiles arrived, sons of Othere. They had rebelled against the best of all The sea-kings in Sweden…" Are we to believe that a terse, "I liked that he was a knight" somehow atones for the lack of reflection on the above stanza? A stanza that says more about Steve McQueen's frantic search for a Mexican cancer cure than volumes upon volumes written on the subject? And while yes, I liked that he was a knight, too (Though I confess to thinking at first that this book was going to revolve around Steve McQueen draped in chain-mail staring off into a black hole—a dangerous variation on my own soon-to-be-completed manuscript), this tawdry, insufficient assessment of one of the greatest sagas of all time just won't cut the proverbial mustard. As a freelance intellectual, I often find myself asked to contribute a book review, or deliver a lecture extempore after Jonathan Safran Foer has cancelled. So, I'm no tyro in this sphere. Mr. Bayard recommends that to lecture on a book one hasn't read, it's essential to "put aside rational thought and…let your subconscious express your personal relationship with the work." Similarly, to review an unfamiliar book, Mr. Bayard counsels, "closing your eyes to perceive what may interest you about [the book]…then writing about yourself." Let me state categorically that allowing the subconscious to intervene during a lecture is a dangerous thing. I recall a commencement speech I was asked to give at Princeton (after Jonathan Safran Foer cancelled), in which my goal was to make a connection between the gateway to adulthood and the chase scene through San Francisco in James Joyce's, Ulysses. At the time, I was 40 pages short of finishing Ulysses, but I panicked for one brief moment, allowing my subconscious to creep in and reference the heart-pumping Steve McQueen vehicle, Bullit to fill in the gaps created by my literary malfeasance. The audience chortled and squirmed with typical Princeton fatuity, and I spent the rest of the address huddled under the gown of Joyce Carol Oates. Years later, when I explained at a PEN meeting to Mrs. Oates that I had, in my youthful folly, dared to reference a book I had not completely finished and I was soooo sorry and I now know the car chase in Ulysses took place in Fresno, not San Francisco, Mrs. Oates gave me a coy smile and sort of whispered, in that way she does, "Would you mind getting me a another vodka gimlet?" As for book reviews, I don't have the faintest clue where Mr. Bayard gets off. Close my eyes and write about myself? What kind of self-aggrandizing, philistine claptrap is that? I was once stuck sitting next to Michiko Kakutani, book reviewer extraordinaire of the New York Times, on a flight to Zurich, and it turned out we were both reviewing the same new translation of Don Quixote. After we agreed that one of the key requirements of criticism is the removal of oneself from the work under consideration, I made a reference to the end of Don Quixote, when Sancho Panza is about to escape from the German POW camp and jump the motorcycle over the barbed-wire fence to freedom, and how it's a metaphor for the craft of writing. I think she must have been forced to digest this burst of protean insight, because for the rest of the flight, she said little. I remarked how every time I met Gore Vidal, he would sound a rape whistle and hog-tie me to a fire hydrant, and Michiko droned on as usual, always trying to one-up me with her one story; you know, the one she never finishes about, "Stewardess, can I change seats?" What's the point, Michiko? The truth is, we read for any number of reasons: we crave a good yarn by the camp fire; we savor the world of words created by our greatest artists; we feel a preternatural magnetism toward an understanding of how and why we are the way we are; perhaps we are having a bowel movement. What Mr. Bayard suggests is an approach toward reading, and a discussion of reading, that goes against our nature. We are not partial beings—we are complete—complete in the sense that our minds create our realities. Mind is life. We must subscribe to life whole-heartedly, eschewing the notion that a partial understanding of our world, our ethos, our pathos, is tantamount to a full life. Dumbing-down displays the utter convenience of ignorance! Bayard is a travesty of nature, like a Gaulloises-puffing ogre. His mongloid understanding of human nature will eventually lead to an early demise. He is a French Hamlet (although presumably shorter), pathologically self-destructing at every turn, but eventually breaking free from that dreaded prison in Guyana with Dustin Hoffman. Yes, he escapes, but at what cost? Tyler Stoddard Smith's works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been featured or are upcoming in: The Best of American Fantasy (Prime Books), Pindeldyboz, The Big Jewel, Ghoti Mag, The Bullfight Review, Modern Drunkard, Box Car Poetry Review, Past Simple, Yankee Pot Roast, Word Riot, Fresh Yarn, Barrelhouse, Monkeybicycle, and McSweeney's, among others. For more info, feel free to e-mail him at Stoddard.smith@gmail.com  In addition, he edits a political satire website, www.demockeracy.com