Reading between the lies

by Gordon McGowan

With the optimism and novelty of the New Year worn off, only the grim reality of tackling our overly-ambitious resolutions remains. 

Now, more than a month into 2010, ideally we would have all adhered to our valiant pledges to improve ourselves in very way possible: learning more, eating better, travelling further.

Unfortunately, more than a month has passed – a month where in the vast majority of our vain promises have been postponed, or at most, halfheartedly attempted before beingbandoned altogether.

Self improvements unquestionably are a hassle.

Perhaps next year?

So, if you never did get around to reading that classic book that just about every intellectual person should have read, why not just utilise some good, old-fashioned dishonesty and simply pretend you did?

So goes the thinking of the majority of us, according to a poll carried out last year.

In the survey, conducted by research organisation Populus, and commissioned for World Book Day, 65 per cent of respondents admitted claiming to have read a book which they hadn’t, usually in order to impressothers.

Most lied about books

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- Four topped the list of the most lied about books with 42 per cent of the guilty naming it, followed by Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace with 31 per cent, James Joyce’s Ulysses with 25 per cent and The Bible with 24 per cent.

Even Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, was guilty, admitting in an interview with The Guardian:

“My first degree was in theology, I got a 2:1 at Durham. I’m embarrassed to say I never finished the Old Testament.”

So it appears that we are a nation of intellectual bluffers, and everyone else is just too busy with their own bluffing to call each other on it.

Instead, countless shelves of pristine, unread classics stand majestically on display in our living rooms – hollow trophies for impressing visitors with our formidable pseudo-smarts – visitors who themselves likely boast similar libraries of lightly-grazed literature.

Works by Stephen Hawking, Salman Rushdie and Gustave Flaubert also featured in the top ten lied-about books peppering the collections of the respondents, of whom 61 per cent said that, in truth, they enjoy the works of the likes of JK Rowling.

Would you lie?

Few UAL students confessed to having lied or exaggerated in such a way:

“I’d be a bit too scared to lie about a book I’ve read,” says Kirsten Allen, a BA Graphic and Media Design student at the London College of Communication.

“I could try lying initially, but if someone is there who has actually read the book and asks about a specific detail, how would you get out of that without making a complete fool of yourself?,” continues Allen.

An admission, one would think, would spare the damage.

Not so in the case of former London School of Economics lecturer Eric Ringmar, who infamously confessed in a blog to not having actually read Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, despite the fact that he was supposed to be teaching it to his students.

This, along with other material in his blog, ended up contributingto him losing his job at the university.

Some students have admitted their guilt though.

One, who declined to have his name printed, believes himself to be a step ahead of the curve:

“I have done it a few times. If there’s a film adaptation, I sometimes watch that and then buy the book, which I usually don’t get around to reading. It means I can still answer any questions about it, so it’s quite fail-safe.”

Has he ever been caught out since Does what you read reflect how intelligent you are?

film adaptations often stray from the source material?

“Not yet.”

The mentality of course,stretches beyond books, into the vast realms of foreign film, obscure jazz, contemporary art; our pretentiousness knows no boundaries.

We adorn ourselves in symbols bearing the likenesses and works of musicians, political figures and artists we only aspire to have an interest in.

We wear T-shirts with cryptic references, to even notify strangers on the street that together we could bluff and stutter our way through the esoteric languages of our exclusive niche cultures.

World Book Day 2010 is less than a month away now, and there is more than enough time to get back on track – this may be an ideal opportunity to turn over a new leaf and hold the upper hand in an otherwise fumbling battle of wits.