Read How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read for Free Online

to help on a practical level, by retyping the poorly typed pages that Dochin gave her each day.
    The problem is that Céline seized the opportunity of this secretarial work to write a completely different novel, which she gradually substituted for Dochin’s, retaining only the title, the period during which the story took pace, and the first names of the two child protagonists. Day by day, she replaced Dochin’s poorly written and unpublishable pages with a much more carefully composed text of her own.
    What is the point of this stratagem? The name Céline Ferdinaud is in fact an alias for a notorious collaborator in the Occupation, Céline Feuhant. With an eye to blackmailing a number of prominent fellow collaborators who had peacefully resumed their lives, Céline had decided to publish her fictionalized memoirs. But at the Liberation she had agreed, in exchange for a promise of impunity, to desist from calling attention to herself. Unable to publish the book as it was lest she be recognized, she discovered her lodger’s third-rate manuscript and hit upon the idea of publishing her own book under his name, without the author—if we can call him that—realizing it.
    Thus two texts bearing the same title continually circulate throughout Siniac’s novel, each by turns substituting for the other. Dochin, like the reader, fails to understand how his own text—which he quite rightly judges to be execrable— could have aroused the enthusiasm of the entire critical community, which has, in fact, been given the other manuscript, written by Céline. For the duration of the ruse, then, Gastinel, who is in on the plot, is inclined to remain as vague as possible when speaking of the book in Dochin’s presence, so that Dochin will not find out that the book causing all the excitement is one he has never read.

    Dochin thus finds himself in the position of having to speak about a book that is unknown to him, although he believes himself to be its author. Unlike Rollo Martins, who knew that he was not speaking about the same author as the members of his audience, Dochin has no idea he is participating in a dialogue of the deaf, since Gastinel is doing his best (failing to give him a copy of his book, among other measures) to prevent Dochin from discovering that La Java brune is not La Java brune.
    It is essential for Gastinel—who has read the same book as his audience, but who must at any cost prevent his partner from being too explicit, lest the host’s reaction tip Dochin off to the substitution of the manuscript—that the comments made during the broadcast be as ambiguous as possible. One of his solutions is to insist on speaking of something other than the text, such as the lives of the authors or their next book.
    Another option for Gastinel is to make sure that the discussion touches only on the few superficial aspects of the text that are shared by the two books. This is the case for the Occupation period that serves as a backdrop for both works, as well as for the two child heroes, Max and Mimile, whom Céline has made sure to retain in her version of La Java brune :
    [The host] came charging back: he was dying, it was clear, to talk about the novel. Gastinel rebuffed him, then consented, all the same, after emitting a declamatory sigh, to say two or three words on the work [ . . . ] It was thus agreed to say two or three little things—which were not at all compromising, there was still this obsession with not giving away the plot—about the Max and Mimile characters, whereupon the portly author directed the discussion authoritatively, as though he himself were the host of the discussion, to the Occupation in Paris in general, the raids, the restrictions, the lines in front of the poorly stocked shops, the curfew, the lists of hostages posted on the walls, the anonymous denunciations, and the entire litany of daily miseries of those four interminable years. There was nothing inappropriate in doing so, besides, since