Bluffer's guide to big books

[mummymonkey]

Can you spot the bluffer?
I chose B.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6404297.stm

[timhau]

I'd say B as well. He talks a lot, but he actually says very little about the book.

[mummymonkey]

We were both wrong!

[timhau]

Bleah. Well bluffed.

And I was thinking that the bluffer gave himself away when he started talking about Russian patronymes and other Russia-related generalities. Duh. The literature professor should be ashamed of himself. (Then again, my experience with literature professors tells me that there's a vanishingly small chance that he's capable of feeling shame for such things...)

[fuelair]

I was not impressed with either of them - and, no, I have not read War and Peace - though I did read a decent (apparently) synopsis of it.

[Almo]

Very interesting article. I couldn't tell the difference. But haven't read WaP.

[thanson]

I've read "War and Peace" and I guessed A. Some of his statements seemed shallow in a way I wouldn't expect from someone who had read the book.

Trent

[bruto]

Even though I've never read the book either, I guessed A immediately. He talks straight standard lit-course cliché right from the start. "Chiaroscuro" my foot.

[Skeptic]

Even though I've never read the book either, I guessed A immediately. He talks straight standard lit-course cliché right from the start. "Chiaroscuro" my foot.

Apart from that that A never says anything more specific than "X is the central character" or "Y is fascinating", which gave him away, B is the only one who mentions anything in the book--e.g., Pierre walking around the battlefield--that is not likely to be found in a cheat-sheet.

[Admiral]

I haven't read "War and Peace," but I was sure it was B UNTIL he B mentioned "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," and A said "A beautiful moment."

Ivan Ilyich wasn't a character in the book- it was a short story by Tolstoy. But A thought B was referencing a moment in War and Peace.