BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA June 18, 2020 The Only Story Julian Barnes
“Much of the pleasure in The Only Story comes from the wit and verbal precision that Barnes allows his narrator. . . . Barnes’s switch from voice to voice is at once understated and dazzling.”
—The New York Review of Books
“The prose master paints a lovely, elegiac portrait of a young man’s disruptive love affair . . . forgoing the easy literary clichés of May- December romance for something much sadder, deeper, and more resonant.”
—Entertainment Weekly
Contents:
Introduction 1 “Beautiful. . . . Profoundly enjoyable. . . . Through his precise attention to Brief Author 2 the marvels of love and his perfect stylistic accompaniments to each Biography state—Barnes has once again shown himself capable of transforming Barnes on suburbia 3 the mundane and ephemeral into the lyrical and lasting.” An exquisite look 4-5 —Los Angeles Review of Books at love
Notes 6
“A thought-provoking meditation on memory and the seemingly endless complexities of love. . . . Barnes’ prose is quietly elegant and adroit. . . .
[The Only Story] has strong, memorably drawn characters and a keen sense of time and place.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
[https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/568058/the-only-story-by-julian-barnes/]
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Brief Author Biography
Booker Prize (Flaubert's outstanding contributions as a Parrot 1984, England, European narrator and essayist. England 1998, and Arthur & On 25 January 2017, the French George 2005). Barnes's other President appointed Julian Barnes awards include the Somerset to the rank of Officier in the Maugham Award Ordre National de la Légion (Metroland 1981), Geoffrey Faber d'Honneur. The citation from the Memorial Prize (Flaubert's Parrot French Ambassador in London, 1985); Prix Médicis (Flaubert's Sylvie Bermann, reads: 'Through Parrot 1986); E. M. Forster Award this award, France wants to (American Academy and Institute recognize your immense talent of Arts and Letters, 1986); and your contribution to raising Gutenberg Prize (1987); the profile of French culture Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy, abroad, as well as your love of 1988); and the Prix Femina France.' (Talking It Over 1992). Barnes was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Julian Barnes has written Arts et des Lettres in 1988, numerous novels, short stories, Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et and essays. He has also translated des Lettres in 1995 and a book by French author Julian Barnes was born in Commandeur de l'Ordre des Alphonse Daudet and a collection Leicester, England on January 19, Arts et des Lettres in 2004. In of German cartoons by Volker 1946. He was educated at the 1993 he was awarded the Kriegel. His writing has earned City of London School from 1957 Shakespeare Prize by the FVS him considerable respect as an to 1964 and at Magdalen College, Foundation and in 2004 won the author who deals with the Oxford, from which he graduated Austrian State Prize for European themes of history, reality, truth in modern languages (with Literature. In 2011 he was and love. honours) in 1968. awarded the David Cohen Prize Barnes lives in London. for Literature. Awarded After graduation, he worked as a biennially, the prize honours a [http://julianbarnes.com/bio/ lexicographer for the Oxford lifetime's achievement in index.html] English Dictionary supplement for literature for a writer in the three years. In 1977, Barnes began English language who is a citizen working as a reviewer and literary of the United Kingdom or the editor for the New Statesman and Republic of Ireland. He received the New Review. From 1979 to the Sunday Times Award for 1986 he worked as a television Literary Excellence in 2013 and critic, first for the New the 2015 Zinklar Award at the Statesman and then for first annual Blixen Ceremony in the Observer. Copenhagen. In 2016, the Barnes has received several American Academy of Arts & Letters elected Barnes as an awards and honours for his writing, including the 2011 Man honorary foreign member. Also Booker Prize for The Sense of an in 2016, Barnes was selected as the second recipient of the Ending. Three additional novels were shortlisted for the Man Siegfried Lenz Prize for his
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Julian Barnes on suburbia
Writers are traditionally interlinked “villages”, each Most of the breadwinners who supposed to have a sense of retaining its original specificity. I lived there spent five days in place, aren’t they? Visit Hardy’s don’t think there’s much truth seven getting out of the place. Dorset, Austen’s Bath, in this: everywhere, you see the Work was in London. So too, Brontëland; take the Charles same food chains and cafes, for me, was school: an hour or Dickens Big Red Bus Tour, and charity shops and bus termini; so’s journey on three different so on. This territoriality wasn’t a also, an astonishing number of tube lines to Blackfriars. This literary impediment; rather, it estate agents. A Martian might pallid nomadism gave me a fairly concentrated their focus. As conclude that these “villagers” strong sense of non-place. To Flaubert put it, to be local is to spend their entire time drinking adapt Larkin: something, like be universal. Nowadays, with coffee and selling one another nothing, happens anywhere. Or, increasing global migration, the their flats and houses. And as a to adapt the prime minister, to norm has changed: many consequence, I have no sense of be a citizen of nowhere much is novelists work from a sense of the great Tufnell Park novel to be a citizen of the world. displacement, of dislocation, fermenting away inside me. Which is what a writer, their protagonists spiritually split consciously or unconsciously, On the other hand, between their birthworld and seeks to be. Northwood, Middlesex, where I subsequent destination. Instead spent the second decade of my I returned to leafy, neutral, of the writer fiercely attached to life and came to sentience, does unaggressive outer suburbia – a piece of ground, we have the seem to have affected my Surrey, this time – as the starting transglobal writer as fertile, writing. The title of my first point of my latest novel, The Only absorbent victim (and novel, Metroland, appears to Story. Its 20ish protagonist itches beneficiary) of a collision of invoke and celebrate the sense to escape from what he judges a cultures, religions, languages. of place. However, despite its place of spiritual torpor. But it is I fall between these two poles. I cosy Betjemanic associations, also a place, as he discovers, spent my first 10 years in an the point about Metroland – and where something as well as inner west London suburb, my its writerly attraction – is that nothing may happen. A big next 10 in an outer north-west from the beginning it was a kind something, which turns out to suburb. I have lived abroad a of fake place. The name, an act command and oversee his entire little, travelled a fair amount, but of branding, was thought up by life. I like this idea of a pale essentially spent my last 45 years property developers and railway background wash, against which in and around the same tube companies as the underground the rich colours of emotional station. Yet I certainly don’t feel network expanded. The line action can show up more the genius loci of Tufnell Park wasn’t built to serve existing dramatically. Somewhat ruefully, very strongly. It is a congenially areas; the place was invented to I have to admit that – for me as a anonymous place to live. I enjoy serve the railway. So it was a writer – suburbia is my kind of its location, shops, weekly non-place full of non-traditions, place. farmers’ market, its access to where – appropriately enough – [https://www.theguardian.com/ parks, comparative quiet, and the predominant architectural books/2018/feb/03/julian-barnes- lack of knife crime; others might style was mock Tudor. The on-suburbia-to-be-a-citizen-of- prioritise schools, hospitals and Northwood police station, a nowhere-much-is-to-be-a-citizen parking. But these are few hundred yards from where I -of-the-world-] characteristics common to many lived, had a birdhouse on a pole inner suburbs. There is a in its front garden. Even this sentimental fantasy that London birdhouse was mock Tudor. consists of a spread of
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An exquisite look at love
Like his Man Booker-winning where pretentious young men first kissed, who made the first 2011 novel The Sense of an jostled to score points over the move, or whether it was both at Ending, and indeed his 2008 history master. Paul, by contrast, the same time. And whether memoir Nothing to Be Frightened opens his narrative at leisure. He perhaps it was not so much a Of, Julian Barnes’s latest novel is is 19, down from university, and move as a drift.” Lovely romantic narrated by an older man puzzling bored and aimless as he drives images – “love feels like the vast over the meaning of existence. himself around country lanes in a and sudden easing of a lifelong All three speakers share a 1950s Morris Minor – bought, such frown ... as if the lungs of my childhood in the “Metroland” of were the times, with his student soul have been inflated with pure Barnes’s debut novel, and a grant. Like Tony, he has several oxygen” – are tucked into asides, promising, if anxious, academic male friends, but he is not carefully distant from any actual 60s youth that took them away absorbed, in the traditional encounter, and are deprecated from their suburban families. Each Barnes fashion, in rivalries with almost at once: “I only thought also has a similarly melancholy, them, nor is he desperately like this when alone, of course.” intimate tone, a fine line in preoccupied with his resentment rhythmic, elegant, understated of his parents, or even, The Sense of an Ending slides prose, and plenty to say about apparently, with sex. When his rapidly by, powered by its time, love and the slippery nature mother suggests he join the slippery narrator and a tight plot of memory. tennis club he assents amiably, where every detail proves contenting himself with just a important. Paul resists such Our new hero, Paul, places few sour snorts about the artifice: he lopes, he repeats, he himself nearer the truth-telling “Hugos” and “Carolines” with gives spoilers from the start, and memoirist Barnes than his whom he plays. But when, like he refuses to sort characters fictional predecessor, the Tony, he encounters an according to plot, giving for fascinatingly unreliable Tony attractive, knowing, ironical example extensive space to Webster in The Sense of an older woman, Susan Macleod – Susan’s friend Joan, who is not a Ending. Paul begins, as if in essay “She is wearing her usual tennis significant actor in the story, and form, with a wide, philosophical dress, and I find myself very little to Susan’s daughters, question: “Would you rather love wondering if its green buttons who are. Susan’s husband, the more, and suffer the more, or undo … I have never met Gordon “Elephant Pants” love the less, and suffer the less?” anyone like her before” – he Macleod (nicknamed for his vast He constantly keeps one eye on does not, as Tony did, run away bloomers), is a potentially historical context, and is abashed, but partners her in the splendid villain: an obese, violent, especially astute on architectural mixed doubles, drives her home, bigoted golfer who chews spring detail and the way money is and embarks on a daring, onions before meals. Paul’s spent; and he is always intent on decades-long love affair: his “only conflict with him is central, making himself ordinary, a mere story” and the defining event of fascinating and lasts years: yet he example of humanity. As such, he his life. insists on telling us about him is anxiously alert not only to the sidewise, occasionally, without a problems of self-heroising, but its Not that the older Paul allows us single spotlit moment of conflict, opposite: “There is the danger of to exult in his bravery or the so that even this struggle is being retrospectively anti-heroic: romance. He is dry about distanced and diffused. making yourself out to have everything: his revolutionary behaved worse than you actually impulses, his rebellion against his All this means that the exquisite did can be a form of self-praise.” parents, his expulsion from the moments – and there are many tennis club, even the sex. “I can’t – in The Only Story come from its Tony started his story at school, remember when or where we psychological acuity, especially
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about how we remember. In Like The Sense of an Ending, a when he gets down on his Paul’s narrative, experiences book where two men kill knees.” deconstruct themselves and themselves rather than become “He gets down on his knees?” In personalities decay in a fathers, or Nothing to Be his elephant pants, I think. devastatingly convincing way. Frightened Of, where children are “Yes, it’s awful, it’s embarrassing, Susan is at first an alluring, rich, summarily dismissed as a it’s undignified.” potent presence, full of ironic defence against the fear of death, “And, what, begs you to stay with turns of speech from which we this is in many ways a story him?” infer great intelligence; but she against parenthood. Paul “often “Yes. You see why I don’t tell becomes reduced, by the middle forgets” that Susan has two you about it?” of the book, to a series of children. In his mind, she is to be repetitive tropes (“A played-out rescued from her mothering, And she doesn’t, much, but that generation … this has all been which he sees as “rising social story is here too, all the same. frightfully interesting”), while even acceptance combined with slow [https://www.theguardian.com/ her nicknames, a vital part of her emotional diminution”. books/2018/jan/26/the-only-story charm, are reduced to verbal tics: One of his most fondly -julian-barnes-review] “Mr EP” for the man who hits her, remembered interludes is sitting “Mr Badger” for Paul. She carries with Susan in a car in Harley on asking desperate questions Street holding a freshly boxed until we, not just Paul, wonder if diaphragm; he dismisses his we ever knew her at all. contemporaries with There is a continual, delicate play conventional families and life- with personal nouns: Paul is “I” trajectories as “furrow- only when he is with his love; dwellers”. But Barnes is too elsewhere, he wears himself away good a writer to be equally to a generalised “you”, and at the callow. Over Paul’s shoulder, end, a conventionalised “he” who and especially in his anxiously can only flick back to his “I” at recounted fantasies, we glimpse moments of extreme pain. other kinds of love, less Writing itself becomes suspect: romantic, more commonplace, “With your inky pen to make you but also more generative: his hate me”, scribbles Susan in Paul’s friend Eric’s kindness; his diary, and her pathetic note is girlfriend Anna’s hopeful turned over and over in Paul’s positivity and firmness; above all, mind, logically, philosophically, in Susan’s daughter Martha’s all sorts of past and possible shining patience with her ill future contexts, until neither hate mother, which does not speak of nor love is left. It all seems “emotional diminution”, but of terribly sad, and horribly true: a family love given, at least at definitive account of how some point, freely and romantic love becomes trapped in generously. its own frame and empties itself of Even the terrible Gordon has his colour and meaning. epiphany, as Susan tells Paul. But it does not seem necessarily “What I hate,” she says, “is the “only story” about love.
BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA
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Notes
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