Nothing to be Frightened of [Hardcover]

 

 

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Julian Barnes is a great author and an interesting thinker, and his subject here is perhaps the biggest of all subjects - mortality: specifically, the deaths of one's parents, one's own decline and fall, the meaning of life. Important news, then, and from an important source. I very much looked forward to watching his perspective form, and perhaps finding comfort and wisdom, or even just a few laughs, in his elegant prose.

Unfortunately the book didn't quite live up to its promise - for me, anyway. This is a very literary book - a self-consciously literary book in which every thought, feeling, experience, is dutifully backed up by a strangely numb Allusion To Literature. Instead of calling on his vast literary experience to enliven or illustrate the deadening weight of the feelings we all experience when our parents die, I felt Barnes was actually using literature as a hiding place from the feelings he meant to engage with. The net effect is an apparent callousness - as if one's dad's death is just an excellent opportunity for another starred First. I'm sure that is not what he intended, and God knows we all need a place to hide ... The book was just a little smaller in scope than I'd hoped.

Still read it, though. He writes like an angel.

Page 34: "This is not, by the way, `my autobiography'." The book is, however, intensely autobiographical, in a discursive rather than chronological or comprehensive way. It deals mainly, but not exclusively, with two themes that have occupied much of Julian Barnes' life: the fear of death which, despite the book's title (ah! but what if you take the word Nothing to mean Nothingness? p.99), has become an essential part of me" (p.62) and his attitude to religion: "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him." (p.1)

Julian has an elder brother Jonathan, a rather donnish philosopher, and he uses Jonathan's views as a foil to his own, for Jonathan seems genuinely not to be bothered by the prospect of death, and is philosophical not just in an academic but in a temperamental way.

And Julian discusses his memories with Jonathan who points to the unreliability of memories. (And this will be demonstrated beautifully towards the end of the book by a long and fascinating passage about a visit by Stendhal to the Church of Santa Croce). No matter: Julian's memories are recalled so vividly, so stylishly and so wittily that one can only say "si non e vero, e ben trovato" (if this francophile will pardon an Italian instead of a French expression). Besides, in another fine passage towards the end, Julian finely describes the craft of the novelist as the interplay between and the merging of memory and the imagination.

Julian draws richly on what other philosophers, composers and writers have said about death and how they have died. In the context in which this information appears, it is infinitely more rewarding than the lists Simon Critchley has provided in The Book of Dead Philosophers (see my recent review.) Julian must have made a note throughout his voluminous reading whenever the subject of death came up.

For he had always feared death, resented it, protested about it, and, in one of several incongruously vulgar expressions which mar an otherwise delicious and elegant prose, is `pissed off' about one of Montaigne's consolatory statements about it (p.42). (And I find it depressing to see this fine stylist stoop to the wholly gratuitous use of the F Word on a couple of occasions.)

He has progressed from very early atheism to agnosticism in his later years, but there is always a strong whiff of regret, a feeling that atheists and even agnostics miss something important. "God is dead, and without Him human beings can at last get up off their knees and assume their full height; and yet this height turns out to be quite dwarfish." (p.57)

There are some fascinating meditations about the response to religious art by people who no longer share the ideas that went into its creation. He wrestles, not all that originally but with his usual elegance, with age-old problems: whether we have Free Will or not; whether, and if so, how we differ from animals in this respect; of whom or what the `I' consists; what is our place in a world which is billions of years old and has billions of years to come; reflections that a good writer can expect go out of print a decade or two after his death (if not during his life-time), and even a great one will no longer be read a few centuries later: so not much of an after-life there either. And there are some delicious and, as far as I know, original extended metaphors: a particularly felicitous one is on p.191: perhaps God has set up a kind of labyrinth without exits to an after-life, just to watch us, as an experimental scientist watches rats scurrying around to find a non-existing piece of cheese behind a door that won't open.

This book wonderfully articulates what not only Julian Barnes but many other people have thought about death - though perhaps most of us have such thoughts only in the small hours of the morning when we cannot sleep, in the occasional conversations we might have with family or friends, or at times when our friends or relations have a distressing and lingering end. Julian Barnes conveys the impression - perhaps wrongly, because this is after all NOT an autobiography, but mainly musings on Death, God, and The Human Condition - that he thinks about these things obsessively all the time; and I have to say that, in the end, I found 250 pages of it just a little excessive.

I have long been a fan of Julian Barnes and purchased this new volume without reading reviews, as I now tend to do with favourite authors. I took it for granted that the writing would be excellent and it was. However, I was amazed at the feat that he has brought off here. The discourse on life and death, interwoven with autobiographical detail, passages about Jules Renard [and you don't need to know anything about him to enjoy the writing - to me he was only a name],combine to produce a stunning and thought-provoking book. It is one of the best he has written, for sheer content and style. Although death figures large, the result is never morbid. To me it is a celebration of life by one of the most literary of all writers. Where another author might have written separate chapters or disappeared down cul de sacs, Barnes has produced a masterpiece of constrained, fluid writing, integrating all the elements brilliantly.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Not his best
I have been a devoted Julian Barnes reader these past fifteen years and have always felt a bit like coming home every time I picked up a new one. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Tilma

3.0 out of 5 stars Kindle edition disappointing
I enjoyed the book, but I've logged on purely to comment on the Kindle edition, which is littered with typos. Read more

Published 4 months ago by K. Thomas

2.0 out of 5 stars The wrong kind of irony?
I suppose Barnes is what passes for avant garde in this country (Pinter was another such); but I can't help thinking he'd sound better in French - unlike certain Americans I like... Read more

Published 11 months ago by Simon G. Barrett

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for me
I bought this book as it was recommended however found it very difficult to get 'into' therefore about a quater way through gave up on it sorry, but this doesnt mean you wont like... Read more

Published 12 months ago by Mrs. Sandra Leigh

5.0 out of 5 stars Take the sting out of death
This is an ambitious book, but Barnes is such a master of language and humour that it works. It is part memoir of his parents, and part homily to some of his literary heroes. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Mr. James G. Thompson

4.0 out of 5 stars Barnes does it again
A cleverly constructed discussion of death, the possibility of life after it, the meaning of life. I couldn't put it down and will dip into it from time to time again but two... Read more

Published 22 months ago by DR T MOTTRAM

3.0 out of 5 stars Unimpressed
The product review states that this is Barnes best book. If that is the case I will not be rushing to buy another of his books. Read more

Published on 10 Jan 2010 by Peregrinus

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
Disappointing. I can't argue against it being well written -it is- but it doesn't do what it says on the cover. Read more

Published on 6 Oct 2009 by pigsmayfly

4.0 out of 5 stars The Death of the Author?
Imagine the scene: you are at the train station or airport facing a long journey and need something to read. You don't fancy a novel, travel doesn't appeal nor history. Read more

Published on 18 Sep 2009 by Eugene Onegin

1.0 out of 5 stars Flawed research
I am currently reading "Nothing to be Frightened of", and came across the reference to Sibelius and "the lemon table" (page 24 in my paperback). Read more

Published on 15 Aug 2009 by Mr. Quentin Newark

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