0:00:02 > 0:00:05SPEECH IS MUTED
0:00:24 > 0:00:27To the occasional bewilderment of critics and librarians,
0:00:27 > 0:00:30the books of Julian Barnes are hard to categorise.
0:00:30 > 0:00:32Works such as Flaubert's Parrot,
0:00:32 > 0:00:34A History of the World in 10 and a Half Chapters
0:00:34 > 0:00:38and Arthur and George combine fiction, literary biography,
0:00:38 > 0:00:42history and essays, within the outward form of a novel.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46Born in Leicester in 1946, Barnes was one of the quieter members
0:00:46 > 0:00:49of a literary pack that included his close friend
0:00:49 > 0:00:52Martin Amis, a noisy literary celebrity,
0:00:52 > 0:00:56who brought some of the din onto Barnes when, in 1995,
0:00:56 > 0:00:59Amis sacked his agent, Pat Kavanagh, Barnes's wife,
0:00:59 > 0:01:03causing a much-publicised breach between the men.
0:01:03 > 0:01:08In 2008, Barnes published Nothing to Be Frightened Of, a reflection on
0:01:08 > 0:01:12mortality and mourning, which proved to be cruelly prophetic, when later
0:01:12 > 0:01:17that year, Pat became suddenly ill and died rapidly from cancer.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20It was small consolation that these worst personal times were followed
0:01:20 > 0:01:26by some of his best professionally, as he won the 2011 Man Booker Prize
0:01:26 > 0:01:30for The Sense of an Ending, a novel about the treachery of memory.
0:01:30 > 0:01:32His most recent book, Levels of Life,
0:01:32 > 0:01:35is a memoir of bereavement, although one that reflects
0:01:35 > 0:01:39the death of his wife through a typically-Barnesian melange
0:01:39 > 0:01:42of biography, fiction and, finally, autobiography
0:01:44 > 0:01:47I was reading some newspaper interviews from the 1980s,
0:01:47 > 0:01:49when your first books came out, and you said then
0:01:49 > 0:01:53that you wrote seven days a week, including Christmas Day.
0:01:53 > 0:01:56Did that, and does that, remain the case?
0:01:56 > 0:02:00I certainly like working on Christmas Day, New Year's Day.
0:02:00 > 0:02:04I love working on the days when other people go to work.
0:02:05 > 0:02:11I think the truth now would be five to six days a week, erm,
0:02:11 > 0:02:13and Christmas Day included, yes.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17I've more than once started a book on Christmas Day...
0:02:17 > 0:02:19just as a way of, sort of, getting through it.
0:02:19 > 0:02:22And what's the significance of that?
0:02:22 > 0:02:25That it's... I mean, you'd be greatly helped in that by not
0:02:25 > 0:02:28having had children. But it's doing what?
0:02:28 > 0:02:30It's doing what other people are not doing on that day?
0:02:30 > 0:02:35Yes, that's right. It feels sort of mildly transgressive, I suppose.
0:02:35 > 0:02:39I get a pleasure of marching to a different drum...
0:02:41 > 0:02:43..which is what writers and artists do.
0:02:43 > 0:02:47I take the craft, as well as the art, deeply seriously.
0:02:47 > 0:02:53And it always has been and remains a great pleasure, as well.
0:02:53 > 0:02:58I'm often mystified when writers say, "Oh, writing's boring"
0:02:58 > 0:03:03or "I have to listen to music while I write" and stuff like that.
0:03:03 > 0:03:06For me it's hard work, but an intense pleasure.
0:03:06 > 0:03:08I won't say monastic,
0:03:08 > 0:03:12because you're very strict on the misuse of words, but it is...
0:03:12 > 0:03:17it's about discipline, it's about taking literature seriously, in the
0:03:17 > 0:03:21same way that a monk would take their religious practice seriously?
0:03:21 > 0:03:24Yes, that's the great Flaubertian comparison.
0:03:24 > 0:03:28And also you are, you are self-employed, you have
0:03:28 > 0:03:34to make your own time zones, you have to make your own discipline.
0:03:36 > 0:03:40And I've often, in the past, thought about a particular book,
0:03:40 > 0:03:45"This will be a 12-month book" or an 18-month book or a two-year book.
0:03:45 > 0:03:52You have a sense of how long it takes for a book to be alive in your head.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56And I think that came out of the somewhat exhausting
0:03:56 > 0:03:59and depressing experience of my first novel, which took me
0:03:59 > 0:04:01about seven or eight years to write.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04And by the time it was ready for submission,
0:04:04 > 0:04:08I was well passed any, sort of, state of interest in it.
0:04:08 > 0:04:10There's a moment in a Paris Review interview with you
0:04:10 > 0:04:13where the interview says, "Surely the only pleasure in writing
0:04:13 > 0:04:17"is having done it, not doing it?" And you disagree on that.
0:04:17 > 0:04:19You actively enjoy the process of writing?
0:04:19 > 0:04:23Yes, I love... I think the most enjoyable part
0:04:23 > 0:04:29is when you're doing a first draft and it's really flowing and you fool
0:04:29 > 0:04:32yourself into thinking that this is very, very close to the final draft.
0:04:32 > 0:04:35But that's always a mistake.
0:04:35 > 0:04:38And then the real work starts, because most writing is re-writing.
0:04:40 > 0:04:46"Prose is like hair. It shines with combing", as Flaubert said.
0:04:46 > 0:04:48But it's more than just making the hair shine, it's often,
0:04:48 > 0:04:52the whole structure has to be reinvented as you go along
0:04:52 > 0:04:55or the bone structure of it develops as you go along.
0:04:57 > 0:05:02For instance, you know, the passage that probably gets most
0:05:02 > 0:05:06work in any novel is the first page, but very often, the first page
0:05:06 > 0:05:08is nowhere near the first page that you write.
0:05:09 > 0:05:13I think I've only once or twice started at the beginning of a book.
0:05:14 > 0:05:19I've only once or twice KNOWN that this was the beginning of the book.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22But talking a couple years after you won the Man Booker Prize
0:05:22 > 0:05:24for The Sense of an Ending - for many writers it brings
0:05:24 > 0:05:27large sales, public invitations, a validation of their talent.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30You pretty much had those, so has it had any psychological
0:05:30 > 0:05:33or practical effects?
0:05:33 > 0:05:36It's sold a large number of copies of that book
0:05:36 > 0:05:39and it's reanimated my back list, to a certain extent.
0:05:39 > 0:05:46And I think any Booker Prize novel automatically sells into,
0:05:46 > 0:05:48you know, a lot of countries.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51I was first shortlisted for Flaubert's Parrot in 1984
0:05:51 > 0:05:56and, had I won, then, maybe it would have doubled my sales
0:05:56 > 0:05:58from 3,000 to 6,000.
0:05:58 > 0:06:05But, it is, apart from anything else, an extraordinary marketing exercise.
0:06:05 > 0:06:10In terms of affecting what I write next, no, it hasn't.
0:06:10 > 0:06:13There's also relief, because you refer to this on the night
0:06:13 > 0:06:15that had you not won on that occasion,
0:06:15 > 0:06:19you would've gone into the dreaded bridesmaid category,
0:06:19 > 0:06:21famously occupied by the late Beryl Bainbridge,
0:06:21 > 0:06:24in which you become famous for not having won it?
0:06:24 > 0:06:26Yes, that's right.
0:06:26 > 0:06:29It is a, sort of, slightly irritating burden.
0:06:29 > 0:06:33But the thing is that, when you don't win - apart from
0:06:33 > 0:06:37the first time, when you think it's all your own personal failure -
0:06:37 > 0:06:41I found that the next two times I didn't win,
0:06:41 > 0:06:43I felt I was letting down my publishers,
0:06:43 > 0:06:48because they invest a lot in it - not financially, but, sort of,
0:06:48 > 0:06:50psychologically -
0:06:50 > 0:06:54and you feel, "Oh, dear, I've made them all unhappy."
0:06:54 > 0:06:57Julian Barnes, for The Sense Of An Ending.
0:06:57 > 0:07:03And so, the relief of winning with The Sense Of An Ending
0:07:03 > 0:07:08was as much so that I could get down off the rostrum
0:07:08 > 0:07:11and face my publishers, who were, very sweetly, mostly in tears.
0:07:11 > 0:07:14So I knew I'd done...I'd done good.
0:07:14 > 0:07:16At the time we're speaking, there have been, I think,
0:07:16 > 0:07:2021 books by Julian Barnes - 15 fiction, six non-fiction -
0:07:20 > 0:07:23plus four crime novels, under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.
0:07:23 > 0:07:26Clearly, some books come about through circumstance,
0:07:26 > 0:07:29but if we'd been talking to you in the '80s,
0:07:29 > 0:07:34would you have had a rough sense of how you wanted
0:07:34 > 0:07:37the "Also by Julian-Barnes..." page to look?
0:07:37 > 0:07:39Erm...
0:07:41 > 0:07:45I think I would've wanted it to look as if I was consistently
0:07:45 > 0:07:52producing through the years and that my main interest was fiction.
0:07:56 > 0:07:58I think I would be...
0:07:58 > 0:08:02Had I been given a preview of what that page looks like now,
0:08:02 > 0:08:05I would've thought, "Well, that's a relief."
0:08:05 > 0:08:09And there are writers - William Boyd, Paul Theroux -
0:08:09 > 0:08:12who will, certainly in an interview, will say,
0:08:12 > 0:08:14"Well, my next novel will be the Japanese one
0:08:14 > 0:08:17"and then the one after that is the Hawaiian one
0:08:17 > 0:08:21"and then there's the Jeffrey Boycott novel or whatever."
0:08:21 > 0:08:23Are you one of those writers?
0:08:24 > 0:08:30For a long time, I certainly had a notion of what the next one would be
0:08:30 > 0:08:34and, of course, given that there used to be nine months to a year between
0:08:34 > 0:08:39manuscript going in and it being published, then, you know,
0:08:39 > 0:08:43I wasn't going to idle away that time, so I would've started something
0:08:43 > 0:08:45so when the interviewer said, "What's your next book about?"
0:08:45 > 0:08:50I'd give a rough idea of the area, rather than any details.
0:08:51 > 0:08:55I mean, at the moment, I'm not sure what my next book will be.
0:08:55 > 0:09:01I know there will be one, but I'm just, sort of, looking around -
0:09:01 > 0:09:02mooching.
0:09:02 > 0:09:06So, when you're not writing a book, do you always write something?
0:09:06 > 0:09:08Do you write a diary or journalism or something?
0:09:08 > 0:09:14Yes, I get itchy if I haven't got work of some sort on
0:09:14 > 0:09:18and I still do journalism, I like doing journalism.
0:09:18 > 0:09:22I like the...discipline of it,
0:09:22 > 0:09:26which is a completely different discipline to that of fiction.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29And I like getting a response to it. You know, you write the piece,
0:09:29 > 0:09:33you send it in and then, a week later or a month later,
0:09:33 > 0:09:35someone tells you what they think about it,
0:09:35 > 0:09:39whereas by the time you get reactions to a novel,
0:09:39 > 0:09:43you're often thinking about something completely different.
0:09:43 > 0:09:46And the Leicester Mercury put your Man Booker victory
0:09:46 > 0:09:48on the front page, rather touchingly.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51This suggests you used to identify quite strongly
0:09:51 > 0:09:55- with Leicester and Leicester with you?- Yes, I was born in Leicester
0:09:55 > 0:09:58and I left when I was, something like, four weeks old.
0:09:58 > 0:10:04And I grew up the first ten years of my life in Acton, in West London,
0:10:04 > 0:10:07but I'm very touched when the Leicester Mercury
0:10:07 > 0:10:11count me as among the favoured sons of the city -
0:10:11 > 0:10:18me and Sue Townsend, Colin Wilson, Joe Orton, CP Snow,
0:10:18 > 0:10:20can you do any more?
0:10:20 > 0:10:23Gary Lineker and Engelbert Humperdinck.
0:10:23 > 0:10:26That's an important one that slipped my memory.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30Writers are... They're given bits of material by circumstance.
0:10:30 > 0:10:34France was one of yours.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Neatly for biographers, both of your parents were French teachers?
0:10:38 > 0:10:41Yes, that's right. And because of that,
0:10:41 > 0:10:47I was taken to France as a 12-13 year-old for the first time
0:10:47 > 0:10:51and it was the first foreign country I knew and the only foreign country
0:10:51 > 0:10:54I knew until I was about 18 or 19, I think.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58So it was... it was my primary exotic
0:10:58 > 0:11:00and it's had a huge formative influence on me.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05And, you know, had they been Italian teachers,
0:11:05 > 0:11:10I would've written Dante's Dachshund or something like that. Who can tell?
0:11:10 > 0:11:12And as parents were,
0:11:12 > 0:11:17did they switch off the school manner or were they strict?
0:11:17 > 0:11:21No, I don't think they were strict, but they certainly weren't lax.
0:11:21 > 0:11:24When I was writing a book called Nothing To Be Frightened Of,
0:11:24 > 0:11:27which is about death and family and memory,
0:11:27 > 0:11:31all I could remember was my mother would occasionally say things like,
0:11:31 > 0:11:34"You should never wear brown shoes with a blue suit"
0:11:34 > 0:11:39and I thought, "Oh, I must remember that for when I get a suit."
0:11:39 > 0:11:41Doesn't mean we weren't taught things. It means that
0:11:41 > 0:11:46everything was in that very English way - it was implicit and osmotic.
0:11:46 > 0:11:52You just... It seeped into you what you should and shouldn't do, somehow.
0:11:52 > 0:11:54My reading of Nothing To Be Frightened Of,
0:11:54 > 0:11:56the sections about your parents,
0:11:56 > 0:11:58was that you were closer to your father than your mother?
0:11:58 > 0:12:00Yes, that's quite correct.
0:12:00 > 0:12:03I think, I think I was equally close to both of them
0:12:03 > 0:12:07and probably closer to my mother in very young childhood.
0:12:07 > 0:12:12And then, when I reached the age of sentience
0:12:12 > 0:12:18and intellection, I think I felt closer to my father.
0:12:20 > 0:12:22My mother was the more domineering of the two,
0:12:22 > 0:12:25my father was more, probably more liberal,
0:12:25 > 0:12:30more tolerant, both politically and in terms of behaviour.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34The Frenchness you inherited, or the interest in France,
0:12:34 > 0:12:38did you feel an immediate affinity with France and French
0:12:38 > 0:12:41or was it just like Chelsea Clinton having to like politics?
0:12:41 > 0:12:43HE CHUCKLES
0:12:45 > 0:12:46It wasn't immediate, no.
0:12:46 > 0:12:51I remember the first morning I woke up in France, having had
0:12:51 > 0:12:54a, sort of, bizarre dinner before, in which they put sort of vermicelli
0:12:54 > 0:12:59in soup and stuff like that and being very anxious about food,
0:12:59 > 0:13:04and my father sent me across the road to get the local paper
0:13:04 > 0:13:09and I remember being terrified of, you know, axe murderers
0:13:09 > 0:13:15or throat-slitters and I remember repeating 15 times
0:13:15 > 0:13:19the words for "Give me the newspaper, please" or something like that.
0:13:19 > 0:13:23And I felt a tremendous sense of achievement, having done it
0:13:23 > 0:13:24and paid for it and brought it back
0:13:24 > 0:13:27and my father took it completely in his stride.
0:13:27 > 0:13:29So, I think I was a highly-anxious child
0:13:29 > 0:13:33and, I think, my first year,
0:13:33 > 0:13:35the first time I went to France,
0:13:35 > 0:13:38I was just baffled by the strangeness of it all.
0:13:40 > 0:13:44But I think that was very good for me and very useful to me.
0:13:44 > 0:13:49I mean, it's lamentable that fewer people are studying
0:13:49 > 0:13:54modern languages nowadays. They say, "Oh, well, why do we need to,
0:13:54 > 0:13:58"because everyone else speaks English?"
0:13:59 > 0:14:05You need to for deeper reasons than merely ordering your breakfast
0:14:05 > 0:14:06in a hotel.
0:14:07 > 0:14:11You need to, in order to feel what otherness is
0:14:11 > 0:14:15and in order to look at your country from the outside.
0:14:15 > 0:14:17You are a, forgive my pronunciation,
0:14:17 > 0:14:23Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France
0:14:23 > 0:14:25and not even an OBE in England.
0:14:25 > 0:14:29That could reveal your attitude to awards or to nationality or both.
0:14:29 > 0:14:32Some people conclude from this that you do...
0:14:32 > 0:14:35You define yourself as a European.
0:14:38 > 0:14:42I would define myself as English first, European second
0:14:42 > 0:14:43and British third.
0:14:46 > 0:14:51I think that...in terms of...
0:14:51 > 0:14:56what I've written and what I like reading,
0:14:56 > 0:15:01my influences are certainly European, rather than American,
0:15:01 > 0:15:05though there are many American writers that I admire.
0:15:05 > 0:15:13I feel myself part of a Continental culture continent, including Britain.
0:15:13 > 0:15:16Because of genetics and psychology,
0:15:16 > 0:15:20we're encouraged to be aware of what we may inherit from our parents.
0:15:20 > 0:15:24Do you have those moments of thinking I got that from him,
0:15:24 > 0:15:26I got that from her?
0:15:28 > 0:15:31Well, even at this age, I, sort of, don't like to think
0:15:31 > 0:15:35I got anything from my mother, which is probably rather, um,
0:15:35 > 0:15:37savagely punitive of me.
0:15:37 > 0:15:40I think, in temperament, I think
0:15:40 > 0:15:42my temperament is very close to my father's.
0:15:42 > 0:15:48I think I'm fairly peaceable, but beyond a certain point,
0:15:48 > 0:15:50I won't be pushed.
0:15:53 > 0:15:59And, I think, a cast of mind, which has a, sort of,
0:15:59 > 0:16:03an ironic slant to it, is similar, yes.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06And the fact that language matters to you and speech
0:16:06 > 0:16:11and whether people use who or whom and solipsism in the newspapers,
0:16:11 > 0:16:14is that inherited from your father?
0:16:14 > 0:16:17No, I don't think so.
0:16:17 > 0:16:20I can't remember my father ever correcting me,
0:16:20 > 0:16:23but don't make me out to be more of a pedant than I am.
0:16:23 > 0:16:26You are a bit of a pedant, though?
0:16:26 > 0:16:34Well, most words mean specific things and, so, when I see...
0:16:34 > 0:16:36And certain words are lost, you know.
0:16:36 > 0:16:42For example, I bridle when the word decimate is used to mean massacre,
0:16:42 > 0:16:46as it routinely is, whereas, in fact, it comes from the old
0:16:46 > 0:16:51Roman legionnaire's punishment, which is to kill one in ten.
0:16:51 > 0:16:56I mean, I was a lexicographer after I left university
0:16:56 > 0:17:02and I tend to look at language with that historical perspective,
0:17:02 > 0:17:05but because I'm an ex-lexicographer, I always think of language
0:17:05 > 0:17:07as being in motion.
0:17:07 > 0:17:11This has never been a golden age of language.
0:17:11 > 0:17:12I mean the, sort of,
0:17:12 > 0:17:15the, sort of, linguistic pedants who you are slightly trying
0:17:15 > 0:17:21to cast me as one of, the, sort of, assumption behind what they say
0:17:21 > 0:17:25is that there was this perfect time, at some point.
0:17:25 > 0:17:27Perhaps it was when Johnson wrote,
0:17:27 > 0:17:29perhaps it was when Shakespeare wrote,
0:17:29 > 0:17:31when words and objects matched.
0:17:31 > 0:17:33That was never the case
0:17:33 > 0:17:38and the English language has always been an impure
0:17:38 > 0:17:43and mongrelised language and the better for it, it seems to me.
0:17:43 > 0:17:45In Metroland, published in 1980,
0:17:45 > 0:17:48the central characters are two boys, Christopher and Toni.
0:17:48 > 0:17:49Toni with an 'I'.
0:17:49 > 0:17:52Travelling to school on the Metropolitan line,
0:17:52 > 0:17:55entranced, among other things, by French language and culture.
0:17:55 > 0:17:59Writers dislike admitting that books are autobiographical,
0:17:59 > 0:18:03but that one was clearly, at least, partly so.
0:18:03 > 0:18:05Oh, yes. Especially in the first section.
0:18:05 > 0:18:08Yes, I commuted for I think about an hour and five minutes
0:18:08 > 0:18:12in each direction on three different London Underground lines.
0:18:12 > 0:18:15The first section is very closely autobiographical,
0:18:15 > 0:18:17particularly in spirit,
0:18:17 > 0:18:22though I think I made the boys a bit, sort of, cleverer
0:18:22 > 0:18:29than I and my friend, who amazingly was called Toni with an 'I', were.
0:18:30 > 0:18:33And then, I think, as the book goes on,
0:18:33 > 0:18:37I learned to exercise the imagination and think up,
0:18:37 > 0:18:40you know, how my life might have gone differently.
0:18:40 > 0:18:43But, yes, I grew up in circumstances very similar
0:18:43 > 0:18:46to those of Christopher in part one of Metroland.
0:18:46 > 0:18:51I'm fascinated that you changed your name, but kept his.
0:18:51 > 0:18:53Why was that?
0:18:53 > 0:18:56I don't know, I can't answer that, really.
0:18:56 > 0:18:58Maybe I wanted to tease him.
0:18:58 > 0:19:00I don't think he liked the book.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03Some people like to see themselves in books
0:19:03 > 0:19:05when they're not really there.
0:19:05 > 0:19:07And others...
0:19:10 > 0:19:11..if they know they're in it,
0:19:11 > 0:19:13they have slightly mixed feelings about it,
0:19:13 > 0:19:17so there's no pleasing some.
0:19:17 > 0:19:21On the other hand, there are people, like my brother.
0:19:21 > 0:19:24My brother is three years older than me
0:19:24 > 0:19:30and he's an ancient philosopher, in both senses of the words.
0:19:30 > 0:19:31He's Jonathan?
0:19:31 > 0:19:34He's Jonathan. He of Aristotle and the Pre-Socratics.
0:19:34 > 0:19:38And when I was writing Nothing To Be Frightened Of,
0:19:38 > 0:19:42which is the closest to a family memoir I've come,
0:19:42 > 0:19:45I e-mailed him and I said,
0:19:45 > 0:19:52"Look, I am writing stuff about us growing up, our parents and so on.
0:19:52 > 0:19:54"I might have a lot of questions."
0:19:54 > 0:19:58And he e-mailed back and said, "That's fine.
0:19:58 > 0:20:03"And by the way, just to get this clear," he said,
0:20:03 > 0:20:06"one - if your memory conflicts with mine,
0:20:06 > 0:20:09"go with yours, because it's probably better than mine,
0:20:09 > 0:20:14"and the second thing is, I don't mind anything that you say about me."
0:20:14 > 0:20:17Which I thought was astonishingly generous.
0:20:17 > 0:20:19Philosophical, indeed.
0:20:19 > 0:20:24I mean, I thought when I was writing the book, my memories are pretty
0:20:24 > 0:20:32good on the whole and he was and is much more suspicious of memory.
0:20:32 > 0:20:35He thinks of memory as something much closer to the imagination.
0:20:35 > 0:20:41He thinks that most memories are unreliable and probably false,
0:20:41 > 0:20:43unless they're corroborated.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46Which also comes in in The Sense of an Ending.
0:20:46 > 0:20:47Yes, indeed,
0:20:47 > 0:20:52and over the years, since I had that first exchange with him,
0:20:52 > 0:20:56I think I've come round more and more to his point of view
0:20:56 > 0:20:59and I distrust my memories more and more
0:20:59 > 0:21:06and, I think, increasingly, that the memories that we have
0:21:06 > 0:21:09from way back are not...
0:21:09 > 0:21:14Their primary function isn't necessarily to be representations
0:21:14 > 0:21:16of the truth, as it was,
0:21:16 > 0:21:22but to be things that are useful or necessary to us,
0:21:22 > 0:21:25in order to continue with our lives.
0:21:25 > 0:21:28MUSIC: "Double Bass Duo" by Moondog
0:21:30 > 0:21:33'How often do we tell our own life story?
0:21:33 > 0:21:34'How often do we adjust,'
0:21:34 > 0:21:38embellish, make sly cuts?
0:21:38 > 0:21:39And the longer life goes on,
0:21:39 > 0:21:43the fewer are those around to challenge our account,
0:21:43 > 0:21:46to remind us that our life is not our life,
0:21:46 > 0:21:50'merely the story we have told about our life.'
0:21:50 > 0:21:55Told to others, but, mainly, to ourselves.
0:21:58 > 0:22:01You also write in Nothing To Be Frightened Of
0:22:01 > 0:22:05that you stopped believing in God in adolescence,
0:22:05 > 0:22:09so that your dead grandparents would not be able to see you masturbating.
0:22:11 > 0:22:12That wasn't, that wasn't...
0:22:12 > 0:22:15That was one of several reasons, Mark, I have to tell you.
0:22:15 > 0:22:17It wasn't just about wanking.
0:22:17 > 0:22:22It was also about the usual reasons why you stop believing in God.
0:22:22 > 0:22:25I mean, I didn't believe very much in God.
0:22:25 > 0:22:26I wasn't brought up...
0:22:26 > 0:22:30My parents never took us to church as boys, I was never christened.
0:22:30 > 0:22:34So God came into it, really, only when I went to school and there
0:22:34 > 0:22:38were morning prayers and hymns being sung, and that, sort of, stuff.
0:22:38 > 0:22:42But, yes, one of the arguments was that it would be grotesque
0:22:42 > 0:22:46if my dead grandparents could actually see me masturbating.
0:22:46 > 0:22:48I think that's quite a profound argument against God
0:22:48 > 0:22:50and the afterlife.
0:22:50 > 0:22:52But then, as I go on to say, later on in the book,
0:22:52 > 0:22:56I think, of course, this presupposes
0:22:56 > 0:22:59that my grandparents would disapprove, you know.
0:22:59 > 0:23:04Perhaps my dead grandfather, up there in the empyrean,
0:23:04 > 0:23:08was saying, "You know, go on, lad, have one for me. I can't any more."
0:23:08 > 0:23:10I'm sure my grandmother would have been shocked. But still.
0:23:10 > 0:23:12MARK CHUCKLES
0:23:12 > 0:23:14You got into Oxford University, flitted around a bit.
0:23:14 > 0:23:19It was French and Russian, then Philosophy and then French again.
0:23:19 > 0:23:21Yeah, I made a complete mess of it.
0:23:21 > 0:23:25I left my school, which was in Blackfriars in the centre of London,
0:23:25 > 0:23:32for university, educationally and intellectually
0:23:32 > 0:23:35of a reasonable maturity,
0:23:35 > 0:23:39but socially and emotionally immature, for my age.
0:23:39 > 0:23:42And I got in on a scholarship to read French
0:23:42 > 0:23:45and Russian was my second language.
0:23:45 > 0:23:48And then, after a couple of terms I thought, you know,
0:23:48 > 0:23:49this isn't really...
0:23:49 > 0:23:51I'm just carrying on doing what I did at school
0:23:51 > 0:23:53and I was a bit bored.
0:23:53 > 0:23:57So I changed to Philosophy and Psychology, and, because I thought,
0:23:57 > 0:24:01you know, these are, sort of, these are subjects which really grasp
0:24:01 > 0:24:04what the world's all about and I will learn, I will learn how to
0:24:04 > 0:24:09think and then I will also learn how the human being operates internally.
0:24:11 > 0:24:16But the Psychology, which is experimental, animal psychology,
0:24:16 > 0:24:19consisted of cutting up earthworms and stuff like that.
0:24:19 > 0:24:22And the Philosophy was just very hard for me to understand.
0:24:22 > 0:24:25I didn't have that cast of mind that my brother did.
0:24:25 > 0:24:28So after two terms, I gave that up,
0:24:28 > 0:24:32with my tail between my legs, and I slunk back to French.
0:24:32 > 0:24:34Were you unhappy there?
0:24:34 > 0:24:36Yeah, I probably was unhappy, yes.
0:24:36 > 0:24:40I felt I... I felt I didn't fit in to...
0:24:40 > 0:24:43I didn't know where I fitted into the world.
0:24:43 > 0:24:48And it took me a while to learn where I did.
0:24:50 > 0:24:53I fit into the world now as a writer.
0:24:53 > 0:24:58And I'm more able to speak in consecutive sentences,
0:24:58 > 0:25:00which I couldn't.
0:25:01 > 0:25:06But you don't, you know, you don't become a writer by an easy process.
0:25:06 > 0:25:13So it took me some years before I felt
0:25:13 > 0:25:15the beginnings of being at ease in the world, yes.
0:25:15 > 0:25:19And then I came back and I read French and I got a second
0:25:19 > 0:25:23and I was, you know, unqualified for anything,
0:25:23 > 0:25:25but assumed I'd get a job, in the way that people did then.
0:25:25 > 0:25:31I saw an advertisement in the TLS, I think, for an assistant editor,
0:25:31 > 0:25:34editorial assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary.
0:25:34 > 0:25:36And I applied for that and got it,
0:25:36 > 0:25:41which meant that I stayed on in Oxford for three years afterwards,
0:25:41 > 0:25:43which was rather like, you know,
0:25:43 > 0:25:45sitting in the bathwater as it gradually cools down,
0:25:45 > 0:25:48because I was no longer, sort of, part of the university.
0:25:48 > 0:25:51Although from outside, it always seems, kind of, a glamorous job
0:25:51 > 0:25:53or, at least, an interesting one to have had.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56I think a lot of jobs are interesting to have had, yes.
0:25:56 > 0:25:59I think that's the way of putting it.
0:25:59 > 0:26:02It was only words from 1880 onwards that I was dealing with
0:26:02 > 0:26:06and it was only in the letters B to about G.
0:26:07 > 0:26:11I was put in charge of sports
0:26:11 > 0:26:14and dirty words, on the grounds that I was...
0:26:14 > 0:26:17There were quite a lot of dons' wives employed
0:26:17 > 0:26:20and, obviously, they couldn't give them to them,
0:26:20 > 0:26:25so, yeah, I had some experience at the muckier end of lexicography.
0:26:25 > 0:26:27You started to become a barrister,
0:26:27 > 0:26:30but did you genuinely intend to practise law or were you hoping
0:26:30 > 0:26:34something would come along to distract you?
0:26:34 > 0:26:37I think I went with mixed motives.
0:26:39 > 0:26:44I thought on the basis of this one job I'd had as a lexicographer
0:26:44 > 0:26:49that all jobs were equally boring, so I may as well get one that
0:26:49 > 0:26:52paid more and took me to London.
0:26:52 > 0:26:57I was totally unequipped, then, to stand on my feet and argue a case,
0:26:57 > 0:27:00I could probably do it now a bit better.
0:27:00 > 0:27:04And what was also apparent was that I started writing book reviews
0:27:04 > 0:27:10about this time and I realised that, you know, doing a fiction
0:27:10 > 0:27:13round-up for the Oxford Mail,
0:27:13 > 0:27:17reviewing five novels and getting four guineas for it
0:27:17 > 0:27:23was going to give me much more satisfaction than standing up
0:27:23 > 0:27:29in court and defending someone on a charge of petty theft or something.
0:27:29 > 0:27:32But you never went professionally into court?
0:27:32 > 0:27:34I never went professionally into court.
0:27:34 > 0:27:37I was a jobbing litterateur around London.
0:27:37 > 0:27:40New Statesman - that was a significant period.
0:27:40 > 0:27:42You met many people there,
0:27:42 > 0:27:44Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, James Fenton.
0:27:44 > 0:27:46Some people have described them,
0:27:46 > 0:27:48then and now, as, you know, as a literary mafia.
0:27:48 > 0:27:50JULIAN CHUCKLES
0:27:50 > 0:27:53I don't think it was much of a mafia.
0:27:53 > 0:27:56There is a suggestion, partly because, sort of, pieces written
0:27:56 > 0:27:59by Clive James in both non-fiction and fiction,
0:27:59 > 0:28:02that it was tremendously rhetorically competitive,
0:28:02 > 0:28:06that you were all sitting round, trying to come up with the smartest,
0:28:06 > 0:28:09a smarter remark than the person before you.
0:28:09 > 0:28:11Was it like that?
0:28:11 > 0:28:17Yes, I found it rather...daunting
0:28:17 > 0:28:18when I would first go along
0:28:18 > 0:28:26to literary lunches with people like Clive James, Martin Amis,
0:28:26 > 0:28:28Christopher Hitchens -
0:28:28 > 0:28:31all of whom were extraordinarily good talkers
0:28:31 > 0:28:34and competitive in their talking, yes.
0:28:35 > 0:28:38I gradually got my confidence, I think,
0:28:38 > 0:28:43and interjected a few things, but, yes, it was very...
0:28:43 > 0:28:47There was a lot of dashing wordsmithery going on.
0:28:47 > 0:28:49And in terms of literary confidence,
0:28:49 > 0:28:52was it a complication that Martin Amis,
0:28:52 > 0:28:56he was, literally, born to the literary world, wasn't he?
0:28:56 > 0:28:59Yes, he was, and as a young man,
0:28:59 > 0:29:03he had incredible literary swagger to him.
0:29:03 > 0:29:09I don't think I was put off by him, though.
0:29:11 > 0:29:19I was put off by all my internal doubts and uncertainties
0:29:19 > 0:29:24and thinking why would anyone out there want to hear from me?
0:29:24 > 0:29:29The notion that, is there anything more to add to the file of knowledge
0:29:29 > 0:29:33on humanity after all the great 19th-century and 20th-century writers
0:29:33 > 0:29:35have had their say.
0:29:36 > 0:29:39But then you, sort of, learn to forget that a bit.
0:29:39 > 0:29:41You have to put that aside.
0:29:42 > 0:29:44The other obvious contrast to Martin Amis
0:29:44 > 0:29:48is he has been the writer as public figure, for good or ill -
0:29:48 > 0:29:53advances, agents, teeth, in public, always in the papers.
0:29:53 > 0:29:55You have tried to do the precise opposite,
0:29:55 > 0:29:58except when you've got dragged into it.
0:29:58 > 0:30:01You've tried to live the writer as private figure.
0:30:01 > 0:30:03That's true, that's true.
0:30:03 > 0:30:06It wasn't, "Oh, that's how he does it, I must do it differently."
0:30:06 > 0:30:09It's simply a reflection of temperament.
0:30:09 > 0:30:14I think I'm a fairly, by nature, a fairly private person,
0:30:14 > 0:30:21but it's also to do with my...literary aesthetic.
0:30:23 > 0:30:26I think that, in an ideal world,
0:30:26 > 0:30:30the work would do all the work, you know?
0:30:30 > 0:30:37The books would do the work for you and they would proceed,
0:30:37 > 0:30:43somehow, by mysterious word of mouth, reader to reader and you wouldn't
0:30:43 > 0:30:48have to put your personality on display to sell your books.
0:30:48 > 0:30:54I have done, over my years, a large number of appearances
0:30:54 > 0:30:59and interviews and so on, but I've always tried to draw
0:30:59 > 0:31:01a certain line, you know.
0:31:02 > 0:31:07I feel that my, on the whole, my task is to talk about the work
0:31:07 > 0:31:11and deflect the interviewer's...
0:31:11 > 0:31:14interest in my life.
0:31:14 > 0:31:19I've always tried to protect that and that of those around me.
0:31:19 > 0:31:23Though, of course, we're talking more openly now, because this is
0:31:23 > 0:31:28the interview that, when the news comes "the novelist Julian Barnes
0:31:28 > 0:31:35"died two days ago and as a tribute, we're broadcasting an extremely
0:31:35 > 0:31:40"abbreviated form of the interview he gave to Mark Lawson a few years ago."
0:31:40 > 0:31:42So, when the line was crossed,
0:31:42 > 0:31:45so, for example, the Martin Amis business,
0:31:45 > 0:31:48when you were dragged onto the front pages,
0:31:48 > 0:31:50that...
0:31:50 > 0:31:53Well, I didn't say anything. Nor did my wife.
0:31:53 > 0:31:56It was...that's how we were.
0:31:56 > 0:32:02Let him talk about it, if he wants to.
0:32:02 > 0:32:06And I haven't spoken about it, as far as I'm aware, and don't intend to.
0:32:06 > 0:32:08Flaubert's Parrot, 1984.
0:32:08 > 0:32:12At the BBC, there used to be this index system
0:32:12 > 0:32:15which had a list of possible contributors
0:32:15 > 0:32:18and then the subjects on which they could be asked to speak
0:32:18 > 0:32:21and under "Barnes, Julian", for quite a long time,
0:32:21 > 0:32:28it said France, Parrots, and this is a result of this...book.
0:32:28 > 0:32:29Yes.
0:32:29 > 0:32:32Kingsley Amis is supposed to have said at one point,
0:32:32 > 0:32:35"Why can't he just shut up about Flaubert?"
0:32:35 > 0:32:36Yeah, he did say that.
0:32:36 > 0:32:39Yes, yes, he probably said it to my face.
0:32:39 > 0:32:44Yes, he got very irritated with all that sort of Froggery
0:32:44 > 0:32:46and foreignery.
0:32:48 > 0:32:50But I haven't shut up about Flaubert,
0:32:50 > 0:32:53as you've noticed in the course of our conversation.
0:32:53 > 0:32:55He is a great exemplar and a great icon.
0:32:55 > 0:33:00So, Gustav Flaubert, 1821-1880. Why? What was it?
0:33:00 > 0:33:03It was school, presumably?
0:33:03 > 0:33:05I was struck by him when I was about 15,
0:33:05 > 0:33:08I had an English master who gave us a reading list
0:33:08 > 0:33:11and it had foreign books on it, one called Madame Bovary,
0:33:11 > 0:33:13and I read it thinking it was going to be a hot book
0:33:13 > 0:33:16and didn't see it at 15,
0:33:16 > 0:33:21though, later on, when I reread it, I thought, "It's quite hot, really."
0:33:22 > 0:33:29I think that what made me attend to him more carefully was that,
0:33:29 > 0:33:33when I was in my early 20s,
0:33:33 > 0:33:37there was a book edited by Francis Steegmuller
0:33:37 > 0:33:41about Flaubert's travels in the near East.
0:33:41 > 0:33:47It shows the Flaubertian sensibility, which is often about, it's ironic,
0:33:47 > 0:33:55it's brainy, it's often about anticipation and disappoint...
0:33:55 > 0:34:00anticipation and reflection being more satisfying
0:34:00 > 0:34:03than the moment of life itself.
0:34:03 > 0:34:06Now, that's a very Flaubertion sentiment.
0:34:06 > 0:34:10At the end of his novel, Sentimental Education,
0:34:10 > 0:34:12there's a boy looking back
0:34:12 > 0:34:16and he thinks that, perhaps, the best time of his whole life
0:34:16 > 0:34:21was when he and a chum set off as 18-year-olds to visit a brothel,
0:34:21 > 0:34:26but they never quite got there, so this moment way back then
0:34:26 > 0:34:30of extraordinary anticipation was the highlight of his life.
0:34:30 > 0:34:34And through the character of a widowed doctor,
0:34:34 > 0:34:38Jeffrey Braithwaite, again, form is crucial in this book,
0:34:38 > 0:34:40which I've read several times,
0:34:40 > 0:34:42but it astonishes me, each time, the variety,
0:34:42 > 0:34:45so chapters may take the form of a chronology
0:34:45 > 0:34:48an examination paper and so on.
0:34:48 > 0:34:52It started discussions on about what a novel can be, but did you,
0:34:52 > 0:34:57were you consciously questioning what a novel can be made of?
0:34:57 > 0:34:58Yes, I was.
0:34:58 > 0:35:02I was thinking how can I make this new?
0:35:02 > 0:35:05How can I make it interesting?
0:35:05 > 0:35:09How can I tell the story I want to tell?
0:35:09 > 0:35:11I knew I didn't want to write...
0:35:11 > 0:35:15I knew I wanted to write about Flaubert because I was quite obsessed
0:35:15 > 0:35:19by him, but I didn't want to write a biography,
0:35:19 > 0:35:25I didn't want to write a novel-novel, you know.
0:35:25 > 0:35:29I wanted to write something that mixed fact and fiction
0:35:29 > 0:35:32that had...
0:35:32 > 0:35:36in which the fiction was a, sort of, firm infrastructure to the book
0:35:36 > 0:35:40and there was this enormous super-structure of facts.
0:35:40 > 0:35:44In my view, it's a novel about obsession.
0:35:44 > 0:35:48Jeffrey Braithwaite is a man obsessed by literature,
0:35:48 > 0:35:50and Flaubert, in particular and, for whom,
0:35:50 > 0:35:56as is the case for some people, something other than life,
0:35:56 > 0:35:59ie art, is more satisfying than life itself.
0:35:59 > 0:36:01His life has been disappointing to him.
0:36:01 > 0:36:04His marriage has gone wrong
0:36:04 > 0:36:10and I think he quotes Logan Pearsall Smith,
0:36:10 > 0:36:15the American, and Smith said,
0:36:15 > 0:36:19"Some people say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading."
0:36:19 > 0:36:23So it was that, sort of, person that I was having as Jeffrey Braithwaite.
0:36:27 > 0:36:31'Books say, "She did this, because..."'
0:36:31 > 0:36:34Life says, "She did this."
0:36:34 > 0:36:39Books are where things are explained to you, life is where things aren't.
0:36:39 > 0:36:42I'm not surprised some people prefer books.
0:36:42 > 0:36:45Books make sense of life.
0:36:45 > 0:36:48The only problem is that the lives they make sense of
0:36:48 > 0:36:52are other people's lives, never your own.
0:36:56 > 0:37:00Right through up until Levels Of Life, recently,
0:37:00 > 0:37:04this is crucial for you, which, to some writers, it isn't,
0:37:04 > 0:37:06the form, the structure of a book.
0:37:06 > 0:37:08Absolutely. Yes.
0:37:10 > 0:37:13Flaubert said there's no idea without a form
0:37:13 > 0:37:20and no form without an idea, by which he meant, I think,
0:37:20 > 0:37:25that you can have an idea for a book, but it's not really
0:37:25 > 0:37:30a potential book until you come up with the form that fits it.
0:37:32 > 0:37:36And I think form is very important to me
0:37:36 > 0:37:39and the novel is a very capacious,
0:37:39 > 0:37:44generous and informal art,
0:37:44 > 0:37:47so it's a broad church.
0:37:47 > 0:37:55But I believe that the idea and the ideas you have in a novel
0:37:55 > 0:38:02are best served if they're helped by the form of the novel. Yes.
0:38:02 > 0:38:05The experiment in form, perhaps most audacious,
0:38:05 > 0:38:07A History of The World in Ten and a Half Chapters,
0:38:07 > 0:38:12the individual sections are essays or short stories.
0:38:12 > 0:38:16There's even a fold-out illustration of a famous art work.
0:38:17 > 0:38:21Now, again, there was critical muttering about, is this a novel?
0:38:21 > 0:38:24Someone actually said he could have got onto the Booker,
0:38:24 > 0:38:26as it then was, the Booker Prize shortlist,
0:38:26 > 0:38:27if only it were a novel.
0:38:27 > 0:38:28I think of them as novels
0:38:28 > 0:38:31and most of my fellow novelists don't have any trouble
0:38:31 > 0:38:36thinking that Flaubert's Parrot or the History of the World is a novel.
0:38:36 > 0:38:43It's always been a very porous and informal art form.
0:38:43 > 0:38:47Go back to the first great European novel, Don Quixote.
0:38:47 > 0:38:50It's got all sorts of stuff in it that you don't think
0:38:50 > 0:38:54is the stuff of a novel and it's got all sorts of formal invention
0:38:54 > 0:38:56and oddity about it.
0:38:57 > 0:39:02I don't acknowledge any lines in the sand between fiction and nonfiction,
0:39:02 > 0:39:06even bits of autobiography or criticism or whatever.
0:39:06 > 0:39:12It's what the story and the book require and demand
0:39:12 > 0:39:16and so, when I'm writing something, I don't think about...
0:39:16 > 0:39:19I don't think about category and then it's only
0:39:19 > 0:39:23when it comes to my publishers, that they say, sometimes,
0:39:23 > 0:39:26"We're not quite sure where this fits"
0:39:26 > 0:39:31and I say, "Well, just call it a book, you know."
0:39:31 > 0:39:33In any library classification system,
0:39:33 > 0:39:38the word that would be used to summarise content of almost
0:39:38 > 0:39:42all the books, actually - death, I mean, this always strikes me.
0:39:42 > 0:39:46It's right there, a chapter in Metroland called "The Big D".
0:39:46 > 0:39:48Narrator of Flaubert's Parrot is a widower,
0:39:48 > 0:39:50one section of A History of the World asks what
0:39:50 > 0:39:53we can set against the presence, the inevitability of death.
0:39:53 > 0:39:56That...
0:39:56 > 0:39:58That has always been a central...
0:39:58 > 0:40:01Well, it's always been a key concern of your books.
0:40:02 > 0:40:04I think that's undeniable,
0:40:04 > 0:40:10and I think that, in the last four or five, um...
0:40:10 > 0:40:15I've written a lot about the approach to the end of life, death,
0:40:15 > 0:40:19and in the most recent book, grief.
0:40:19 > 0:40:22And it's certainly there, even from the first book.
0:40:22 > 0:40:25It's there...it's been there in my life, you know,
0:40:25 > 0:40:28since I first became aware of death when I was...
0:40:30 > 0:40:31..seven or eight or...
0:40:31 > 0:40:34I don't know, I can't remember, I can't remember when I...
0:40:34 > 0:40:37I remember... I remember that it would come
0:40:37 > 0:40:41when I would be lying in bed on one side,
0:40:41 > 0:40:47not on the other. Er, mysteriously, this...
0:40:47 > 0:40:51this awareness of extinction and what it meant.
0:40:51 > 0:40:53So, I had it from an early age,
0:40:53 > 0:40:58and it seems to me a matter well worth investigating.
0:40:58 > 0:41:01You address this in Nothing To Be Frightened Of.
0:41:01 > 0:41:06Conventionally, children and books are the things that people say...
0:41:06 > 0:41:10I mean, they do survive you, we hope, in most cases.
0:41:10 > 0:41:15But that literary immortality - is that something you believe in?
0:41:15 > 0:41:17No, um...
0:41:17 > 0:41:19I believe in, um...
0:41:20 > 0:41:24I think that probably some of my books will be read after my death.
0:41:24 > 0:41:29I think that they may be read for one or two generations, maybe.
0:41:29 > 0:41:33Let's say they're read for eight generations or something like that.
0:41:33 > 0:41:37But there will always be a last reader
0:41:37 > 0:41:41and I fantasise about the last reader in Nothing To Be Frightened Of.
0:41:41 > 0:41:47And, at first, I feel quite tender towards this person, man or woman,
0:41:47 > 0:41:49who's the last person to read one of my books.
0:41:49 > 0:41:52And then, I realise that what this logically entails
0:41:52 > 0:41:57is that person refuses to recommend my books to anyone else.
0:41:57 > 0:41:59You bastard!
0:41:59 > 0:42:02What an unkind reader that is.
0:42:02 > 0:42:06Where were we? We were with death, where we always are, yes.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10You've quoted a few times from Nothing To Be Frightened Of.
0:42:10 > 0:42:12I remember hearing that book was coming out
0:42:12 > 0:42:15and thinking that it was a most unlikely book
0:42:15 > 0:42:17from a person as private as you were,
0:42:17 > 0:42:20that it was, as we say, a family memoir.
0:42:20 > 0:42:25It has the experiences of friends, although disguised under initials.
0:42:25 > 0:42:29But there just came... that book just, it began to happen.
0:42:31 > 0:42:35Yes, I think, er...
0:42:35 > 0:42:38there had been various, sort of, scribbles in my notebooks,
0:42:38 > 0:42:42and a first line for a book,
0:42:42 > 0:42:47which went, "Let's get this death thing straight."
0:42:47 > 0:42:49And I knew that...
0:42:49 > 0:42:53Which certainly isn't the first line of Nothing To Be Frightened Of
0:42:53 > 0:42:55and it's not a very good first line,
0:42:55 > 0:42:59because it's got that terrible "th" together - death, thing,
0:42:59 > 0:43:02which you can barely say or read.
0:43:02 > 0:43:07But the fact that there would be a death book
0:43:07 > 0:43:12was in my mind... for a number of years.
0:43:12 > 0:43:14And, I guess, I thought...
0:43:15 > 0:43:18Well, the fact that my parents had both died
0:43:18 > 0:43:23and that I had, you know, experienced what that was,
0:43:23 > 0:43:27gave me a bit more field work, I suppose.
0:43:27 > 0:43:31And I thought that doing it
0:43:31 > 0:43:35within the context of some, sort of, family memoir might work.
0:43:37 > 0:43:40Reading backwards, Nothing To Be Frightened Of,
0:43:40 > 0:43:42The Sense Of An Ending, which won the Booker,
0:43:42 > 0:43:46and Levels Of Life, they form a sort of loose...
0:43:46 > 0:43:48an accidental and, indeed, unwanted trilogy,
0:43:48 > 0:43:52in that you first anticipate the possibility of bereavement
0:43:52 > 0:43:55and then you write in the shadow of it.
0:43:55 > 0:43:57So, in a sense...
0:43:57 > 0:44:00I mean, those books are intricately linked.
0:44:02 > 0:44:03Intricately linked,
0:44:03 > 0:44:08but not linked by overall master plan, no.
0:44:08 > 0:44:09Um...
0:44:13 > 0:44:14Though, if we go...
0:44:14 > 0:44:17I mean, four of my last five books
0:44:17 > 0:44:21have been a collection of short stories, called Pulse.
0:44:21 > 0:44:25Before that, there was Nothing To Be Frightened Of,
0:44:25 > 0:44:27then Sense of An Ending, then Levels Of Life -
0:44:27 > 0:44:30all of which are moving towards the end of life
0:44:30 > 0:44:32and the consequences of the end of life,
0:44:32 > 0:44:35both in terms of the person experiencing it
0:44:35 > 0:44:39and then the person surviving the ending of someone else's life.
0:44:39 > 0:44:41So, yes, you could say that they have...
0:44:41 > 0:44:43They are intricately linked,
0:44:43 > 0:44:47but I think that they're, sort of, linked by authorial chronology
0:44:47 > 0:44:48as much as anything else.
0:44:48 > 0:44:50I certainly didn't plan them that way.
0:44:50 > 0:44:54"I'll do old age, then I'll do death, then I'll do grief."
0:44:54 > 0:44:55I, you know...
0:44:55 > 0:44:59You don't know how your life is going to work out in any case.
0:44:59 > 0:45:01It's also true that two of them are...
0:45:02 > 0:45:07..more personal and more... autobiographical
0:45:07 > 0:45:12than... than... than stuff I've written before.
0:45:12 > 0:45:14Um...
0:45:14 > 0:45:17But again, that's just the way it turned out.
0:45:17 > 0:45:19That was the story I wanted to tell.
0:45:19 > 0:45:23And there is, as you will realise,
0:45:23 > 0:45:27there was a shock for the readers of Levels Of Life
0:45:27 > 0:45:31that you describe a period in which you began to think about suicide
0:45:31 > 0:45:33and the way you would do it.
0:45:33 > 0:45:36And if we've read The Sense Of An Ending,
0:45:36 > 0:45:40we realise that that form of suicide is in that book.
0:45:40 > 0:45:42Yes.
0:45:42 > 0:45:43Yes, I...
0:45:43 > 0:45:48Well, after my wife died, um... at a certain fairly early stage,
0:45:48 > 0:45:55like...some people who have lost someone they loved for a long time,
0:45:55 > 0:45:58I contemplated ending my life.
0:45:58 > 0:46:00It seemed one solution.
0:46:00 > 0:46:04There were other solutions - some of which seemed harder.
0:46:04 > 0:46:06And eventually, as I describe in the book,
0:46:06 > 0:46:08I come up with an argument against it.
0:46:08 > 0:46:14I think this is quite common and...
0:46:14 > 0:46:18even if fleeting, um...
0:46:18 > 0:46:21and because I was trying to write about grief
0:46:21 > 0:46:26as directly and as truthfully as I could, it seemed...
0:46:26 > 0:46:31it never crossed my mind that I would not refer to it.
0:46:31 > 0:46:34Because you don't think when you're writing a book,
0:46:34 > 0:46:38"Oh, I wonder if this bit will get into the newspapers."
0:46:38 > 0:46:41It never crosses my mind.
0:46:41 > 0:46:45You're thinking about... yourself as writer,
0:46:45 > 0:46:48the text, the world and the reader.
0:46:48 > 0:46:52And you don't think of the, sort of, things in the interstices
0:46:52 > 0:46:56between these sections of what writing and reading is.
0:46:56 > 0:46:59You don't think, at some point, a journalist will get this
0:46:59 > 0:47:02and say, "Oh, look, he says he wanted to kill himself,
0:47:02 > 0:47:04"let's make a news story out of that."
0:47:04 > 0:47:07- It just never crossed my mind. - Really?- No, I promise you.
0:47:07 > 0:47:10Yes, I would have, um...
0:47:10 > 0:47:15I would have used the method that Adrian had to kill himself,
0:47:15 > 0:47:18um...
0:47:18 > 0:47:20because it was in my mind.
0:47:20 > 0:47:22Um...
0:47:22 > 0:47:25And then, I subsequently wrote about it non-fictionally.
0:47:25 > 0:47:30I think there is a subtle distinction between the two forms,
0:47:30 > 0:47:33in that, when I was thinking about doing it,
0:47:33 > 0:47:38I was going to have a nice big glass of wine at my side
0:47:38 > 0:47:42and I think, in the fictional suicide, there was no glass of wine.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46But the method was exactly the same - a sharp knife and a warm bath, yes.
0:47:46 > 0:47:47So, the old classical method.
0:47:47 > 0:47:52But the other biographical connection is that you say in...
0:47:52 > 0:47:53You talk in Levels Of Life,
0:47:53 > 0:47:56which, again, is a common experience in bereavement
0:47:56 > 0:47:58of starting to panic about memory
0:47:58 > 0:48:01and the reliability of memory and the disappearance of memory.
0:48:01 > 0:48:05In retrospect, THAT, it seems to me, went into the novel,
0:48:05 > 0:48:07- The Sense Of An Ending.- Um...
0:48:08 > 0:48:12I think that what was in Sense Of An Ending came...
0:48:12 > 0:48:16Rather than being leeched back from a future book,
0:48:16 > 0:48:19actually came out of Nothing To Be Frightened Of
0:48:19 > 0:48:22and the discussions that I was having with my brother
0:48:22 > 0:48:24about memory and the fallibility of memory.
0:48:24 > 0:48:26Um...
0:48:26 > 0:48:28I think that what...
0:48:28 > 0:48:33The fallibility of memory in grief is a very specific thing
0:48:33 > 0:48:36and I was assured it would come back. And it does come back.
0:48:36 > 0:48:40But it's not the same kind of memory, because, um...
0:48:43 > 0:48:46..because before the one that you loved died,
0:48:46 > 0:48:52you had her point of comparison, so that memory was binocular,
0:48:52 > 0:48:55BI-nocular, and now has become monocular.
0:48:55 > 0:48:57So, your memory does change.
0:48:57 > 0:49:00But this is the very particular memory of grief
0:49:00 > 0:49:05and, in Sense Of An Ending,
0:49:05 > 0:49:10I was dealing more generally with what happens to memory over time.
0:49:10 > 0:49:15It's about what time does to memory and what memory does to time.
0:49:15 > 0:49:17Do you have any sense ever of the reception of the book?
0:49:17 > 0:49:19I mean, you can't think,
0:49:19 > 0:49:22"This one is going to win the Man Booker Prize,"
0:49:22 > 0:49:27but does the outcome of a book, the public outcome of it,
0:49:27 > 0:49:29is it ever predictable?
0:49:31 > 0:49:33I don't think so, um...
0:49:35 > 0:49:36But, um...
0:49:39 > 0:49:41I...
0:49:41 > 0:49:44And because I write different sorts of books,
0:49:44 > 0:49:49I have, obviously, a core of readers who will go with me wherever,
0:49:49 > 0:49:51but then there will be some people who come in
0:49:51 > 0:49:54because this has won the Booker,
0:49:54 > 0:49:58or the latest one, there will be people...
0:49:58 > 0:50:02It's being given to lots of people who've been widowed, unsurprisingly.
0:50:02 > 0:50:05And I've had extraordinary
0:50:05 > 0:50:08and deeply-personal responses to the book,
0:50:08 > 0:50:11which, again, I didn't anticipate.
0:50:11 > 0:50:13I've had a lot of letters,
0:50:13 > 0:50:17and I've had people coming up to me in the street
0:50:17 > 0:50:22and just telling me things about their...about their own grief,
0:50:22 > 0:50:28which are, on the one hand... chastening
0:50:28 > 0:50:31and, on the other hand, sort of, flattering.
0:50:31 > 0:50:32You know, I had...
0:50:32 > 0:50:37A man came up to me in the street and said, "I read your book,
0:50:37 > 0:50:40"my wife died X months ago. Every day, I wake up
0:50:40 > 0:50:44"and I think of a different way to commit...to kill myself,
0:50:44 > 0:50:46"and my children don't understand,
0:50:46 > 0:50:51"and so I'm going to write out sentences of your book
0:50:51 > 0:50:54"and give them to them, so that they do understand."
0:50:54 > 0:50:57It makes you feel that you have done a service,
0:50:57 > 0:50:59which you, sort of, didn't intend,
0:50:59 > 0:51:05but if it's helpful, you know, I'm...I'm pleased and flattered.
0:51:05 > 0:51:06Um...
0:51:08 > 0:51:10The American writer Joyce Carol Oates,
0:51:10 > 0:51:13who, as you know, because you reviewed it,
0:51:13 > 0:51:17- she wrote a book about being widowed, becoming a widow.- Yes, yes.
0:51:17 > 0:51:18And when I talked to her,
0:51:18 > 0:51:23she said her big shock was that she'd always, at book readings,
0:51:23 > 0:51:27had fairly scholarly questions and polite responses,
0:51:27 > 0:51:29and then people were coming up and hugging her,
0:51:29 > 0:51:31which, I suppose, is the same phenomenon,
0:51:31 > 0:51:37that people... They suddenly have a response to a writer or to a book
0:51:37 > 0:51:39that they don't expect to have.
0:51:39 > 0:51:42Yes, and because of the subject matter
0:51:42 > 0:51:47and because, in this country, we're very bad at dealing with death
0:51:47 > 0:51:50and we're very bad at dealing with grief,
0:51:50 > 0:51:55I think that some of the things that I said
0:51:55 > 0:52:01were articulations of things that people felt but couldn't express.
0:52:01 > 0:52:02Um...
0:52:02 > 0:52:05And that's when you're both...
0:52:05 > 0:52:08you're grateful in more ways than one that you are a writer
0:52:08 > 0:52:10because you can express such things for other people,
0:52:10 > 0:52:12as well as for yourself.
0:52:13 > 0:52:19"Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function.
0:52:19 > 0:52:22"One day means no more than the next,
0:52:22 > 0:52:25"so why have they been picked out and given separate names?
0:52:25 > 0:52:28"It also reconfigures space.
0:52:28 > 0:52:33"You have entered a new geography, mapped by a new cartography.
0:52:33 > 0:52:36"You seem to be taking your bearings from one of those 17th-Century maps,
0:52:36 > 0:52:38"which feature The Desert of Loss,
0:52:38 > 0:52:41"The windless Lake of Indifference,
0:52:41 > 0:52:44"The Dried-up River of Desolation,
0:52:44 > 0:52:45"The Bog of Self-Pity
0:52:45 > 0:52:48"and The Subterranean Caverns of Memory."
0:52:50 > 0:52:54As you know, there's a lot of talk about the catharsis of writing,
0:52:54 > 0:52:57and, indeed, sometimes, in bereavement counselling
0:52:57 > 0:52:59people are encouraged, non-professionally,
0:52:59 > 0:53:01to set down their words.
0:53:01 > 0:53:04Did it have any such benefit for you?
0:53:04 > 0:53:08No, and I didn't expr-... I didn't, um...
0:53:10 > 0:53:14No, and I didn't... I didn't expect it to have.
0:53:14 > 0:53:15I've never...
0:53:15 > 0:53:21I've never particularly believed in the therapeutic value of literature.
0:53:21 > 0:53:25There is a parallel to the grief section of Levels Of Life,
0:53:25 > 0:53:29which is an enormous diary that I kept throughout my wife's illness
0:53:29 > 0:53:32and in the months and immediate years thereafter,
0:53:32 > 0:53:35which is hundreds of thousands of words.
0:53:35 > 0:53:42And that was written, in part, for therapeutic reasons, I suppose,
0:53:42 > 0:53:44in part, to get it down, in case...
0:53:44 > 0:53:47going back to memory again, in case I forgot.
0:53:47 > 0:53:50I wanted to get everything down exactly as it happened,
0:53:50 > 0:53:52in case I forgot, that was...
0:53:52 > 0:53:56Because it's one thing to suffer through it
0:53:56 > 0:53:57and see someone suffering
0:53:57 > 0:54:00and it's another thing to forget that.
0:54:00 > 0:54:04That's... That's another failure, you know?
0:54:04 > 0:54:08So, I wrote everything down, and I didn't consult it at all
0:54:08 > 0:54:11when I wrote the grief section of Levels Of Life,
0:54:11 > 0:54:17because I wanted that to be the movement and process
0:54:17 > 0:54:22and unshiftingness of grief, viewed from four years on.
0:54:24 > 0:54:29At the mention of the journals, the ears of biographers, publishers,
0:54:29 > 0:54:33possibly newspaper serial purchase editors will perk up.
0:54:33 > 0:54:35You must have made a decision about this.
0:54:35 > 0:54:37You never would publish your journals.
0:54:38 > 0:54:44I have no present intention to publish my journals, Mark, no.
0:54:44 > 0:54:47But I'm aware that things...change.
0:54:47 > 0:54:53I mean, the possibilities are I publish some of them before I die,
0:54:53 > 0:54:56I burn them before I die, er...
0:54:56 > 0:54:57they're published after my death,
0:54:57 > 0:55:01to the irritation of many people, I put an embargo on them
0:55:01 > 0:55:05so they're published after everyone who's in them dies.
0:55:05 > 0:55:09So, you know, it's like... as soon as you make a decision,
0:55:09 > 0:55:12you find it sort of countermanded.
0:55:12 > 0:55:15So, um...never say never, if that isn't a...
0:55:17 > 0:55:18..title of a James Bond film.
0:55:20 > 0:55:22An obvious question - there are stories of writers
0:55:22 > 0:55:27when children or relatives are ill actually making notes,
0:55:27 > 0:55:29making notes in the hospital and all the rest of it,
0:55:29 > 0:55:32knowing they were going to write about it.
0:55:32 > 0:55:34Did you always know that, at some point,
0:55:34 > 0:55:36you were going to have to write about grief
0:55:36 > 0:55:40- or did the writer side switch off?- No, I had no...
0:55:40 > 0:55:44I had no... I had no intention of doing so,
0:55:44 > 0:55:48and had you asked me for two or three years after my wife died,
0:55:48 > 0:55:50I would have said, "No, I have no intention of doing it."
0:55:50 > 0:55:54It's also how I did it, I mean, I...
0:55:54 > 0:56:00Even on this matter, there are lines I drew which I wouldn't cross.
0:56:00 > 0:56:04So, my wife was a very private person.
0:56:04 > 0:56:08She hated seeing her name in print, for example.
0:56:08 > 0:56:11And for that reason I don't use her name in the book, in fact.
0:56:11 > 0:56:15But I don't go back into, "This was how our life was together,
0:56:15 > 0:56:17"and then this dreadful thing happened."
0:56:17 > 0:56:21I start at the point at which grief starts, really,
0:56:21 > 0:56:23with tiny little bits of backtracking.
0:56:23 > 0:56:26So I certainly wasn't...
0:56:28 > 0:56:33When I went through the... the dreadful months in 2008,
0:56:33 > 0:56:38I wasn't thinking "This will be useful, this will be material."
0:56:38 > 0:56:40Um...
0:56:40 > 0:56:44The desire to write, that must have gone for a while.
0:56:44 > 0:56:46Um...
0:56:46 > 0:56:51What went, er...was concentration
0:56:51 > 0:56:55and concentration even to read a book.
0:56:55 > 0:56:57I could read a newspaper.
0:56:57 > 0:57:01It was months before concentration to read a book came back.
0:57:01 > 0:57:08And then, in terms of writing, quite by chance,
0:57:08 > 0:57:10I had...
0:57:10 > 0:57:15I had started writing a piece about George Orwell, um...
0:57:15 > 0:57:17a review, a long review,
0:57:17 > 0:57:21and I got a hurry-up message from the editor,
0:57:21 > 0:57:24who, as it happened, didn't know my wife had died.
0:57:24 > 0:57:27And I said, "Well, I don't know when I can."
0:57:29 > 0:57:31And then I took that up,
0:57:31 > 0:57:36and it's odd, in that there is meant to be a, sort of...
0:57:36 > 0:57:40a hostile relationship between journalism and literature,
0:57:40 > 0:57:41whereas at the start of my career
0:57:41 > 0:57:45I found that doing bits of journalism,
0:57:45 > 0:57:50while sometimes they took away time,
0:57:50 > 0:57:54helped give me the confidence to write books.
0:57:54 > 0:57:56There I was, and I had this book review
0:57:56 > 0:57:59of which I'd written about a quarter,
0:57:59 > 0:58:02and I took it up again, and I found I could get to the end of it.
0:58:02 > 0:58:03Um...
0:58:06 > 0:58:08And then I don't know how long...
0:58:08 > 0:58:14I think I then...went from that to a short story or two,
0:58:14 > 0:58:16which finished my collection Pulse.
0:58:17 > 0:58:23But I would... not have survived so well
0:58:23 > 0:58:27had I not had work.
0:58:27 > 0:58:30I think that's... I've been very...
0:58:30 > 0:58:33Insofar as I've been fortunate, I've been fortunate in that respect,
0:58:33 > 0:58:37that I remained, and I hope always will be, a writer.
0:58:37 > 0:58:40- Julian Barnes, thank you.- Thank you.