Julian Barnes Mark Lawson Talks To...


Julian Barnes

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SPEECH IS MUTED

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To the occasional bewilderment of critics and librarians,

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the books of Julian Barnes are hard to categorise.

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Works such as Flaubert's Parrot,

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A History of the World in 10 and a Half Chapters

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and Arthur and George combine fiction, literary biography,

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history and essays, within the outward form of a novel.

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Born in Leicester in 1946, Barnes was one of the quieter members

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of a literary pack that included his close friend

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Martin Amis, a noisy literary celebrity,

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who brought some of the din onto Barnes when, in 1995,

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Amis sacked his agent, Pat Kavanagh, Barnes's wife,

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causing a much-publicised breach between the men.

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In 2008, Barnes published Nothing to Be Frightened Of, a reflection on

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mortality and mourning, which proved to be cruelly prophetic, when later

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that year, Pat became suddenly ill and died rapidly from cancer.

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It was small consolation that these worst personal times were followed

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by some of his best professionally, as he won the 2011 Man Booker Prize

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for The Sense of an Ending, a novel about the treachery of memory.

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His most recent book, Levels of Life,

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is a memoir of bereavement, although one that reflects

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the death of his wife through a typically-Barnesian melange

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of biography, fiction and, finally, autobiography

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I was reading some newspaper interviews from the 1980s,

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when your first books came out, and you said then

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that you wrote seven days a week, including Christmas Day.

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Did that, and does that, remain the case?

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I certainly like working on Christmas Day, New Year's Day.

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I love working on the days when other people go to work.

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I think the truth now would be five to six days a week, erm,

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and Christmas Day included, yes.

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I've more than once started a book on Christmas Day...

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just as a way of, sort of, getting through it.

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And what's the significance of that?

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That it's... I mean, you'd be greatly helped in that by not

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having had children. But it's doing what?

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It's doing what other people are not doing on that day?

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Yes, that's right. It feels sort of mildly transgressive, I suppose.

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I get a pleasure of marching to a different drum...

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..which is what writers and artists do.

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I take the craft, as well as the art, deeply seriously.

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And it always has been and remains a great pleasure, as well.

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I'm often mystified when writers say, "Oh, writing's boring"

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or "I have to listen to music while I write" and stuff like that.

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For me it's hard work, but an intense pleasure.

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I won't say monastic,

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because you're very strict on the misuse of words, but it is...

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it's about discipline, it's about taking literature seriously, in the

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same way that a monk would take their religious practice seriously?

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Yes, that's the great Flaubertian comparison.

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And also you are, you are self-employed, you have

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to make your own time zones, you have to make your own discipline.

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And I've often, in the past, thought about a particular book,

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"This will be a 12-month book" or an 18-month book or a two-year book.

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You have a sense of how long it takes for a book to be alive in your head.

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And I think that came out of the somewhat exhausting

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and depressing experience of my first novel, which took me

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about seven or eight years to write.

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And by the time it was ready for submission,

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I was well passed any, sort of, state of interest in it.

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There's a moment in a Paris Review interview with you

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where the interview says, "Surely the only pleasure in writing

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"is having done it, not doing it?" And you disagree on that.

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You actively enjoy the process of writing?

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Yes, I love... I think the most enjoyable part

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is when you're doing a first draft and it's really flowing and you fool

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yourself into thinking that this is very, very close to the final draft.

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But that's always a mistake.

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And then the real work starts, because most writing is re-writing.

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"Prose is like hair. It shines with combing", as Flaubert said.

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But it's more than just making the hair shine, it's often,

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the whole structure has to be reinvented as you go along

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or the bone structure of it develops as you go along.

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For instance, you know, the passage that probably gets most

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work in any novel is the first page, but very often, the first page

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is nowhere near the first page that you write.

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I think I've only once or twice started at the beginning of a book.

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I've only once or twice KNOWN that this was the beginning of the book.

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But talking a couple years after you won the Man Booker Prize

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for The Sense of an Ending - for many writers it brings

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large sales, public invitations, a validation of their talent.

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You pretty much had those, so has it had any psychological

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or practical effects?

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It's sold a large number of copies of that book

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and it's reanimated my back list, to a certain extent.

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And I think any Booker Prize novel automatically sells into,

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you know, a lot of countries.

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I was first shortlisted for Flaubert's Parrot in 1984

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and, had I won, then, maybe it would have doubled my sales

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from 3,000 to 6,000.

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But, it is, apart from anything else, an extraordinary marketing exercise.

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In terms of affecting what I write next, no, it hasn't.

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There's also relief, because you refer to this on the night

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that had you not won on that occasion,

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you would've gone into the dreaded bridesmaid category,

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famously occupied by the late Beryl Bainbridge,

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in which you become famous for not having won it?

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Yes, that's right.

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It is a, sort of, slightly irritating burden.

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But the thing is that, when you don't win - apart from

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the first time, when you think it's all your own personal failure -

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I found that the next two times I didn't win,

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I felt I was letting down my publishers,

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because they invest a lot in it - not financially, but, sort of,

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psychologically -

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and you feel, "Oh, dear, I've made them all unhappy."

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Julian Barnes, for The Sense Of An Ending.

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And so, the relief of winning with The Sense Of An Ending

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was as much so that I could get down off the rostrum

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and face my publishers, who were, very sweetly, mostly in tears.

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So I knew I'd done...I'd done good.

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At the time we're speaking, there have been, I think,

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21 books by Julian Barnes - 15 fiction, six non-fiction -

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plus four crime novels, under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.

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Clearly, some books come about through circumstance,

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but if we'd been talking to you in the '80s,

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would you have had a rough sense of how you wanted

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the "Also by Julian-Barnes..." page to look?

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Erm...

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I think I would've wanted it to look as if I was consistently

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producing through the years and that my main interest was fiction.

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I think I would be...

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Had I been given a preview of what that page looks like now,

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I would've thought, "Well, that's a relief."

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And there are writers - William Boyd, Paul Theroux -

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who will, certainly in an interview, will say,

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"Well, my next novel will be the Japanese one

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"and then the one after that is the Hawaiian one

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"and then there's the Jeffrey Boycott novel or whatever."

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Are you one of those writers?

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For a long time, I certainly had a notion of what the next one would be

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and, of course, given that there used to be nine months to a year between

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manuscript going in and it being published, then, you know,

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I wasn't going to idle away that time, so I would've started something

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so when the interviewer said, "What's your next book about?"

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I'd give a rough idea of the area, rather than any details.

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I mean, at the moment, I'm not sure what my next book will be.

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I know there will be one, but I'm just, sort of, looking around -

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mooching.

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So, when you're not writing a book, do you always write something?

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Do you write a diary or journalism or something?

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Yes, I get itchy if I haven't got work of some sort on

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and I still do journalism, I like doing journalism.

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I like the...discipline of it,

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which is a completely different discipline to that of fiction.

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And I like getting a response to it. You know, you write the piece,

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you send it in and then, a week later or a month later,

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someone tells you what they think about it,

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whereas by the time you get reactions to a novel,

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you're often thinking about something completely different.

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And the Leicester Mercury put your Man Booker victory

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on the front page, rather touchingly.

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This suggests you used to identify quite strongly

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-with Leicester and Leicester with you?

-Yes, I was born in Leicester

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and I left when I was, something like, four weeks old.

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And I grew up the first ten years of my life in Acton, in West London,

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but I'm very touched when the Leicester Mercury

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count me as among the favoured sons of the city -

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me and Sue Townsend, Colin Wilson, Joe Orton, CP Snow,

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can you do any more?

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Gary Lineker and Engelbert Humperdinck.

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That's an important one that slipped my memory.

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Writers are... They're given bits of material by circumstance.

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France was one of yours.

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Neatly for biographers, both of your parents were French teachers?

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Yes, that's right. And because of that,

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I was taken to France as a 12-13 year-old for the first time

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and it was the first foreign country I knew and the only foreign country

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I knew until I was about 18 or 19, I think.

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So it was... it was my primary exotic

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and it's had a huge formative influence on me.

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And, you know, had they been Italian teachers,

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I would've written Dante's Dachshund or something like that. Who can tell?

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And as parents were,

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did they switch off the school manner or were they strict?

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No, I don't think they were strict, but they certainly weren't lax.

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When I was writing a book called Nothing To Be Frightened Of,

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which is about death and family and memory,

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all I could remember was my mother would occasionally say things like,

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"You should never wear brown shoes with a blue suit"

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and I thought, "Oh, I must remember that for when I get a suit."

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Doesn't mean we weren't taught things. It means that

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everything was in that very English way - it was implicit and osmotic.

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You just... It seeped into you what you should and shouldn't do, somehow.

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My reading of Nothing To Be Frightened Of,

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the sections about your parents,

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was that you were closer to your father than your mother?

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Yes, that's quite correct.

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I think, I think I was equally close to both of them

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and probably closer to my mother in very young childhood.

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And then, when I reached the age of sentience

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and intellection, I think I felt closer to my father.

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My mother was the more domineering of the two,

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my father was more, probably more liberal,

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more tolerant, both politically and in terms of behaviour.

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The Frenchness you inherited, or the interest in France,

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did you feel an immediate affinity with France and French

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or was it just like Chelsea Clinton having to like politics?

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HE CHUCKLES

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It wasn't immediate, no.

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I remember the first morning I woke up in France, having had

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a, sort of, bizarre dinner before, in which they put sort of vermicelli

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in soup and stuff like that and being very anxious about food,

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and my father sent me across the road to get the local paper

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and I remember being terrified of, you know, axe murderers

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or throat-slitters and I remember repeating 15 times

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the words for "Give me the newspaper, please" or something like that.

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And I felt a tremendous sense of achievement, having done it

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and paid for it and brought it back

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and my father took it completely in his stride.

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So, I think I was a highly-anxious child

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and, I think, my first year,

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the first time I went to France,

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I was just baffled by the strangeness of it all.

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But I think that was very good for me and very useful to me.

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I mean, it's lamentable that fewer people are studying

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modern languages nowadays. They say, "Oh, well, why do we need to,

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"because everyone else speaks English?"

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You need to for deeper reasons than merely ordering your breakfast

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in a hotel.

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You need to, in order to feel what otherness is

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and in order to look at your country from the outside.

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You are a, forgive my pronunciation,

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Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France

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and not even an OBE in England.

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That could reveal your attitude to awards or to nationality or both.

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Some people conclude from this that you do...

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You define yourself as a European.

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I would define myself as English first, European second

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and British third.

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I think that...in terms of...

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what I've written and what I like reading,

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my influences are certainly European, rather than American,

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though there are many American writers that I admire.

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I feel myself part of a Continental culture continent, including Britain.

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Because of genetics and psychology,

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we're encouraged to be aware of what we may inherit from our parents.

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Do you have those moments of thinking I got that from him,

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I got that from her?

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Well, even at this age, I, sort of, don't like to think

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I got anything from my mother, which is probably rather, um,

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savagely punitive of me.

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I think, in temperament, I think

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my temperament is very close to my father's.

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I think I'm fairly peaceable, but beyond a certain point,

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I won't be pushed.

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And, I think, a cast of mind, which has a, sort of,

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an ironic slant to it, is similar, yes.

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And the fact that language matters to you and speech

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and whether people use who or whom and solipsism in the newspapers,

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is that inherited from your father?

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No, I don't think so.

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I can't remember my father ever correcting me,

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but don't make me out to be more of a pedant than I am.

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You are a bit of a pedant, though?

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Well, most words mean specific things and, so, when I see...

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And certain words are lost, you know.

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For example, I bridle when the word decimate is used to mean massacre,

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as it routinely is, whereas, in fact, it comes from the old

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Roman legionnaire's punishment, which is to kill one in ten.

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I mean, I was a lexicographer after I left university

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and I tend to look at language with that historical perspective,

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but because I'm an ex-lexicographer, I always think of language

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as being in motion.

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This has never been a golden age of language.

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I mean the, sort of,

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the, sort of, linguistic pedants who you are slightly trying

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to cast me as one of, the, sort of, assumption behind what they say

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is that there was this perfect time, at some point.

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Perhaps it was when Johnson wrote,

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perhaps it was when Shakespeare wrote,

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when words and objects matched.

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That was never the case

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and the English language has always been an impure

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and mongrelised language and the better for it, it seems to me.

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In Metroland, published in 1980,

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the central characters are two boys, Christopher and Toni.

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Toni with an 'I'.

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Travelling to school on the Metropolitan line,

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entranced, among other things, by French language and culture.

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Writers dislike admitting that books are autobiographical,

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but that one was clearly, at least, partly so.

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Oh, yes. Especially in the first section.

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Yes, I commuted for I think about an hour and five minutes

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in each direction on three different London Underground lines.

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The first section is very closely autobiographical,

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particularly in spirit,

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though I think I made the boys a bit, sort of, cleverer

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than I and my friend, who amazingly was called Toni with an 'I', were.

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And then, I think, as the book goes on,

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I learned to exercise the imagination and think up,

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you know, how my life might have gone differently.

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But, yes, I grew up in circumstances very similar

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to those of Christopher in part one of Metroland.

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I'm fascinated that you changed your name, but kept his.

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Why was that?

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I don't know, I can't answer that, really.

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Maybe I wanted to tease him.

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I don't think he liked the book.

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Some people like to see themselves in books

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when they're not really there.

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And others...

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..if they know they're in it,

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they have slightly mixed feelings about it,

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so there's no pleasing some.

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On the other hand, there are people, like my brother.

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My brother is three years older than me

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and he's an ancient philosopher, in both senses of the words.

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He's Jonathan?

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He's Jonathan. He of Aristotle and the Pre-Socratics.

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And when I was writing Nothing To Be Frightened Of,

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which is the closest to a family memoir I've come,

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I e-mailed him and I said,

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"Look, I am writing stuff about us growing up, our parents and so on.

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"I might have a lot of questions."

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And he e-mailed back and said, "That's fine.

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"And by the way, just to get this clear," he said,

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"one - if your memory conflicts with mine,

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"go with yours, because it's probably better than mine,

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"and the second thing is, I don't mind anything that you say about me."

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Which I thought was astonishingly generous.

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Philosophical, indeed.

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I mean, I thought when I was writing the book, my memories are pretty

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good on the whole and he was and is much more suspicious of memory.

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He thinks of memory as something much closer to the imagination.

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He thinks that most memories are unreliable and probably false,

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unless they're corroborated.

0:20:410:20:43

Which also comes in in The Sense of an Ending.

0:20:430:20:46

Yes, indeed,

0:20:460:20:47

and over the years, since I had that first exchange with him,

0:20:470:20:52

I think I've come round more and more to his point of view

0:20:520:20:56

and I distrust my memories more and more

0:20:560:20:59

and, I think, increasingly, that the memories that we have

0:20:590:21:06

from way back are not...

0:21:060:21:09

Their primary function isn't necessarily to be representations

0:21:090:21:14

of the truth, as it was,

0:21:140:21:16

but to be things that are useful or necessary to us,

0:21:160:21:22

in order to continue with our lives.

0:21:220:21:25

MUSIC: "Double Bass Duo" by Moondog

0:21:250:21:28

'How often do we tell our own life story?

0:21:300:21:33

'How often do we adjust,'

0:21:330:21:34

embellish, make sly cuts?

0:21:340:21:38

And the longer life goes on,

0:21:380:21:39

the fewer are those around to challenge our account,

0:21:390:21:43

to remind us that our life is not our life,

0:21:430:21:46

'merely the story we have told about our life.'

0:21:460:21:50

Told to others, but, mainly, to ourselves.

0:21:500:21:55

You also write in Nothing To Be Frightened Of

0:21:580:22:01

that you stopped believing in God in adolescence,

0:22:010:22:05

so that your dead grandparents would not be able to see you masturbating.

0:22:050:22:09

That wasn't, that wasn't...

0:22:110:22:12

That was one of several reasons, Mark, I have to tell you.

0:22:120:22:15

It wasn't just about wanking.

0:22:150:22:17

It was also about the usual reasons why you stop believing in God.

0:22:170:22:22

I mean, I didn't believe very much in God.

0:22:220:22:25

I wasn't brought up...

0:22:250:22:26

My parents never took us to church as boys, I was never christened.

0:22:260:22:30

So God came into it, really, only when I went to school and there

0:22:300:22:34

were morning prayers and hymns being sung, and that, sort of, stuff.

0:22:340:22:38

But, yes, one of the arguments was that it would be grotesque

0:22:380:22:42

if my dead grandparents could actually see me masturbating.

0:22:420:22:46

I think that's quite a profound argument against God

0:22:460:22:48

and the afterlife.

0:22:480:22:50

But then, as I go on to say, later on in the book,

0:22:500:22:52

I think, of course, this presupposes

0:22:520:22:56

that my grandparents would disapprove, you know.

0:22:560:22:59

Perhaps my dead grandfather, up there in the empyrean,

0:22:590:23:04

was saying, "You know, go on, lad, have one for me. I can't any more."

0:23:040:23:08

I'm sure my grandmother would have been shocked. But still.

0:23:080:23:10

MARK CHUCKLES

0:23:100:23:12

You got into Oxford University, flitted around a bit.

0:23:120:23:14

It was French and Russian, then Philosophy and then French again.

0:23:140:23:19

Yeah, I made a complete mess of it.

0:23:190:23:21

I left my school, which was in Blackfriars in the centre of London,

0:23:210:23:25

for university, educationally and intellectually

0:23:250:23:32

of a reasonable maturity,

0:23:320:23:35

but socially and emotionally immature, for my age.

0:23:350:23:39

And I got in on a scholarship to read French

0:23:390:23:42

and Russian was my second language.

0:23:420:23:45

And then, after a couple of terms I thought, you know,

0:23:450:23:48

this isn't really...

0:23:480:23:49

I'm just carrying on doing what I did at school

0:23:490:23:51

and I was a bit bored.

0:23:510:23:53

So I changed to Philosophy and Psychology, and, because I thought,

0:23:530:23:57

you know, these are, sort of, these are subjects which really grasp

0:23:570:24:01

what the world's all about and I will learn, I will learn how to

0:24:010:24:04

think and then I will also learn how the human being operates internally.

0:24:040:24:09

But the Psychology, which is experimental, animal psychology,

0:24:110:24:16

consisted of cutting up earthworms and stuff like that.

0:24:160:24:19

And the Philosophy was just very hard for me to understand.

0:24:190:24:22

I didn't have that cast of mind that my brother did.

0:24:220:24:25

So after two terms, I gave that up,

0:24:250:24:28

with my tail between my legs, and I slunk back to French.

0:24:280:24:32

Were you unhappy there?

0:24:320:24:34

Yeah, I probably was unhappy, yes.

0:24:340:24:36

I felt I... I felt I didn't fit in to...

0:24:360:24:40

I didn't know where I fitted into the world.

0:24:400:24:43

And it took me a while to learn where I did.

0:24:430:24:48

I fit into the world now as a writer.

0:24:500:24:53

And I'm more able to speak in consecutive sentences,

0:24:530:24:58

which I couldn't.

0:24:580:25:00

But you don't, you know, you don't become a writer by an easy process.

0:25:010:25:06

So it took me some years before I felt

0:25:060:25:13

the beginnings of being at ease in the world, yes.

0:25:130:25:15

And then I came back and I read French and I got a second

0:25:150:25:19

and I was, you know, unqualified for anything,

0:25:190:25:23

but assumed I'd get a job, in the way that people did then.

0:25:230:25:25

I saw an advertisement in the TLS, I think, for an assistant editor,

0:25:250:25:31

editorial assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary.

0:25:310:25:34

And I applied for that and got it,

0:25:340:25:36

which meant that I stayed on in Oxford for three years afterwards,

0:25:360:25:41

which was rather like, you know,

0:25:410:25:43

sitting in the bathwater as it gradually cools down,

0:25:430:25:45

because I was no longer, sort of, part of the university.

0:25:450:25:48

Although from outside, it always seems, kind of, a glamorous job

0:25:480:25:51

or, at least, an interesting one to have had.

0:25:510:25:53

I think a lot of jobs are interesting to have had, yes.

0:25:530:25:56

I think that's the way of putting it.

0:25:560:25:59

It was only words from 1880 onwards that I was dealing with

0:25:590:26:02

and it was only in the letters B to about G.

0:26:020:26:06

I was put in charge of sports

0:26:070:26:11

and dirty words, on the grounds that I was...

0:26:110:26:14

There were quite a lot of dons' wives employed

0:26:140:26:17

and, obviously, they couldn't give them to them,

0:26:170:26:20

so, yeah, I had some experience at the muckier end of lexicography.

0:26:200:26:25

You started to become a barrister,

0:26:250:26:27

but did you genuinely intend to practise law or were you hoping

0:26:270:26:30

something would come along to distract you?

0:26:300:26:34

I think I went with mixed motives.

0:26:340:26:37

I thought on the basis of this one job I'd had as a lexicographer

0:26:390:26:44

that all jobs were equally boring, so I may as well get one that

0:26:440:26:49

paid more and took me to London.

0:26:490:26:52

I was totally unequipped, then, to stand on my feet and argue a case,

0:26:520:26:57

I could probably do it now a bit better.

0:26:570:27:00

And what was also apparent was that I started writing book reviews

0:27:000:27:04

about this time and I realised that, you know, doing a fiction

0:27:040:27:10

round-up for the Oxford Mail,

0:27:100:27:13

reviewing five novels and getting four guineas for it

0:27:130:27:17

was going to give me much more satisfaction than standing up

0:27:170:27:23

in court and defending someone on a charge of petty theft or something.

0:27:230:27:29

But you never went professionally into court?

0:27:290:27:32

I never went professionally into court.

0:27:320:27:34

I was a jobbing litterateur around London.

0:27:340:27:37

New Statesman - that was a significant period.

0:27:370:27:40

You met many people there,

0:27:400:27:42

Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, James Fenton.

0:27:420:27:44

Some people have described them,

0:27:440:27:46

then and now, as, you know, as a literary mafia.

0:27:460:27:48

JULIAN CHUCKLES

0:27:480:27:50

I don't think it was much of a mafia.

0:27:500:27:53

There is a suggestion, partly because, sort of, pieces written

0:27:530:27:56

by Clive James in both non-fiction and fiction,

0:27:560:27:59

that it was tremendously rhetorically competitive,

0:27:590:28:02

that you were all sitting round, trying to come up with the smartest,

0:28:020:28:06

a smarter remark than the person before you.

0:28:060:28:09

Was it like that?

0:28:090:28:11

Yes, I found it rather...daunting

0:28:110:28:17

when I would first go along

0:28:170:28:18

to literary lunches with people like Clive James, Martin Amis,

0:28:180:28:26

Christopher Hitchens -

0:28:260:28:28

all of whom were extraordinarily good talkers

0:28:280:28:31

and competitive in their talking, yes.

0:28:310:28:34

I gradually got my confidence, I think,

0:28:350:28:38

and interjected a few things, but, yes, it was very...

0:28:380:28:43

There was a lot of dashing wordsmithery going on.

0:28:430:28:47

And in terms of literary confidence,

0:28:470:28:49

was it a complication that Martin Amis,

0:28:490:28:52

he was, literally, born to the literary world, wasn't he?

0:28:520:28:56

Yes, he was, and as a young man,

0:28:560:28:59

he had incredible literary swagger to him.

0:28:590:29:03

I don't think I was put off by him, though.

0:29:030:29:09

I was put off by all my internal doubts and uncertainties

0:29:110:29:19

and thinking why would anyone out there want to hear from me?

0:29:190:29:24

The notion that, is there anything more to add to the file of knowledge

0:29:240:29:29

on humanity after all the great 19th-century and 20th-century writers

0:29:290:29:33

have had their say.

0:29:330:29:35

But then you, sort of, learn to forget that a bit.

0:29:360:29:39

You have to put that aside.

0:29:390:29:41

The other obvious contrast to Martin Amis

0:29:420:29:44

is he has been the writer as public figure, for good or ill -

0:29:440:29:48

advances, agents, teeth, in public, always in the papers.

0:29:480:29:53

You have tried to do the precise opposite,

0:29:530:29:55

except when you've got dragged into it.

0:29:550:29:58

You've tried to live the writer as private figure.

0:29:580:30:01

That's true, that's true.

0:30:010:30:03

It wasn't, "Oh, that's how he does it, I must do it differently."

0:30:030:30:06

It's simply a reflection of temperament.

0:30:060:30:09

I think I'm a fairly, by nature, a fairly private person,

0:30:090:30:14

but it's also to do with my...literary aesthetic.

0:30:140:30:21

I think that, in an ideal world,

0:30:230:30:26

the work would do all the work, you know?

0:30:260:30:30

The books would do the work for you and they would proceed,

0:30:300:30:37

somehow, by mysterious word of mouth, reader to reader and you wouldn't

0:30:370:30:43

have to put your personality on display to sell your books.

0:30:430:30:48

I have done, over my years, a large number of appearances

0:30:480:30:54

and interviews and so on, but I've always tried to draw

0:30:540:30:59

a certain line, you know.

0:30:590:31:01

I feel that my, on the whole, my task is to talk about the work

0:31:020:31:07

and deflect the interviewer's...

0:31:070:31:11

interest in my life.

0:31:110:31:14

I've always tried to protect that and that of those around me.

0:31:140:31:19

Though, of course, we're talking more openly now, because this is

0:31:190:31:23

the interview that, when the news comes "the novelist Julian Barnes

0:31:230:31:28

"died two days ago and as a tribute, we're broadcasting an extremely

0:31:280:31:35

"abbreviated form of the interview he gave to Mark Lawson a few years ago."

0:31:350:31:40

So, when the line was crossed,

0:31:400:31:42

so, for example, the Martin Amis business,

0:31:420:31:45

when you were dragged onto the front pages,

0:31:450:31:48

that...

0:31:480:31:50

Well, I didn't say anything. Nor did my wife.

0:31:500:31:53

It was...that's how we were.

0:31:530:31:56

Let him talk about it, if he wants to.

0:31:560:32:02

And I haven't spoken about it, as far as I'm aware, and don't intend to.

0:32:020:32:06

Flaubert's Parrot, 1984.

0:32:060:32:08

At the BBC, there used to be this index system

0:32:080:32:12

which had a list of possible contributors

0:32:120:32:15

and then the subjects on which they could be asked to speak

0:32:150:32:18

and under "Barnes, Julian", for quite a long time,

0:32:180:32:21

it said France, Parrots, and this is a result of this...book.

0:32:210:32:28

Yes.

0:32:280:32:29

Kingsley Amis is supposed to have said at one point,

0:32:290:32:32

"Why can't he just shut up about Flaubert?"

0:32:320:32:35

Yeah, he did say that.

0:32:350:32:36

Yes, yes, he probably said it to my face.

0:32:360:32:39

Yes, he got very irritated with all that sort of Froggery

0:32:390:32:44

and foreignery.

0:32:440:32:46

But I haven't shut up about Flaubert,

0:32:480:32:50

as you've noticed in the course of our conversation.

0:32:500:32:53

He is a great exemplar and a great icon.

0:32:530:32:55

So, Gustav Flaubert, 1821-1880. Why? What was it?

0:32:550:33:00

It was school, presumably?

0:33:000:33:03

I was struck by him when I was about 15,

0:33:030:33:05

I had an English master who gave us a reading list

0:33:050:33:08

and it had foreign books on it, one called Madame Bovary,

0:33:080:33:11

and I read it thinking it was going to be a hot book

0:33:110:33:13

and didn't see it at 15,

0:33:130:33:16

though, later on, when I reread it, I thought, "It's quite hot, really."

0:33:160:33:21

I think that what made me attend to him more carefully was that,

0:33:220:33:29

when I was in my early 20s,

0:33:290:33:33

there was a book edited by Francis Steegmuller

0:33:330:33:37

about Flaubert's travels in the near East.

0:33:370:33:41

It shows the Flaubertian sensibility, which is often about, it's ironic,

0:33:410:33:47

it's brainy, it's often about anticipation and disappoint...

0:33:470:33:55

anticipation and reflection being more satisfying

0:33:550:34:00

than the moment of life itself.

0:34:000:34:03

Now, that's a very Flaubertion sentiment.

0:34:030:34:06

At the end of his novel, Sentimental Education,

0:34:060:34:10

there's a boy looking back

0:34:100:34:12

and he thinks that, perhaps, the best time of his whole life

0:34:120:34:16

was when he and a chum set off as 18-year-olds to visit a brothel,

0:34:160:34:21

but they never quite got there, so this moment way back then

0:34:210:34:26

of extraordinary anticipation was the highlight of his life.

0:34:260:34:30

And through the character of a widowed doctor,

0:34:300:34:34

Jeffrey Braithwaite, again, form is crucial in this book,

0:34:340:34:38

which I've read several times,

0:34:380:34:40

but it astonishes me, each time, the variety,

0:34:400:34:42

so chapters may take the form of a chronology

0:34:420:34:45

an examination paper and so on.

0:34:450:34:48

It started discussions on about what a novel can be, but did you,

0:34:480:34:52

were you consciously questioning what a novel can be made of?

0:34:520:34:57

Yes, I was.

0:34:570:34:58

I was thinking how can I make this new?

0:34:580:35:02

How can I make it interesting?

0:35:020:35:05

How can I tell the story I want to tell?

0:35:050:35:09

I knew I didn't want to write...

0:35:090:35:11

I knew I wanted to write about Flaubert because I was quite obsessed

0:35:110:35:15

by him, but I didn't want to write a biography,

0:35:150:35:19

I didn't want to write a novel-novel, you know.

0:35:190:35:25

I wanted to write something that mixed fact and fiction

0:35:250:35:29

that had...

0:35:290:35:32

in which the fiction was a, sort of, firm infrastructure to the book

0:35:320:35:36

and there was this enormous super-structure of facts.

0:35:360:35:40

In my view, it's a novel about obsession.

0:35:400:35:44

Jeffrey Braithwaite is a man obsessed by literature,

0:35:440:35:48

and Flaubert, in particular and, for whom,

0:35:480:35:50

as is the case for some people, something other than life,

0:35:500:35:56

ie art, is more satisfying than life itself.

0:35:560:35:59

His life has been disappointing to him.

0:35:590:36:01

His marriage has gone wrong

0:36:010:36:04

and I think he quotes Logan Pearsall Smith,

0:36:040:36:10

the American, and Smith said,

0:36:100:36:15

"Some people say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading."

0:36:150:36:19

So it was that, sort of, person that I was having as Jeffrey Braithwaite.

0:36:190:36:23

'Books say, "She did this, because..."'

0:36:270:36:31

Life says, "She did this."

0:36:310:36:34

Books are where things are explained to you, life is where things aren't.

0:36:340:36:39

I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

0:36:390:36:42

Books make sense of life.

0:36:420:36:45

The only problem is that the lives they make sense of

0:36:450:36:48

are other people's lives, never your own.

0:36:480:36:52

Right through up until Levels Of Life, recently,

0:36:560:37:00

this is crucial for you, which, to some writers, it isn't,

0:37:000:37:04

the form, the structure of a book.

0:37:040:37:06

Absolutely. Yes.

0:37:060:37:08

Flaubert said there's no idea without a form

0:37:100:37:13

and no form without an idea, by which he meant, I think,

0:37:130:37:20

that you can have an idea for a book, but it's not really

0:37:200:37:25

a potential book until you come up with the form that fits it.

0:37:250:37:30

And I think form is very important to me

0:37:320:37:36

and the novel is a very capacious,

0:37:360:37:39

generous and informal art,

0:37:390:37:44

so it's a broad church.

0:37:440:37:47

But I believe that the idea and the ideas you have in a novel

0:37:470:37:55

are best served if they're helped by the form of the novel. Yes.

0:37:550:38:02

The experiment in form, perhaps most audacious,

0:38:020:38:05

A History of The World in Ten and a Half Chapters,

0:38:050:38:07

the individual sections are essays or short stories.

0:38:070:38:12

There's even a fold-out illustration of a famous art work.

0:38:120:38:16

Now, again, there was critical muttering about, is this a novel?

0:38:170:38:21

Someone actually said he could have got onto the Booker,

0:38:210:38:24

as it then was, the Booker Prize shortlist,

0:38:240:38:26

if only it were a novel.

0:38:260:38:27

I think of them as novels

0:38:270:38:28

and most of my fellow novelists don't have any trouble

0:38:280:38:31

thinking that Flaubert's Parrot or the History of the World is a novel.

0:38:310:38:36

It's always been a very porous and informal art form.

0:38:360:38:43

Go back to the first great European novel, Don Quixote.

0:38:430:38:47

It's got all sorts of stuff in it that you don't think

0:38:470:38:50

is the stuff of a novel and it's got all sorts of formal invention

0:38:500:38:54

and oddity about it.

0:38:540:38:56

I don't acknowledge any lines in the sand between fiction and nonfiction,

0:38:570:39:02

even bits of autobiography or criticism or whatever.

0:39:020:39:06

It's what the story and the book require and demand

0:39:060:39:12

and so, when I'm writing something, I don't think about...

0:39:120:39:16

I don't think about category and then it's only

0:39:160:39:19

when it comes to my publishers, that they say, sometimes,

0:39:190:39:23

"We're not quite sure where this fits"

0:39:230:39:26

and I say, "Well, just call it a book, you know."

0:39:260:39:31

In any library classification system,

0:39:310:39:33

the word that would be used to summarise content of almost

0:39:330:39:38

all the books, actually - death, I mean, this always strikes me.

0:39:380:39:42

It's right there, a chapter in Metroland called "The Big D".

0:39:420:39:46

Narrator of Flaubert's Parrot is a widower,

0:39:460:39:48

one section of A History of the World asks what

0:39:480:39:50

we can set against the presence, the inevitability of death.

0:39:500:39:53

That...

0:39:530:39:56

That has always been a central...

0:39:560:39:58

Well, it's always been a key concern of your books.

0:39:580:40:01

I think that's undeniable,

0:40:020:40:04

and I think that, in the last four or five, um...

0:40:040:40:10

I've written a lot about the approach to the end of life, death,

0:40:100:40:15

and in the most recent book, grief.

0:40:150:40:19

And it's certainly there, even from the first book.

0:40:190:40:22

It's there...it's been there in my life, you know,

0:40:220:40:25

since I first became aware of death when I was...

0:40:250:40:28

..seven or eight or...

0:40:300:40:31

I don't know, I can't remember, I can't remember when I...

0:40:310:40:34

I remember... I remember that it would come

0:40:340:40:37

when I would be lying in bed on one side,

0:40:370:40:41

not on the other. Er, mysteriously, this...

0:40:410:40:47

this awareness of extinction and what it meant.

0:40:470:40:51

So, I had it from an early age,

0:40:510:40:53

and it seems to me a matter well worth investigating.

0:40:530:40:58

You address this in Nothing To Be Frightened Of.

0:40:580:41:01

Conventionally, children and books are the things that people say...

0:41:010:41:06

I mean, they do survive you, we hope, in most cases.

0:41:060:41:10

But that literary immortality - is that something you believe in?

0:41:100:41:15

No, um...

0:41:150:41:17

I believe in, um...

0:41:170:41:19

I think that probably some of my books will be read after my death.

0:41:200:41:24

I think that they may be read for one or two generations, maybe.

0:41:240:41:29

Let's say they're read for eight generations or something like that.

0:41:290:41:33

But there will always be a last reader

0:41:330:41:37

and I fantasise about the last reader in Nothing To Be Frightened Of.

0:41:370:41:41

And, at first, I feel quite tender towards this person, man or woman,

0:41:410:41:47

who's the last person to read one of my books.

0:41:470:41:49

And then, I realise that what this logically entails

0:41:490:41:52

is that person refuses to recommend my books to anyone else.

0:41:520:41:57

You bastard!

0:41:570:41:59

What an unkind reader that is.

0:41:590:42:02

Where were we? We were with death, where we always are, yes.

0:42:020:42:06

You've quoted a few times from Nothing To Be Frightened Of.

0:42:060:42:10

I remember hearing that book was coming out

0:42:100:42:12

and thinking that it was a most unlikely book

0:42:120:42:15

from a person as private as you were,

0:42:150:42:17

that it was, as we say, a family memoir.

0:42:170:42:20

It has the experiences of friends, although disguised under initials.

0:42:200:42:25

But there just came... that book just, it began to happen.

0:42:250:42:29

Yes, I think, er...

0:42:310:42:35

there had been various, sort of, scribbles in my notebooks,

0:42:350:42:38

and a first line for a book,

0:42:380:42:42

which went, "Let's get this death thing straight."

0:42:420:42:47

And I knew that...

0:42:470:42:49

Which certainly isn't the first line of Nothing To Be Frightened Of

0:42:490:42:53

and it's not a very good first line,

0:42:530:42:55

because it's got that terrible "th" together - death, thing,

0:42:550:42:59

which you can barely say or read.

0:42:590:43:02

But the fact that there would be a death book

0:43:020:43:07

was in my mind... for a number of years.

0:43:070:43:12

And, I guess, I thought...

0:43:120:43:14

Well, the fact that my parents had both died

0:43:150:43:18

and that I had, you know, experienced what that was,

0:43:180:43:23

gave me a bit more field work, I suppose.

0:43:230:43:27

And I thought that doing it

0:43:270:43:31

within the context of some, sort of, family memoir might work.

0:43:310:43:35

Reading backwards, Nothing To Be Frightened Of,

0:43:370:43:40

The Sense Of An Ending, which won the Booker,

0:43:400:43:42

and Levels Of Life, they form a sort of loose...

0:43:420:43:46

an accidental and, indeed, unwanted trilogy,

0:43:460:43:48

in that you first anticipate the possibility of bereavement

0:43:480:43:52

and then you write in the shadow of it.

0:43:520:43:55

So, in a sense...

0:43:550:43:57

I mean, those books are intricately linked.

0:43:570:44:00

Intricately linked,

0:44:020:44:03

but not linked by overall master plan, no.

0:44:030:44:08

Um...

0:44:080:44:09

Though, if we go...

0:44:130:44:14

I mean, four of my last five books

0:44:140:44:17

have been a collection of short stories, called Pulse.

0:44:170:44:21

Before that, there was Nothing To Be Frightened Of,

0:44:210:44:25

then Sense of An Ending, then Levels Of Life -

0:44:250:44:27

all of which are moving towards the end of life

0:44:270:44:30

and the consequences of the end of life,

0:44:300:44:32

both in terms of the person experiencing it

0:44:320:44:35

and then the person surviving the ending of someone else's life.

0:44:350:44:39

So, yes, you could say that they have...

0:44:390:44:41

They are intricately linked,

0:44:410:44:43

but I think that they're, sort of, linked by authorial chronology

0:44:430:44:47

as much as anything else.

0:44:470:44:48

I certainly didn't plan them that way.

0:44:480:44:50

"I'll do old age, then I'll do death, then I'll do grief."

0:44:500:44:54

I, you know...

0:44:540:44:55

You don't know how your life is going to work out in any case.

0:44:550:44:59

It's also true that two of them are...

0:44:590:45:01

..more personal and more... autobiographical

0:45:020:45:07

than... than... than stuff I've written before.

0:45:070:45:12

Um...

0:45:120:45:14

But again, that's just the way it turned out.

0:45:140:45:17

That was the story I wanted to tell.

0:45:170:45:19

And there is, as you will realise,

0:45:190:45:23

there was a shock for the readers of Levels Of Life

0:45:230:45:27

that you describe a period in which you began to think about suicide

0:45:270:45:31

and the way you would do it.

0:45:310:45:33

And if we've read The Sense Of An Ending,

0:45:330:45:36

we realise that that form of suicide is in that book.

0:45:360:45:40

Yes.

0:45:400:45:42

Yes, I...

0:45:420:45:43

Well, after my wife died, um... at a certain fairly early stage,

0:45:430:45:48

like...some people who have lost someone they loved for a long time,

0:45:480:45:55

I contemplated ending my life.

0:45:550:45:58

It seemed one solution.

0:45:580:46:00

There were other solutions - some of which seemed harder.

0:46:000:46:04

And eventually, as I describe in the book,

0:46:040:46:06

I come up with an argument against it.

0:46:060:46:08

I think this is quite common and...

0:46:080:46:14

even if fleeting, um...

0:46:140:46:18

and because I was trying to write about grief

0:46:180:46:21

as directly and as truthfully as I could, it seemed...

0:46:210:46:26

it never crossed my mind that I would not refer to it.

0:46:260:46:31

Because you don't think when you're writing a book,

0:46:310:46:34

"Oh, I wonder if this bit will get into the newspapers."

0:46:340:46:38

It never crosses my mind.

0:46:380:46:41

You're thinking about... yourself as writer,

0:46:410:46:45

the text, the world and the reader.

0:46:450:46:48

And you don't think of the, sort of, things in the interstices

0:46:480:46:52

between these sections of what writing and reading is.

0:46:520:46:56

You don't think, at some point, a journalist will get this

0:46:560:46:59

and say, "Oh, look, he says he wanted to kill himself,

0:46:590:47:02

"let's make a news story out of that."

0:47:020:47:04

-It just never crossed my mind.

-Really?

-No, I promise you.

0:47:040:47:07

Yes, I would have, um...

0:47:070:47:10

I would have used the method that Adrian had to kill himself,

0:47:100:47:15

um...

0:47:150:47:18

because it was in my mind.

0:47:180:47:20

Um...

0:47:200:47:22

And then, I subsequently wrote about it non-fictionally.

0:47:220:47:25

I think there is a subtle distinction between the two forms,

0:47:250:47:30

in that, when I was thinking about doing it,

0:47:300:47:33

I was going to have a nice big glass of wine at my side

0:47:330:47:38

and I think, in the fictional suicide, there was no glass of wine.

0:47:380:47:42

But the method was exactly the same - a sharp knife and a warm bath, yes.

0:47:420:47:46

So, the old classical method.

0:47:460:47:47

But the other biographical connection is that you say in...

0:47:470:47:52

You talk in Levels Of Life,

0:47:520:47:53

which, again, is a common experience in bereavement

0:47:530:47:56

of starting to panic about memory

0:47:560:47:58

and the reliability of memory and the disappearance of memory.

0:47:580:48:01

In retrospect, THAT, it seems to me, went into the novel,

0:48:010:48:05

-The Sense Of An Ending.

-Um...

0:48:050:48:07

I think that what was in Sense Of An Ending came...

0:48:080:48:12

Rather than being leeched back from a future book,

0:48:120:48:16

actually came out of Nothing To Be Frightened Of

0:48:160:48:19

and the discussions that I was having with my brother

0:48:190:48:22

about memory and the fallibility of memory.

0:48:220:48:24

Um...

0:48:240:48:26

I think that what...

0:48:260:48:28

The fallibility of memory in grief is a very specific thing

0:48:280:48:33

and I was assured it would come back. And it does come back.

0:48:330:48:36

But it's not the same kind of memory, because, um...

0:48:360:48:40

..because before the one that you loved died,

0:48:430:48:46

you had her point of comparison, so that memory was binocular,

0:48:460:48:52

BI-nocular, and now has become monocular.

0:48:520:48:55

So, your memory does change.

0:48:550:48:57

But this is the very particular memory of grief

0:48:570:49:00

and, in Sense Of An Ending,

0:49:000:49:05

I was dealing more generally with what happens to memory over time.

0:49:050:49:10

It's about what time does to memory and what memory does to time.

0:49:100:49:15

Do you have any sense ever of the reception of the book?

0:49:150:49:17

I mean, you can't think,

0:49:170:49:19

"This one is going to win the Man Booker Prize,"

0:49:190:49:22

but does the outcome of a book, the public outcome of it,

0:49:220:49:27

is it ever predictable?

0:49:270:49:29

I don't think so, um...

0:49:310:49:33

But, um...

0:49:350:49:36

I...

0:49:390:49:41

And because I write different sorts of books,

0:49:410:49:44

I have, obviously, a core of readers who will go with me wherever,

0:49:440:49:49

but then there will be some people who come in

0:49:490:49:51

because this has won the Booker,

0:49:510:49:54

or the latest one, there will be people...

0:49:540:49:58

It's being given to lots of people who've been widowed, unsurprisingly.

0:49:580:50:02

And I've had extraordinary

0:50:020:50:05

and deeply-personal responses to the book,

0:50:050:50:08

which, again, I didn't anticipate.

0:50:080:50:11

I've had a lot of letters,

0:50:110:50:13

and I've had people coming up to me in the street

0:50:130:50:17

and just telling me things about their...about their own grief,

0:50:170:50:22

which are, on the one hand... chastening

0:50:220:50:28

and, on the other hand, sort of, flattering.

0:50:280:50:31

You know, I had...

0:50:310:50:32

A man came up to me in the street and said, "I read your book,

0:50:320:50:37

"my wife died X months ago. Every day, I wake up

0:50:370:50:40

"and I think of a different way to commit...to kill myself,

0:50:400:50:44

"and my children don't understand,

0:50:440:50:46

"and so I'm going to write out sentences of your book

0:50:460:50:51

"and give them to them, so that they do understand."

0:50:510:50:54

It makes you feel that you have done a service,

0:50:540:50:57

which you, sort of, didn't intend,

0:50:570:50:59

but if it's helpful, you know, I'm...I'm pleased and flattered.

0:50:590:51:05

Um...

0:51:050:51:06

The American writer Joyce Carol Oates,

0:51:080:51:10

who, as you know, because you reviewed it,

0:51:100:51:13

-she wrote a book about being widowed, becoming a widow.

-Yes, yes.

0:51:130:51:17

And when I talked to her,

0:51:170:51:18

she said her big shock was that she'd always, at book readings,

0:51:180:51:23

had fairly scholarly questions and polite responses,

0:51:230:51:27

and then people were coming up and hugging her,

0:51:270:51:29

which, I suppose, is the same phenomenon,

0:51:290:51:31

that people... They suddenly have a response to a writer or to a book

0:51:310:51:37

that they don't expect to have.

0:51:370:51:39

Yes, and because of the subject matter

0:51:390:51:42

and because, in this country, we're very bad at dealing with death

0:51:420:51:47

and we're very bad at dealing with grief,

0:51:470:51:50

I think that some of the things that I said

0:51:500:51:55

were articulations of things that people felt but couldn't express.

0:51:550:52:01

Um...

0:52:010:52:02

And that's when you're both...

0:52:020:52:05

you're grateful in more ways than one that you are a writer

0:52:050:52:08

because you can express such things for other people,

0:52:080:52:10

as well as for yourself.

0:52:100:52:12

"Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function.

0:52:130:52:19

"One day means no more than the next,

0:52:190:52:22

"so why have they been picked out and given separate names?

0:52:220:52:25

"It also reconfigures space.

0:52:250:52:28

"You have entered a new geography, mapped by a new cartography.

0:52:280:52:33

"You seem to be taking your bearings from one of those 17th-Century maps,

0:52:330:52:36

"which feature The Desert of Loss,

0:52:360:52:38

"The windless Lake of Indifference,

0:52:380:52:41

"The Dried-up River of Desolation,

0:52:410:52:44

"The Bog of Self-Pity

0:52:440:52:45

"and The Subterranean Caverns of Memory."

0:52:450:52:48

As you know, there's a lot of talk about the catharsis of writing,

0:52:500:52:54

and, indeed, sometimes, in bereavement counselling

0:52:540:52:57

people are encouraged, non-professionally,

0:52:570:52:59

to set down their words.

0:52:590:53:01

Did it have any such benefit for you?

0:53:010:53:04

No, and I didn't expr-... I didn't, um...

0:53:040:53:08

No, and I didn't... I didn't expect it to have.

0:53:100:53:14

I've never...

0:53:140:53:15

I've never particularly believed in the therapeutic value of literature.

0:53:150:53:21

There is a parallel to the grief section of Levels Of Life,

0:53:210:53:25

which is an enormous diary that I kept throughout my wife's illness

0:53:250:53:29

and in the months and immediate years thereafter,

0:53:290:53:32

which is hundreds of thousands of words.

0:53:320:53:35

And that was written, in part, for therapeutic reasons, I suppose,

0:53:350:53:42

in part, to get it down, in case...

0:53:420:53:44

going back to memory again, in case I forgot.

0:53:440:53:47

I wanted to get everything down exactly as it happened,

0:53:470:53:50

in case I forgot, that was...

0:53:500:53:52

Because it's one thing to suffer through it

0:53:520:53:56

and see someone suffering

0:53:560:53:57

and it's another thing to forget that.

0:53:570:54:00

That's... That's another failure, you know?

0:54:000:54:04

So, I wrote everything down, and I didn't consult it at all

0:54:040:54:08

when I wrote the grief section of Levels Of Life,

0:54:080:54:11

because I wanted that to be the movement and process

0:54:110:54:17

and unshiftingness of grief, viewed from four years on.

0:54:170:54:22

At the mention of the journals, the ears of biographers, publishers,

0:54:240:54:29

possibly newspaper serial purchase editors will perk up.

0:54:290:54:33

You must have made a decision about this.

0:54:330:54:35

You never would publish your journals.

0:54:350:54:37

I have no present intention to publish my journals, Mark, no.

0:54:380:54:44

But I'm aware that things...change.

0:54:440:54:47

I mean, the possibilities are I publish some of them before I die,

0:54:470:54:53

I burn them before I die, er...

0:54:530:54:56

they're published after my death,

0:54:560:54:57

to the irritation of many people, I put an embargo on them

0:54:570:55:01

so they're published after everyone who's in them dies.

0:55:010:55:05

So, you know, it's like... as soon as you make a decision,

0:55:050:55:09

you find it sort of countermanded.

0:55:090:55:12

So, um...never say never, if that isn't a...

0:55:120:55:15

..title of a James Bond film.

0:55:170:55:18

An obvious question - there are stories of writers

0:55:200:55:22

when children or relatives are ill actually making notes,

0:55:220:55:27

making notes in the hospital and all the rest of it,

0:55:270:55:29

knowing they were going to write about it.

0:55:290:55:32

Did you always know that, at some point,

0:55:320:55:34

you were going to have to write about grief

0:55:340:55:36

-or did the writer side switch off?

-No, I had no...

0:55:360:55:40

I had no... I had no intention of doing so,

0:55:400:55:44

and had you asked me for two or three years after my wife died,

0:55:440:55:48

I would have said, "No, I have no intention of doing it."

0:55:480:55:50

It's also how I did it, I mean, I...

0:55:500:55:54

Even on this matter, there are lines I drew which I wouldn't cross.

0:55:540:56:00

So, my wife was a very private person.

0:56:000:56:04

She hated seeing her name in print, for example.

0:56:040:56:08

And for that reason I don't use her name in the book, in fact.

0:56:080:56:11

But I don't go back into, "This was how our life was together,

0:56:110:56:15

"and then this dreadful thing happened."

0:56:150:56:17

I start at the point at which grief starts, really,

0:56:170:56:21

with tiny little bits of backtracking.

0:56:210:56:23

So I certainly wasn't...

0:56:230:56:26

When I went through the... the dreadful months in 2008,

0:56:280:56:33

I wasn't thinking "This will be useful, this will be material."

0:56:330:56:38

Um...

0:56:380:56:40

The desire to write, that must have gone for a while.

0:56:400:56:44

Um...

0:56:440:56:46

What went, er...was concentration

0:56:460:56:51

and concentration even to read a book.

0:56:510:56:55

I could read a newspaper.

0:56:550:56:57

It was months before concentration to read a book came back.

0:56:570:57:01

And then, in terms of writing, quite by chance,

0:57:010:57:08

I had...

0:57:080:57:10

I had started writing a piece about George Orwell, um...

0:57:100:57:15

a review, a long review,

0:57:150:57:17

and I got a hurry-up message from the editor,

0:57:170:57:21

who, as it happened, didn't know my wife had died.

0:57:210:57:24

And I said, "Well, I don't know when I can."

0:57:240:57:27

And then I took that up,

0:57:290:57:31

and it's odd, in that there is meant to be a, sort of...

0:57:310:57:36

a hostile relationship between journalism and literature,

0:57:360:57:40

whereas at the start of my career

0:57:400:57:41

I found that doing bits of journalism,

0:57:410:57:45

while sometimes they took away time,

0:57:450:57:50

helped give me the confidence to write books.

0:57:500:57:54

There I was, and I had this book review

0:57:540:57:56

of which I'd written about a quarter,

0:57:560:57:59

and I took it up again, and I found I could get to the end of it.

0:57:590:58:02

Um...

0:58:020:58:03

And then I don't know how long...

0:58:060:58:08

I think I then...went from that to a short story or two,

0:58:080:58:14

which finished my collection Pulse.

0:58:140:58:16

But I would... not have survived so well

0:58:170:58:23

had I not had work.

0:58:230:58:27

I think that's... I've been very...

0:58:270:58:30

Insofar as I've been fortunate, I've been fortunate in that respect,

0:58:300:58:33

that I remained, and I hope always will be, a writer.

0:58:330:58:37

-Julian Barnes, thank you.

-Thank you.

0:58:370:58:40

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