Julian Barnes bids a masterful farewell with last novel
FICTION
Departure)
Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape, $39.99
A Belgian interviewer was blunt: “So Mr Barnes, you are now 76 and will never win the Nobel Prize because you are a white man – are you raging against the dying of the light?” – marks not only the end of the Booker Prize-winning author’s life, but also the extinction of his generation of writers. Julian Barnes brushed off the question, but it still left a mark.
These days, Barnes and his mostly white, mostly male group are weakened in more ways than one. With the departure of Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens, their cast rallied around a shared sense of humor, grit, and fear of clichés rather than death. Everything is very English. Each of them was not as angry against the dying light as they were writing in it. All three were diagnosed with cancer, and the other two published nonfiction accounts of their struggles. As Barnes approaches 80, his non-terminal diagnosis means he must live with cancer rather than die from it. his last book Departure) He claims that it is “a work of fiction, which does not mean that it is not true.”
Instead of dwelling on weakness, Barnes describes reacquainting himself with two old college friends, Stephen and Jean. The couple, who were once lovers in their 20s, broke up because they were too young to start a family. After a “missing middle” and now in his 60s, Stephen asks Barnes to help him plan a chance meeting with Jean to rekindle their old love. In the middle, we learn only that Stephen admits that he married the “wrong woman”, got a divorce, but is now determined to right a lifelong mistake. Jean sees through the ruse, but that doesn’t stop the two from reaching a deal. They soon marry, with Barnes as his best man. Each of them tells him that this is their last chance for happiness. Once the romantic destiny is satisfied, they begin to understand that love and life are more complicated than turning back the clock.
Barnes reports that the probability of success for such late “reflares” is high, around 70 percent, according to the literature. But when they go astray, it spells disaster. Just as there is a separation to deal with, the pain that eases over time becomes sharp again. The point Barnes emphasizes has more to do with aging. If given another chance, would we fail again, even with the advantage of all the accumulated knowledge?
Barnes examines regret by asking a question: What if the meaning we give to our lives, the wisdom that is one of the few consolations of aging, is not enough to influence the course of life? Despite its romantic appearance, Departure) It’s more about life than love. Barnes suggests that the pearls we gather from life’s troubles may actually be more fiction, although that doesn’t mean they’re untrue. A reader may ask how a writer has the courage to set limits on giving meaning to life after spending his career doing so.
This aside, its tragic outcome is made possible by the decline of memory. Barnes uses Involuntary Autobiographical Memory as a counterthought. In this case, any action will trigger the recall of all similar memories. For example, if someone eats a sandwich, every sandwich consumed will come back. It’s clearly a confusing and overwhelming prospect, Barnes said. On the other hand, while the decay of memory is a necessary evil, it opens the door to regret. Our remembrance loses the fidelity and intensity of the moment. Therefore, our retellings exaggerate our previous agency and often ignore why we acted the way we did.
Another counterpoint: Jimmy, Jean’s Jack Russell, is the most free and original character. He can bite whomever he wants, and by plucking the daisies woven around his wedding collar, he denies the feeling and is completely free from regret. Sleeps irregularly and frequently in old age. Although Jimmy has memory, he lacks the human demand that things should be. Meaning Something.
Although he has never won a Nobel Prize, Barnes can still find a publisher for everything he writes. Departure(s) meandering off-topic conversations sometimes become self-indulgent. But we can tolerate it if we remember that it was once a great sin for an author to appear as a character in his own fiction. When Martin Amis did this, his father threw the Kingsley manuscript across the room. This is how generations change.
So we must mourn the end of a career and the decline of a generation of writers, even if his denial that life should mean anything feels like kicking the ladder in his wake. For my part, I will continue to deal with my regrets, including that Barnes can no longer write.
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Kurt Johnson is an author and journalist living in Europe. He likes to visit places of historical significance, especially the post-Soviet space.
