Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
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Book Summary Author: Julian Barnes Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Format: Deckle Edge Published: 2008-09-02 ISBN: 0307269639 Number of pages: 243 Publisher: Knopf |
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Book Reviews of the Nothing to Be Frightened Of
Customer Review: Something to Be Leery of
Summary: 2 Stars
If this book were written by someone other than Barnes, I'd have given it another star or two, perhaps. But I hold Barnes to a higher standard. (I'll never forget restudying Madame Bovary as a grad student, then reading Flaubert's Parrot and being blown away by it in every regard--exquisite literary criticism, intricately fascinating plot, overall brilliance.)
But reading Nothing to Be Frightened Of was akin to being stuck over too many cups of tea with a garrulous old fogey, more self satisfied with his clever reflections than he is interested in the purpose of them--in this case, the theme of his book.
For one thing, I found something extra-literarily embarrassing about the details of his father, his mother, and their deaths. As an author, Barnes abandons these intimacies to the page without taking on their one salient quality--their homely mundanity. (One exception: the leather pouffe brought home from India by his father and subsequently stuffed with the letters--shredded--of his parents' courtship. What a stunning exemplar of the cruel entropy of time--and how Barnesian! (Except, there it lies on page 33, kerplunk.))
To belabor the tea analogy: I have sat at my kitchen table over tea with any number of old fogey friends and listened to their musings on death, replete with their memories and literary correspondences, and have found them as interesting in vivo as Barnes might be, if also in vivo. But a book is not a chat between generous friends. I perked up on page 47 at the introduction of Jules Renard, he who uttered "I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't." By page 52 I was wishing Barnes would dodder off already and leave his seat to Jules while I made a fresh pot.
Here's what it seems to me is going on with this book. Barnes, contemplating his end, is invoking his claim to immortality by publishing NTBFO. But the horrible irony is that this is the most forgettable of his books. Fear of death is perhaps the most mundane human experience of all, and I'd looked to Barnes for some elevation of it. Instead, I got lots of clever nattering. I hope that having vented, he lives long enough to live up to himself on the page again.