Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
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Book Reviews of Nothing to Be Frightened Of
Book Review: Julian Barnes does not need a Memento Mori
Summary: 4 Stars
Barnes writes: "This is not, by the way, `my autobiography'." The book is, however, intensely autobiographical, in a discursive rather than chronological or comprehensive way. It deals mainly, but not exclusively, with two themes that have occupied much of Julian Barnes' life: the fear of death which, despite the book's title (ah! but what if you take the word Nothing to mean Nothingness?), has become an essential part of me" and his attitude to religion: "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him."
Julian has an elder brother Jonathan, a rather donnish philosopher, and he uses Jonathan's views as a foil to his own, for Jonathan seems genuinely not to be bothered by the prospect of death, and is philosophical not just in an academic but in a temperamental way.
And Julian discusses his memories with Jonathan who points to the unreliability of memories. (And this will be demonstrated beautifully towards the end of the book by a long and fascinating passage about a visit by Stendhal to the Church of Santa Croce). No matter: Julian's memories are recalled so vividly, so stylishly and so wittily that one can only say "si non e vero, e ben trovato" (if this francophile will pardon an Italian instead of a French expression). Besides, in another fine passage towards the end, Julian finely describes the craft of the novelist as the interplay between and the merging of memory and the imagination.
Julian draws richly on what other philosophers, composers and writers have said about death and how they have died. In the context in which this information appears, it is infinitely more rewarding than the lists Simon Critchley has provided in The Book of Dead Philosophers (see my recent review.) Julian must have made a note throughout his voluminous reading whenever the subject of death came up.
For he had always feared death, resented it, protested about it, and, in one of several incongruously vulgar expressions which mar an otherwise delicious and elegant prose, is `pissed off' about one of Montaigne's consolatory statements about it (And I find it depressing to see this fine stylist stoop to the wholly gratuitous use of the F Word on a couple of occasions.)
He has progressed from very early atheism to agnosticism in his later years, but there is always a strong whiff of regret, a feeling that atheists and even agnostics miss something important. "God is dead, and without Him human beings can at last get up off their knees and assume their full height; and yet this height turns out to be quite dwarfish."
There are some fascinating meditations about the response to religious art by people who no longer share the ideas that went into its creation. He wrestles, not all that originally but with his usual elegance, with age-old problems: whether we have Free Will or not; whether, and if so, how we differ from animals in this respect; of whom or what the `I' consists; what is our place in a world which is billions of years old and has billions of years to come; reflections that a good writer can expect go out of print a decade or two after his death (if not during his life-time), and even a great one will no longer be read a few centuries later: so not much of an after-life there either. And there are some delicious and, as far as I know, original extended metaphors: a particularly felicitous one is that perhaps God has set up a kind of labyrinth without exits to an after-life, just to watch us, as an experimental scientist watches rats scurrying around to find a non-existing piece of cheese behind a door that won't open.
This book wonderfully articulates what not only Julian Barnes but many other people have thought about death - though perhaps most of us have such thoughts only in the small hours of the morning when we cannot sleep, in the occasional conversations we might have with family or friends, or at times when our friends or relations have a distressing and lingering end. Julian Barnes conveys the impression - perhaps wrongly, because this is after all NOT an autobiography, but mainly musings on Death, God, and The Human Condition - that he thinks about these things obsessively all the time; and I have to say that, in the end, I found 250 pages of it just a little excessive.
Book Review: What's There to Like?
Summary: 4 Stars
The truth is, I did not like this book except where it permitted me to escape its main topic. I am not an embracer of death, nor is Barnes, who hates and fears it, as I do. But he wrote a whole book about it. Are his death obsessions rooted in vanity or cowardice or, golly, mortality? Barnes admits to waking up in the dead of night yelling, "No No NO!" as he dreams of being swallowed up into blackness. And death weaves its way into his entire opus of novels because Barnes has always been obsessed with its ultimate appearance for every living thing.
Who can really accept death? Barnes gives us lots of small talk about the topic from such giants as Flaubert, Stendahl, Stravinsky, and Phillip Larkin, all of whom faced that moment in various states of terror. These are the good parts of his ramblings. In fact, when he's off topic, which is rarely, that's when this book is bearable. But I must say, 240 pages of musings, twistings, and turnings from Barnes on the ultimate moment are enough to depress the hell out of anybody, as there is no escape, not even blind, idiotic acceptance, which perhaps a handful of people have achieved. And even though Barnes poo poos the notion of being a father and passing on the genes as being a mild antidote to our shared mortal dilemma, I wonder how his life would have changed had he been one. Not all the moments he's spent dwelling on death, and death dwelling on him, would even have been available to him, as he'd have been changing nappies and going to parent-teacher meetings instead.
I've always admired Barnes, and this book of unpleasant musings only adds to that admiration. As you might tell, I have mixed feelings toward this book and its grisly theme. Hah! What does it really matter what feelings I have toward death, which also holds true for Mr. Barnes. No spiritual transfigurations here. No comforts, not even that of "artistic immortality." In fact, Barnes does not claim that he writes to overcome death. He writes because he writes, as plumbers plumb and butchers butcher. It's his job. It's what he does.
This book has been reviewed in The New York Review of Books by Frank Kermode and in the New York Times book review section, front page, by Garrison Keillor. They found it meritorious. I found it annoying, like a poisonous growth on my lower lip. So why 4 stars? Because poisonous growths are embedded in true art, and Barnes fully understands that. Besides, just about anything Barnes has to say is worth hearing, even if it's poured into your ear like deadly bile.
Book Review: Safety in Numbers?
Summary: 4 Stars
The success or failure of a memoir really depends upon one thing: its ability to transcend the personal and to speak to the universal. For this alone, "Nothing to Be Frightened Of" would score highest marks. Barnes' book is a poignant and humorous mediation on mortality, and in particular upon his inability to come to terms with it. Barnes has read the poets; he's read the psychoanalysts; he's read theologians and philosophers, and still he remains implacable.
Oddly enough, the book is neither morbid nor cynical nor depressing. That is to say, while the tone necessarily reflects some of the author's own dread, that anxiety is never transferred to the reader. I remember feeling a sense of suffocation when reading Kubler-Ross and Irvin D. Yalom, to say nothing of Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" or Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture," the latter two representing a sure-fire way to exercise the old tear ducts. Barnes' book doesn't do that to you; instead, he manages to be both intimate and critically distant enough that one actually feels safe contemplating the end with him.
The jokes help too.
Not that we are ever laughing at death. Death is no laughing matter. But how we confront death sometimes is. To that end, the reported exchanges between Julian and his brother (the philosopher Jonathan Barnes) are more than just comic relief; they set the mood while providing the framework of the book, which juxtaposes the thoughts and exchanges of other thinkers, to include famous writers, classical composers and various other pundits---and not just the usual suspects. Those cited are the (primarily) French authors--Jules Renard, Alphonse Daudet, Flaubert, Montaigne--so important to the author himself. At times passages are repeated, but always within a unique context, much like free-association.
Ultimately, Barnes never does find consolation, but he inadvertently offers it. Or at least I found consolation. For while we may all die alone and without answers, it helps to know that so many of us ask the same questions, have the same fears. And while I was pleased that the questioning ended when it did, Barnes' memoir is moving, intelligent, eloquent and (dare I say it?) ... fun.
Book Review: Thoughtful Railing Against Death
Summary: 4 Stars
I've not always liked Barnes's fiction. Staring at the Sun did little for me and Talking It Over was not my cup of tea. I did enjoy A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters. But the book I admired most was his Flaubert's Parrot, a convoluted, sometimes rambling essay on history and writing and Flaubert's life and who knows what else. It was a Diderotian-type essay, than which I can say nothing better. Now Barnes has produced a mate to Parrot, not a match in theme but in approach to writing, and in the quality of his reflections. The theme is the fear of death. Barnes states that he used to be an atheist and is now an agnostic but I can't find the difference between the two in his reflections on life as racing toward (painful, undignified, purposeless and too soon) death. Flaubert wrote (Barnes quotes him): "No sooner do we come into this world than bits of us start to drop off." That's pretty much the theme of much of this exceptionally thoughtful book. The book drips with zingers gently delivered, some from Barnes's own pen, some from others whom he finds sympathetic. Here's Barnes: "Religion tends to authoritarianism as capitalism tends to monopoly." And I love this one from Richard Dawkins: "When I am dying, I should like my life taken out under general anesthetic, exactly as if it were a diseased appendix." Barnes does not rail against those who disagree with him, as have Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in recent books. He's never strident, but neither does he accept false comfort. For Barnes, life simply ends and on a cosmic or even historic scale, our lives are insignificant. They're only significant to us, and that is what is tragic about being a temporarily living, strong feeling human being. I can't stop myself from adding one more passage from Barnes. It doesn't illuminate the book's principal preoccupation. It's more in the nature of a by-blow, an extraneous thought tossed off en passage. But I love it! "Writers need certain stock replies for certain stock questions. When asked What The Novel Does, I tend to answer, `It tells beautiful, shapely lies which enclose hard, exact truths.'" Now that's fine writing!Book Review: Always interesting but did not quite fit together....
Summary: 4 Stars
Barnes is bright, entertaining, reflective, and knowledgable and all those positives come together in this discursive treatise on death and many other not totally aligned subjects. I enjoyed my time with him but I kept expecting just a little bit more insight into the main subject: death or rather the fear of death and dying. And yet...I did feel a bit better after finishing the book. Less alone? More aware of the fact that many other people share the same fear? And that many other people have difficult and strained family relationships and awkward memories of things left unsaid and unresolved? I think so. Somehow we do feel that it is all going to come together by the end, even though we must know that it is unlikely to do so. The book brought that vain yet obviously fairly common hope to our attention and dashed it in a pretty gentle manner. For that I am grateful.