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A review by ilse
Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story by Julian Barnes
5.0
Life and reading are not separate activities. When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.
When I asked my daughter this weekend to make a collage out of the portraits I collected from the writers discussed in this compilation of essays, she rolled her eyes sceptically when she found out I had been reading a book on books, which she took as a symptom her mother has entered another more dangerous stage in her book craziness. Reading books on books, isn’t that just horror incarnate, a terribly nerdy thing to do? Asking why I still didn’t post her work of art (on which she secretly was a little proud), sulking when I disclosed my struggling to word my impressions, she sighed and brazenly summoned me to stop trying and keep it simple: ‘Just say “This is a brilliant book. Highly recommended!” (And please cook dinner mother, now).
By analysing and reflecting on the writing and lives of 5 British, 6 American and 5 French writers, Julian Barnes shares his insights on how fiction works, and why, and rather unsurprisingly to me he turns out not only a stunning fiction writer but also a clever and perceptive reader, maybe the kind of reader which many writers dreams of, an ideal and benevolent reader, considering that in his opinion ‘Reading is a majority skill but a minority art’. A reader who phrases his ruminations on books in an erudite, thoughtful, incisive and witty style, mostly in a mild and sympathetic voice, enlivening his exposé on readers and writers with more juicy or entertaining biographical anecdotes or characterisations – in short, a fellow writer, knowing the secrets of writerly craftsmanship and psychology. While his affection for some of the authors is palpable and infectious (Fitzgerald, Wharton, Ford), others get a more ironic, reserved and ambivalent handling (Orwell, Houellebecq).
One could wonder if it is actually meaningful to read about an author or book one hasn’t read yet, but while at first determined to read only the essays on authors I had at least read a short story of (Penelope Fitzgerald, Orwell, Ford Madox Ford, Chamfort, Flaubert, Houellebecq, Mérimée, Updike, Kipling), in my eagerness and enthusiasm I couldn’t stop myself greedily devouring the whole chocolate box, even the essays on authors entirely obscure to me (Arthur Clough, Félix Féneon, Lorrie Moore) or haven’t yet read anything by (Edith Wharton, Joan Didion, Joyce Oates), taking a singular delight in Barnes’s short story Homage to Hemingway, which is playfully modelled on Hemingway’s story [b:Homage to Switzerland|18741518|Homage to Switzerland|Ernest Hemingway|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1383141306s/18741518.jpg|26620700] and uses its structure to reflect and comment on Hemingway as a writer in a gently metafictional way.
Besides encountering Barnes’s typical ingredients dispersed throughout the essays (Flaubertophilia, Francophilia), part of the pleasure is that apart from the light Barnes casts on the fiction and authors he discusses, he also obliquely or more directly reveals some of his own preferential techniques as a writer. When talking about unreliable narrators with Ford (‘the novel plays with the reader as it reveals and conceals truth’, ‘Ford plays relentlessly on the reader’s desire to trust the narrative’), or when extolling Ford’s [b:The Good Soldier|7628|The Good Soldier|Ford Madox Ford|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389213508s/7628.jpg|1881188] for ‘its immaculate use of a ditheringly unreliable narrator, it sophisticated disguise of true narrative behind a false façade of apparent narrative, its self-reflectingness, its deep duality about human motive, intention and experience' – which all sounds pretty programmatic for his own novel [b:The Sense of an Ending|10746542|The Sense of an Ending|Julian Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1311704453s/10746542.jpg|15657664].
Some of his sentences proved quite persistent, popping up in my head again when pondering on friend’s reviews, having to restrain myself from bombarding friends with quotations from this book (‘you marry to continue the conversation'), this sticky effect enforced as they kindled memories on some of his novels, especially the poignant closing essay ‘Regulating sorrow’ on the accounts of bereavement from Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates, of which some thoughts return in the last chapter of his later novel [b:Levels of Life|17262198|Levels of Life|Julian Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1363837006s/17262198.jpg|23694714] - like the unsolicited advice given to a widowed person ‘Foreign travel is advised; so is getting a dog’, or the closing lines of this collection, an excerpt from a letter of consolation by Dr. Johnson on what to expect when mourning one’s wife, which also elucidates the way Barnes as a writer and person is affected and influenced by his reading like his reader in turn is by reading Barnes:
“He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interests; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good or evil; and with whom he could set his mind his mind at liberty, to retrace the past, or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settle course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless, till it is driven by external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspense is dreadful.”
As a bonus, there is the fun smuggled into the index (not in the Dutch edition) – Barnes began his writing life as an OED lexicographer in what he called the "sports and dirty words department" and ça se voit:
Ford Madox Ford – compared to a poached egg;
Sex – danger of Belgians; in exchange for an interview?; post-coital harness- mending; post-coital melon-eating;
Wildlife – George Orwell ‘not a parrot’; FM Ford as great auk ; Tietjens compared to entire farmyard; also to lobster; vile thoughts about kittens
The Dutch edition, which was published before the English one, while lacking the playful index, comprises as a consolation prize a lovely additional essay on Barnes’s bibliophilism, which was published separately as a pamphlet [b:A Life with Books|15735364|A Life with Books|Julian Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1342186419s/15735364.jpg|21418162] to celebrate Independent Booksellers week and which also can be read here.
Alone, and yet in company: that is the paradoxical position of the reader. Alone in the company of a writer who speaks in silence of your mind. And – a further paradox – it makes no difference whether that writer is alive or dead.
A GR friend writes on his profile he prefers his authors dead. This might come across as a somewhat provocatively articulated statement and however I wouldn’t venture to phrase it that boldly, I can relate to it, as most of my favourite authors simply are dead, even if they seem very much present and alive to me when reading them. Although I have only read 4 of his novels so far and not so often read still flourishing authors, by reading this collection of essays it occurred to me that Julian Barnes might have grown into my favourite living author at the moment – and that I am far of alone in adoring his writing. It amuses me to notice a similar keenness with some friends – writing in their reviews that to them Barnes simply can do no wrong, or that they feel smarter by reading him, that they’d read his grocery list, or feel so at ease in his company. Admitting my own almost fangirlish admiration might have gotten in the way of writing a proper review, I blushingly and cheerfully apologize and make it up by referring to the plentiful fine reviews written on this book here, of which Helle's was the one that kindly pointed me to it.
A multifaceted gem and an awesome source of inspiration for further reading., guiding me both into exploring unknown territory as well as enlightening previously roamed paths.
Collage of photos created by Senta - thanks a ton, dearest daughter!
When I asked my daughter this weekend to make a collage out of the portraits I collected from the writers discussed in this compilation of essays, she rolled her eyes sceptically when she found out I had been reading a book on books, which she took as a symptom her mother has entered another more dangerous stage in her book craziness. Reading books on books, isn’t that just horror incarnate, a terribly nerdy thing to do? Asking why I still didn’t post her work of art (on which she secretly was a little proud), sulking when I disclosed my struggling to word my impressions, she sighed and brazenly summoned me to stop trying and keep it simple: ‘Just say “This is a brilliant book. Highly recommended!” (And please cook dinner mother, now).
By analysing and reflecting on the writing and lives of 5 British, 6 American and 5 French writers, Julian Barnes shares his insights on how fiction works, and why, and rather unsurprisingly to me he turns out not only a stunning fiction writer but also a clever and perceptive reader, maybe the kind of reader which many writers dreams of, an ideal and benevolent reader, considering that in his opinion ‘Reading is a majority skill but a minority art’. A reader who phrases his ruminations on books in an erudite, thoughtful, incisive and witty style, mostly in a mild and sympathetic voice, enlivening his exposé on readers and writers with more juicy or entertaining biographical anecdotes or characterisations – in short, a fellow writer, knowing the secrets of writerly craftsmanship and psychology. While his affection for some of the authors is palpable and infectious (Fitzgerald, Wharton, Ford), others get a more ironic, reserved and ambivalent handling (Orwell, Houellebecq).
One could wonder if it is actually meaningful to read about an author or book one hasn’t read yet, but while at first determined to read only the essays on authors I had at least read a short story of (Penelope Fitzgerald, Orwell, Ford Madox Ford, Chamfort, Flaubert, Houellebecq, Mérimée, Updike, Kipling), in my eagerness and enthusiasm I couldn’t stop myself greedily devouring the whole chocolate box, even the essays on authors entirely obscure to me (Arthur Clough, Félix Féneon, Lorrie Moore) or haven’t yet read anything by (Edith Wharton, Joan Didion, Joyce Oates), taking a singular delight in Barnes’s short story Homage to Hemingway, which is playfully modelled on Hemingway’s story [b:Homage to Switzerland|18741518|Homage to Switzerland|Ernest Hemingway|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1383141306s/18741518.jpg|26620700] and uses its structure to reflect and comment on Hemingway as a writer in a gently metafictional way.
Besides encountering Barnes’s typical ingredients dispersed throughout the essays (Flaubertophilia, Francophilia), part of the pleasure is that apart from the light Barnes casts on the fiction and authors he discusses, he also obliquely or more directly reveals some of his own preferential techniques as a writer. When talking about unreliable narrators with Ford (‘the novel plays with the reader as it reveals and conceals truth’, ‘Ford plays relentlessly on the reader’s desire to trust the narrative’), or when extolling Ford’s [b:The Good Soldier|7628|The Good Soldier|Ford Madox Ford|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389213508s/7628.jpg|1881188] for ‘its immaculate use of a ditheringly unreliable narrator, it sophisticated disguise of true narrative behind a false façade of apparent narrative, its self-reflectingness, its deep duality about human motive, intention and experience' – which all sounds pretty programmatic for his own novel [b:The Sense of an Ending|10746542|The Sense of an Ending|Julian Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1311704453s/10746542.jpg|15657664].
Some of his sentences proved quite persistent, popping up in my head again when pondering on friend’s reviews, having to restrain myself from bombarding friends with quotations from this book (‘you marry to continue the conversation'), this sticky effect enforced as they kindled memories on some of his novels, especially the poignant closing essay ‘Regulating sorrow’ on the accounts of bereavement from Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates, of which some thoughts return in the last chapter of his later novel [b:Levels of Life|17262198|Levels of Life|Julian Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1363837006s/17262198.jpg|23694714] - like the unsolicited advice given to a widowed person ‘Foreign travel is advised; so is getting a dog’, or the closing lines of this collection, an excerpt from a letter of consolation by Dr. Johnson on what to expect when mourning one’s wife, which also elucidates the way Barnes as a writer and person is affected and influenced by his reading like his reader in turn is by reading Barnes:
“He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interests; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good or evil; and with whom he could set his mind his mind at liberty, to retrace the past, or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settle course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless, till it is driven by external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspense is dreadful.”
As a bonus, there is the fun smuggled into the index (not in the Dutch edition) – Barnes began his writing life as an OED lexicographer in what he called the "sports and dirty words department" and ça se voit:
Ford Madox Ford – compared to a poached egg;
Sex – danger of Belgians; in exchange for an interview?; post-coital harness- mending; post-coital melon-eating;
Wildlife – George Orwell ‘not a parrot’; FM Ford as great auk ; Tietjens compared to entire farmyard; also to lobster; vile thoughts about kittens
The Dutch edition, which was published before the English one, while lacking the playful index, comprises as a consolation prize a lovely additional essay on Barnes’s bibliophilism, which was published separately as a pamphlet [b:A Life with Books|15735364|A Life with Books|Julian Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1342186419s/15735364.jpg|21418162] to celebrate Independent Booksellers week and which also can be read here.
Alone, and yet in company: that is the paradoxical position of the reader. Alone in the company of a writer who speaks in silence of your mind. And – a further paradox – it makes no difference whether that writer is alive or dead.
A GR friend writes on his profile he prefers his authors dead. This might come across as a somewhat provocatively articulated statement and however I wouldn’t venture to phrase it that boldly, I can relate to it, as most of my favourite authors simply are dead, even if they seem very much present and alive to me when reading them. Although I have only read 4 of his novels so far and not so often read still flourishing authors, by reading this collection of essays it occurred to me that Julian Barnes might have grown into my favourite living author at the moment – and that I am far of alone in adoring his writing. It amuses me to notice a similar keenness with some friends – writing in their reviews that to them Barnes simply can do no wrong, or that they feel smarter by reading him, that they’d read his grocery list, or feel so at ease in his company. Admitting my own almost fangirlish admiration might have gotten in the way of writing a proper review, I blushingly and cheerfully apologize and make it up by referring to the plentiful fine reviews written on this book here, of which Helle's was the one that kindly pointed me to it.
A multifaceted gem and an awesome source of inspiration for further reading., guiding me both into exploring unknown territory as well as enlightening previously roamed paths.
Collage of photos created by Senta - thanks a ton, dearest daughter!