Not long into this essay I found myself wondering if it would have been published if the author were not Julian Barnes. I also wondered: would I have guessed the author’s identity if it had been withheld from me?
Actually, it’s really five little essays, whose subjects are ‘Memories’, ‘Words’, ‘Politics’, ‘Books’, and ‘Age and Time’. Here is a sample from the first section:
We change our minds about many things, from matters of mere taste – the colours we prefer, the clothes we wear – to aesthetic matters – the music, the books we like – to adherence to social groups – the football team or political party we support – to the highest verities – the person we love, the God we revere, the significance or insignificance of our place in the seemingly empty or mysteriously full universe.
Indeed, indeed (although I have not yet met anyone who has changed their allegiance to a football team. It’s kind of the point of supporting one).
The book is like this all the way through: an even tone, as that of the thoughtful vicar delivering an uncontroversial sermon in a venerable church somewhere in the Home Counties. As with such occasions, the mind wanders; one is intermittently brought back to either agree with a particular point or disagree with another; one surreptitiously looks at one’s watch and wonders when it will be over, or what’s for lunch. ‘Gradually,’ Barnes writes, ‘I have come to change my mind about the very nature of memory itself.’ (It is not to be relied on, basically.)
Here are the opening lines of ‘Words’:
I’ve spent my life with words, writing them and reading them.
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