Julian Barnes Wiki Project: Julian Essay

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) Talking It Over has also been adapted for the stage, appearing in Chicago and Slovenia; a stage version of Arthur & George recently closed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

Criticism:

Barnes' work has often been criticized for its abstract formal nature, in which essays, lexical material, chronology, encyclopedia entries, and other nominally non-fictional genres are brought to bear as support for a central story. These auxiliary techniques are sometimes dismissed as "contrivances" of postmodern literature that render his books outside the novelistic realm:

"Barnes writes books which look like novels and get shelved as novels but which, when you open them up, are something else altogether. Flaubert's Parrot was for the most part a set of studies of Flaubert and his parrot. His new book, A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters, is even odder. The 10 chapters contain 10 quite different stories, some factual, some not. They are related only by image and theme" (David Sexton, Sunday Telegraph, 11 June 1989; quoted in Moseley 8-9).

While this criticism may have some relevance in a purely classical novelistic context, Barnes and his fans are not interested in the question of whether the books are "novels" or not. He considers himself simply an artist working in an extended fictional form, aligning himself with Milan Kundera and other modern experimentalists as well as with predecessors like Rabelais. In any case, U.S. (and French) critics have been more forgiving of the postmodern formal pastiche than their British counterparts.

Quotations:

"I don't believe in God, but I miss Him. That's what I say when the question is put." (Nothing To Be Frightened Of)

"As a journalist, I deal in checkable fact, and I will produce an appealing assemblage of facts which will lead to a conclusion which either I will draw or will be clearly implicit.

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It's quite opposite with a novel where you are not dealing in facts but dealing in truth." (2000 interview with the author; http://identitytheory.com/people/birnbaum8.html)

"Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own." (Flaubert's Parrot)

"How do you turn catastrophe into art? Nowadays the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? We'll have a play on the London stage within a year. A president is assassinated? You can have the book or the film or the filmed book or booked film. War? Send in the novelists. A series of gruesome murders? Listen for the tramp of the poets." (A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters)

Links:

http://www.julianbarnes.com -- the author's personal site http://www.dankavanagh.com -- a fan-made site for the Dan Kavanagh pseudonym http://julianbarnes.blogspot.com -- the author's blog (largely inactive)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Julian-Barnes-Website/307118768275 -- the author's Facebook presence, which has replaced the blog http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/barnes -- publisher site http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth1 -- Contemporary Writers profile

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