Page 48 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 48
Ideology in the 20th Century: studies of literary and social discourses and practices
when they deny it. Almost at the very end of Barnes’ book, we find these
sentences:
You get towards the end of life—no, not life itself, but of something else:
the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long mo-
ment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done
wrong? (Barnes 2011, 142).
The important and at the same time the difficult question is: when does
the end really come? An ancient Greek philosopher, Alcmaeon of Cro-
ton, whose thoughts Kermode is profoundly reviving, argues that a man
was dying because he could no longer find a clue between the beginning
and the end. While one is alive, he or she does so by creating a harmo-
ny between things; the subject creates, in other words, the models of the
48 world. Kermode’s main thesis is that existence and fiction are related ac-
tivities because both of them create congruencies of beginnings and ends
to give meaning both to life and to the novel. In order to give meaning to
our lives from where we are (always somewhere in between), we need fic-
tion about the beginnings and fictions about endings, fictions that unite
the beginning and the end, and give meaning to the interval between
them. Kermode calls them concord-fictions, and Julian Barnes in his nov-
el is just examining the ways in which we build concord-fictions, which
indirectly means examining the relationships between tragedy and com-
edy, between history and her or his story, between biography and narra-
tive, between the mystery of transience of memory and forever missed
possibilities of existence. What is, conditionally speaking, postmodern
in the novel and quite characteristic of Barnes’ poetics, is the continual
pointing out that the narrator tells us one possible story about himself,
though probably the most important one. Therefore, there are discon-
tinuities of writing, plural interpretations of the same events, unreliable
and reliable memories, conscious choices, but also unconscious ones that
are later rationalized.
Moving from credulity to skepticism, the narrator, the elderly Tony
Webster, uses juicy everyday speech (including cursing), recalling his
life, or some episodes related to his gifted school friend, a girl he loved or
thought he loved, and to one human tragedy, which actually reminds him
of an episode from his schooldays, and also affects the finding of the sense
(or nonsense) of his own end. The retired bureaucrat in the field of culture
is divorced, has a daughter with whom she maintains regular but not ex-
cessively close relationships, returns to the turning points and the forking
paths of youth—in the first part of the novel he is searching for consola-
when they deny it. Almost at the very end of Barnes’ book, we find these
sentences:
You get towards the end of life—no, not life itself, but of something else:
the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long mo-
ment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done
wrong? (Barnes 2011, 142).
The important and at the same time the difficult question is: when does
the end really come? An ancient Greek philosopher, Alcmaeon of Cro-
ton, whose thoughts Kermode is profoundly reviving, argues that a man
was dying because he could no longer find a clue between the beginning
and the end. While one is alive, he or she does so by creating a harmo-
ny between things; the subject creates, in other words, the models of the
48 world. Kermode’s main thesis is that existence and fiction are related ac-
tivities because both of them create congruencies of beginnings and ends
to give meaning both to life and to the novel. In order to give meaning to
our lives from where we are (always somewhere in between), we need fic-
tion about the beginnings and fictions about endings, fictions that unite
the beginning and the end, and give meaning to the interval between
them. Kermode calls them concord-fictions, and Julian Barnes in his nov-
el is just examining the ways in which we build concord-fictions, which
indirectly means examining the relationships between tragedy and com-
edy, between history and her or his story, between biography and narra-
tive, between the mystery of transience of memory and forever missed
possibilities of existence. What is, conditionally speaking, postmodern
in the novel and quite characteristic of Barnes’ poetics, is the continual
pointing out that the narrator tells us one possible story about himself,
though probably the most important one. Therefore, there are discon-
tinuities of writing, plural interpretations of the same events, unreliable
and reliable memories, conscious choices, but also unconscious ones that
are later rationalized.
Moving from credulity to skepticism, the narrator, the elderly Tony
Webster, uses juicy everyday speech (including cursing), recalling his
life, or some episodes related to his gifted school friend, a girl he loved or
thought he loved, and to one human tragedy, which actually reminds him
of an episode from his schooldays, and also affects the finding of the sense
(or nonsense) of his own end. The retired bureaucrat in the field of culture
is divorced, has a daughter with whom she maintains regular but not ex-
cessively close relationships, returns to the turning points and the forking
paths of youth—in the first part of the novel he is searching for consola-
