Julian Barnes: Nothing to be Frightened of

  Julian Barnes says in his unclassifiable book called "Nothing to be Frightened of", which as its name doesn't suggest is dedicated to the theme of death, that when he began to write fiction he set two rules: “Neither dreams nor climate." "As a long term reader, a significant meteorology has always irritated me, storm clouds, rainbows, thunder in the distance, and I was also tired of significant dreams, premonitions, and appearances and other". He even thought about calling his first novel "Without climate."
 

  I read Barnes for the first time when I was about eighteen. "Flaubert's Parrot". I still have the volume. This was the moment I decided to become a writer. I was marveled by his sense of humor, erudition and tenderness with which he treated his characters. Then the laziness and lack of ideas made me stop my project, ridding the world of a handful of printed pieces of paper.  So at least I've avoided a comment like his mother once made: "I have two sons, one (the philosopher Jonathan Barnes) who writes books I read and do not understand and the other (Julian) who writes books that I understand and do not read."

 

  Barnes shares with fellow British professional colleagues some more or less contemporary features. It's as funny as Nick Hornby, but his humor is more subtle and is not intended to be as "cool". It may be ironic as Martin Amis, but is far more compassionate and less smug. Instead of pulling his teeth he would drink a bottle of Burgundy. It is no coincidence that he abides by the reminder of Flaubert: "be methodical and orderly in your life, like a bourgeois, to be violent and original in your life”. He is so capable of expressing the world of small things like Paul Auster, but not as pretentious or "serious" as the American, which is why the latter is more popular in Spain, where if a writer is not stupendous, he or she will not be taken seriously. His books are just too fun to deserve the Prince of Asturias Award. Perhaps they could give it to his alter ego, crime novel writers.

  Even though he is such a Francophile guy, Barnes has always seemed the quintessence of British virtues to me, although not having sympathy for the French is precisely the least of the English virtues. A feature of exquisite extravagance. Barnes is for all audiences. Being as erudite as he is, you can read it as easily as John LeCarré. You will never have shove in your face that he was educated in Oxford. I bet you didn´t know? I bet it never crossed your mind? It is obvious that it terrifies him to be a literary celebrity as Somerset Maugham or Arthur Conan Doyle, who he dedicates one of his finest novels. He really proposes a "this has occurred to me, what do you think?”

 

But, on he has a ten year old picture hung on his website. We will investigate this dark side.

  

  I give a series titles of Barnes. I have not used a particular criteria, just used my memory and taste.
 

• Flaubert's Parrot
• Engand, England
• Talking in over
• Love Etc
• Arthur & George
• The sense of an ending

 

For more information I enclose some links:

• Bibliography
• New York Times: Julian Barnes and the Emotions of Englishmen
• NewYorker: The Sense of and Ending

 

El Señor Gordo

El humor está aquí, en alguna parte

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Translation by Amanda Perri