Nothing To Be Frightened Of - Julian Barnes

I bought this book a couple of years ago, probably one day when I was being particularly depressed about being in my sixties. I don't mean to say that I have this morbid fascination with death. I don't. And even though the occurrences of death among my family and friends are increasing with each passing year, I am reasonably convinced that I am going to survive forever.

Besides, each new day brings a new potential disaster to worry about and either way you look at that you win. If the ruination of the earth from global warming takes another generation to take effect, I will be dead when it happens, so there is really nothing to worry about. On the other hand, if some crazed religious zealot manages to secure a nuclear stockpile and decides to blow up the world and me with it tomorrow, there is really nothing particularly irksome about my individual death, therefore; nothing to worry about.

I think that is the way our politicians ought to think. Sure, our economy is going down the toilet and our country's maddening propensity to feed the poor and comfort the afflicted will bring us all to the brink, but with any luck the ice caps will melt before that happens and Wall Street will be under water. See, in the long run there is nothing to worry about.

Julian Barnes' book ruminates about death in that manner for almost 250 pages. I managed to come away from the book with a healthier attitude about the whole thing and ended up finding the whole subject quite funny.

It also taught me a lot about the writing of fiction. Barnes looks at death through the eyes of a fiction writer whose job is to turn real life into narratives that expose some truth by telling lies about reality. The whole book, then, is an erudite, if gloomy, exercise in creating art with death as the fitting ending.

There is at least one laugh line on each page and little revelations that force the reader to reevaluate his certainties. What more can you ask for?

I think I'll share some.

* * * * *

When talking about Pascal and the whole idea that it is a better bet to believe in God than not, Barnes offers a great illustration.

". . . In June 2006, at the Kiev zoo, a man lowered himself by rope into the island compound where the lions and tigers are kept. As he descended, he shouted across to the gawping crowds. One witness quoted him as saying, 'Who believes in God will be unharmed by lions'; another, the more challenging, 'God will save me, if He exists.' The metaphysical provocateur reached the ground, took off his shoes, and walked towards the animals; whereupon an irritated lioness knocked him down, and bit through his carotid artery. Does this prove a) the man was mad; b) God does not exist; c) God does exist, but won't be lured into the open by cheap tricks; d) God does exist, and has just demonstrated that He is an ironist; e) none of the above."

* * * * *

Barnes likes to talk about how Renard faced death. In one section he talks about Renard's understanding of irony.

"Irony does not dry up the grass. It just burns off the weeds."

* * * * *

Barnes is an art critic/lover. He wonders if atheism puts up barriers to the appreciation of art and beauty.

"Missing God is focused for me by missing the underlying sense of purpose and belief when confronted with religious art. It is one of the haunting hypotheticals for the nonbeliever: what would it be like 'if it were true' . . .Imagine hearing the Mozart Requiem in a great cathedral--or, for that matter, Poulenc's fishermen's mass in a clifftop chapel damp from salt spray--and taking the text as gospel; imagine reading Giotto's holy strip-cartoon in the chapel at Padua as nonfiction; imagine looking on a Donatello as the actual face of the suffering Christ or the weeping Magdalene. It would--to put it mildly--add a bit of extra oomph, wouldn't it?"

* * * * *

My favorite Barnes' book is Flaubert's Parrot. He includes this great quote from Flaubert. I have to reproduce it here because I once used this quote as an essay question in Advanced Placement just to drive a certain earnest young woman crazy.

"Is it splendid, or stupid, to take life seriously?"

* * * * *

And my favorite passage about fiction.

"Fiction is made by a process which combines total freedom and utter control, which balances precise observation with the free play of the imagination, which uses lies to tell the truth and truth to tell lies. It is both centripetal and centrifugal. It wants to tell all stories, in all their contrariness, contradiction, and irresolvability; at the same time it wants to tell the one true story, the one that smelts and refines and resolves all the other stories. . ."

I'm surprised at how much I ended up liking this book.