Julian Barnes

 
Julian Barnes, he of the stunning vocabulary and erudition, the master blender of sarcasm and subtlety, the chronicler of  pain par excellence, the giver of amazing insights, has finally won the Booker Prize. I am so happy.

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Oliver: "I was dozing, I confess. Et tu? O narcoleptic and steatopygous Stuart, he of the crepuscular understanding and the Weltanschauung built of Lego. Look, can we please take the longer view? Chou-en-lai, my hero. Or Zhou-en-lai, as he later became. What do you consider to have been the effect on world history of the French revolution? To which the wise man replied, "It is too early to tell."

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Oliver: "So there I was, two-wheeling out of your sight past glinting steel silos crammed with the crushed blood of the Minervois grape, while Gillian was doing a fast-fade in my rear-view mirror. A gauche term, don't you find - rear-view mirror - so filled with plod and particularity?  Compare the snappier French: rétroviseur. Retrovision: how much we wish we had it, eh?

But we live our lives without such useful little mirrors magnifying the road just travelled. We barrel up the A61 towards Toulouse, looking ahead, looking ahead. Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it. The rétroviseur: essential for not just road safety but the race's survival. Oh dear, I feel an advertising slogan coming on.

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Mme Wyatt: "People are surprised that Oliver had a nervous collapse after the death of his father. But he so hated his father, they say. Why did not that death release him from that emotion and make him happy? Well, how many reasons would you prefer? ......the death of a parent you love is in many ways simpler than the death of a parent you hate or to whom you are indifferent. Love, loss, mourning, remembering - we all know the scheme.

But what is the scheme when this is not the case, when the parent is not loved? A tranquil forgetting? I think not. Imagine the situation of someone like Oliver, who realises that for all his life as an adult, and for many years before that as well, he has lived without knowing what it is like to love a parent. You will reply that this is not so extraordinary, not so uncommon, and I will reply that this does not make it more easy."

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From 'Love, etc.'

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