Levels of Life

[lesleyruth]

My husband died of a brain tumour 18 months ago. Julian's description of grief is devastatingly accurate and mirrors my own experience. I know the soaring height and the unforgiving fall.

[dawnoshiro]

I'm so sorry to hear about your husband. My condolences on your terrible loss.

Julian Barnes's previous meditation on death ("Nothing to Be Frightened Of") became one of my favorite books and his translation of "In the Land of Pain" was very powerful and moving as well. He has an incredible gift for finding the words to express emotions and experiences which often seem indescribable.

The book is not coming out in America until late September, but I did order a British copy which is hopefully in the mail.

[andrew1966]

I read 'Levels of Life' last week. It is an absorbing, although rather harrowing read. I hadn't read any of Julian Barnes's other books, but I decided to read this one after having read an interview with Mr Barnes in the 'Review' section of 'The Guardian' in which he talked about 'Levels of Life' at some length. The newspaper article sparked my interest.

I would like to read some of Julian Barnes's other books. Recommendations welcome!

[dawnoshiro]

Welcome to the forum, Andrew! Diversity is one of the reasons Julian Barnes has rapidly become my favorite writer. Some writers stick close to the same genre, but Mr. Barnes's books are more like a kaleidoscope--they may use similar colors and themes, but each one is completely unique.

If you liked "Levels of Life", "Nothing to be Frightened of" is very similar to the last third of that book. Mr. Barnes writes very eloquently about life (and death) all while putting them in a larger context. Even though it isn't fiction, I think it's still my favorite.

For short stories, I would recommend "The Lemon Table". Even though his other volumes of short stories are very good, these are the ones I remember. They linger in the memory and blood long after you're done with the book.

The novels are all very different in terms of style and genre. Personally, I love "The Sense of An Ending" because it is a structural masterpiece. There are layers upon layers in this book; the best parts of it are the subtle, inferred things and the way reality shifts beneath the feet of the narrator and the reader simultaneously. Simply put, it is an experience to read (and reread) and plot summaries can't possibly do it justice.

"Flaubert's Parrot" has more of an experimental feel to it. There are stories within stories here. There is one larger narrative but it is fed by small historical and fictional digressions. It all comes together beautifully, but I still think "The Sense of An Ending" is superior in terms of structure and technique.

"England, England" is a satire; a dark comedy of extremes that works as social criticism and dystopian literature. It has moments of great sadness and cruelty and humor, but since I'm an American I feel as though I may not be getting all of the historical or cultural layers to this one.

"Arthur and George" is historical fiction, so if you enjoy that genre, it is a pleasant surprise. It narrates the parallel lives of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, following their stories to the point of intersection during the Great Wyrley outrages. It is just as good as Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" (which I'm reading now) and uses a similar strangely intimate third person narrator.

Any one of these would be excellent places to start. They're all so unique that I think it depends where your reading interests lie.

[postscript]

I started from the end - the first book of JB, what I read, was "The Sense of an Ending" - and here a coup de foudre took place (so far not passed). Each his novel is completely different. I am fan of short stories JB . I think short stories are more difficult than endless (especially in the age of computers) worthless novels, the authors of which doesn't take the trouble to look at the world and its inhabitants. "Flaubert's Parrot" in my opinion, has a place in the canon of literature of the twentieth century. I am curious about his all the reviews, interviews and essays. I think, English people are lucky too much - so many great writers ... (Are conscious of it?)
PS. Podcast BBC last night probably survived the siege or my Internet flew away, because I could not hear out to the end of the drama "Talking it Over".

[terefere]

An interesting review in The New York Review of Books (19 December 2013): Cathleen Schine, The Most Mysterious Subject, but "This article is available only subscribers it."

[terefere]

Link to interesting review:
www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/julian-barnes-fils-du-ciel_1318482.html

Postscript. Are not these avatars a bit too big? ...

[andrew1966]

Is the second section of 'Levels of Life' concerning the love affair between Sarah Bernhardt and Fred Burnaby fictional?

[manosd]

Since you listened the interview with Mark Lawson and posted a message for the rest of us, why don’t you tell us…Did you get an answer to your question? None of us 3 have read the book; Eva, I think, had a quick look in a bookshop, so when we discussed your question she suggested to look at the following picture as independent observers…..

www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw193181/Kingsley-Amis-Martin-Amis-Pat-Kavanagh-Julian-Patrick-Barnes

“What do you see?” she asked the rest of us, but gave no answer, typical of her. “Look at the evidence,” she said. This is their (hers, husband’s and son’s) favourite phrase.
What I see Andrew1966, is ‘Mrs Ford playing with Adrian’. I see an immature Julian Barnes with a woman if not old enough to be his mother, certainly old enough to be his OLDER SISTER or AUNT!! What do you see mate?
“ Believe in nothing more than evidence. Believe in observation, measurement and reasoning. Does Barnes looks like a rational animal in this picture?” she asked. “NO”, we all answered ….
“ It was the era that Barnes was thinking with his lower head and not his proper one. Because if he was a rational animal, he would have observed the facts and then run fast!!” And yes mate, she divides men to categories and also gives percentages to these categories…
So now you know who is Sarah Bernhardt and who is Fred Burnaby!!! And if you look Bernhardt's biography you'll see that she also had an affair with another WOMAN...Hope you got it now!!!!!

[andrew1966]

I posted my question about whether the romance between Fred Burnaby and Sarah Bernhardt was fictional in February 2014, and the Julian Barnes interview with Mark Lawson was not broadcast until 30th March 2014. Furthermore, although Julian Barnes talked at some length about 'Levels of Life' in the BBC4 interview, the conversation mainly dealt with the third section of the book, and the question of whether Barnes made up the Burnaby/Bernhardt romance was not discussed.

[Heather]

I want to thank Julian for writing this book.  My husband died in 2009 and left me a widow at 47.  Sine then I have felt like I am living outside the world of everyone else.  As I read levels of life I found myself saying yes this is how it is living with grief.  So thank you so much. 

[manosd]

www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw193181/Kingsley-Amis-Martin-Amis-Pat-Kavanagh-Julian-Patrick-Barnes

This photo was not chosen accidentally. Looking at it you could tell many stories about class, power, control, love, sex, ambitions etc.
In this picture, like in real life, you could see the controllers and the controlees. You could see how ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ could manipulate 3 men; of course you could also see how her face expression contradicts her gesture: her mind is somewhere else, but her fingers reassure her pet ... You could see a young anxious boy sitting in the shadow of his megalomaniac father. He is already ‘fucked-up’,while the one sitting next to him is naively happy, he’s not aware that he’d soon be fucked up. Both are sex driven, love dependent for different reasons. Barnaby/BARNES thinks (stupidly!) that the world is out there waiting for his ideas and he, like a storm, would change everything; while the other one thinks(falsely!) that he has inherited the world from his famous dad.
However, what makes this photo interesting is the person who is missing: Bernhardt’s younger sister. Her and Martin Amis were lovers a few years before this photo was taken. You see upper middle class men, money and success were the basic targets for BOTH sisters... And they happen to find themselves in the GOLDEN ERA of Literature, Publishing and Media development. Making the right connections, hanging out with fashionable people and planning carefully their next steps could offer them among others, FIRST CLASS degrees, well-paid jobs, pet-husbands and the chance ,when you are old and scorned but want to get back into the public spotlight, to remember about those days and write a memoir about your fucks, your fucks with legendary writers….
But as you could obviously see the older sister has no problem with young Amis dumping her sister, since she is still earning money from the AMIS FAMILY.. So we keep our mouth shut and tolerate them??!! That was until 1995,when Martin Amis decide to dump and the older sister. That was too much!! Now, that the Kavanagh/Barnes LTD were about to loose money, it was time to remember what kind of people the AMIS were.. And the WAR started….

- And I am asking you, if you were offered 200.000 pounds more(neither 2000 nor 20,000 pounds), would you have left the money in the name of your friendship ? Because I won’t and neither of the people that I have asked would…

[manosd]

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3656664/Barnes-and-Amis-the-big-row.html

Is it funny how BARNES has been put forward against K. AMIS? This is an indication how much money matter to people and could bring them closer together( Barnes/Kavanagh).Of course it is also an indication of how easily BARNES could be manipulated and led to humiliation,his humiliation once more,SINCE HE HAS ACTED AS ONE OF HER ASSISTANTS FOR ALL HIS LIFE(AND PET DOG AND MANY OTHERS....)
PAT KAVANAGH was the AMIS AGENT for more than 25 years… From this relationship between the AMIS and the KAVANAGHS/ BARNES who were the people that benefited most (earned both money and new connections)?Who introduced BARNES to LARKIN ? How many people were introduced to KAVANAGH through K. AMIS? Was KAVANAGH’S behavior PROFESSIONAL?
And since BARNES so easily judges K.AMIS and sends M.AMIS to FUCK OFF, he should find the strength to be honest about all the people in his life.... Otherwise, he should let the facts speak for themselves…And at the end of the day Martin AMIS fucked with his wife and produced children. WHAT ABOUT SOME OTHER RESPECTABLE LITERARY MEN Do they see the vanity and do they feel any remorse about how they behaved in the past???
If Julian BARNES had the guts to write about sisters who fucked with men who first became best friends and then turned into the worst enemies, about orgies in hotel rooms and faithful cuckolded husbands, about life playing games and turning the powerful into powerless and the vain into wise( Martin Amis ,you have a long way to go yet), his story would have been so much interesting, readable, fun, spicy, and most of all real, truthful and would have earned him even more money to spend for opera, expensive wine and flowers for phenomenal artists… THE TITLE OF THE BOOK?
‘Real Levels OF ENGLISH Literature LIFE’

[rachel]

My husband died suddenly a year ago of a brain hemorrhage. I was 51, he 57. Devastated. No chance to say goodbye. Nothing.

I've read over 25 books about grief since Glenn died and this book is the first one that seemed to "really get it"...! I felt as if I were reading my own thoughts.

[morgan le fay]

“ Writers believe in the patterns their words make, which they hope and trust add up to ideas, to stones, to truths.”


Barnes uses the same ‘pattern’ that ties his 3 stories: “You put together two things that have not been put together before”…. and either

1) “ the world is changed”, or

2) “ sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t….”

But finally 3) “… when it works, and something new is made, and the world is changed, there is a point, sooner or later, for this reason or that, that one of them is taken away, and what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.”

I need to explain myself. I have not read the whole book,but could things be as bad as being described on the 3rd part? His sorrow seems to be real and I like his honesty, but isn’t Barnes who said in his interview to MARK LAWSON in 2013,that he shuns sentimentality?
(mentionning an Amis poem?)
So what’s his purpose? To make us understand his situation? That he needs guidance to find his seat in the Opera House? I found that shocking!!! To make us feel pity for him? I don’t think that Pat would have liked the others to feel pity for her,contrary with Barnes who likes expressing ‘self-pity’… Pat was 68 when she died; she had lived an exciting and comfortable life with an uxorious husband who had forgiven her mistakes…. Barnes lost Pat, “ the heart of his life,the life of his heart”. But wasn’t Pat in the late 80s who broke his heart by leaving him for another woman??? I guess that Barnes is one of those who believe that LOVE is HARD to FIND, HARD to KEEP and HARD to FORGET!! So what exactly is he now?  A Heartless Man without a Life? Or a Lifeless Man without a Heart? Well, he is BOTH!!!!


“There are two essential kinds of loneliness: that of not having found someone to love, and that of having been deprived of the one you did love….” Barnes started his literary career with ‘Metroland’, a semi- autobiographical novel and closes this circle with ‘Levels of Life’,a hybrid ,partly essay, partly memoir. So what next? More grief, sorrow, remorse, loneliness, sadness, memory or lack of memory?
There is a German word, Sehnsucht, which has no English equivalent; it means ‘the longing for something’…. Barnes could copy Flaubert and turn his house, their house, into a museum, looking at her personal objects or even wearing her clothes, rereading her last words or even talking to her pictures…Basically he could match his loneliness with her lessness. But has ever Barnes consider the possibility to rewrite history? And does history repeat itself?

That’s the point!! Because I don’t know whether Barnes likes the ‘pattern’ he experienced for 30 years, that old story, called ‘history’ and whether he wants to add some new chapters to his ‘History of the World in 30 chapters’?!...

What I do know is that Nature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another’s death....



PS: I don’t know how he concludes the book,what he hopes or how he sees the future ,if there is any. I stopped at the ‘opera’ point, where Barnes discovers in himself a sudden love of opera. Now, in the rawness of grief, he sees how “opera cuts to the chase – as death does”. As a great fan of MARIA CALLAS I have some of her rare live recordings from Covent Garden ,La Scala and as Elena in Verdi’s ‘I Vespri Siciliani’ (Firenze,1951),but I still think that ‘ opera cuts to my nerves-like a bunch of screaming children do’.....