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Title: A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes ISBN: 0-679-73137-7 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 27 November, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.41 (41 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: History as Novel
Comment: There are ten wonderful and oddly connected stories in this book, each told in a different voice and set in a different milieu. Each stands on its own as a provocative work, each with virtuoso narrative flow. Yet, as I read this book, I had the feeling that the stories, great as they are, don't really form a connected work. Then, in his chapter "Parenthesis", Barnes explains why. "The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap; strange links, impertinent connections. ...And while we fret and writhe... we make up a story to cover the facts we don't know or can't accept; we keep a few true facts and spin a new story round them. Our panic and our pain are only eased by soothing fabulation; we call it history."
This idea about history is certainly true. But it does create a book, fine though it is, that doesn't build narrative power from chapter to chapter. This would be a serious flaw in a lesser writer. But with Barnes, my verdict is highly recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Fictional Non-Fiction Novelty
Comment: The novelty inherent in Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters is'in part'that it is not really a 'novel.' It is more of a comically tragic reminiscence of Joyce's Dubliners than your standard long-prose work, complete with protagonist, antagonist, and the typical one-plot, one setting structure. Its 10 ½ stories bluntly give us a non-revisionist's history of the world by traveling from a tale of 'unclean' woodworm stowaways upon Noah's Ark to Barnes' conception of Heaven. It is realist and fantastic at once, telling how it was, is, and is to be with such honesty, depth, and sensitivity that its classification should be a sort of jocular Capotesque non-fiction novel.
A History of the World's most curious feature is its division. Ten strikingly different stories and one half-chapter side-note are seem as if they are randomly slapped together until the reader starts to make the connections. The woodworms stowed away on the Ark are in a subsequent chapter tried for the destruction of church property and blasphemous offence against God when their progeny take residence in and consume the Catholic cathedral of Mamirolle. The trial sings with critique of man's distortion of the religious impulse and social commentary. The Ark comes up in nearly every chapter, establishing a sort of nautical theme tied together with the wreck of the Medusa, a 17th century French naval frigate and the theories of the modern human's ascent from the sea from an amphibious state. Barnes also maintains a religious theme throughout the work, adding a discussion of Jonah in the whale, a timely leap into Middle Eastern religion turned politics, and a philosophical treatise on the meaning and purpose of heaven. All of this is weaved together to form a mystical collage of human nature and history.
As one might surmise from the title, the ½ chapter is of great importance to the unity of the narrative. Entitled 'Parenthesis' these 19 pages of side note seem to be a larger version of the 'aside' in which the author speaks directly to the reader. Barnes includes this personal commentary to reveal the main theme of the work: an exploration of love and its value for the human species. Love is the only tool we have to beat down the history of the world and make life plausible, give it some meaning.
History isn't what happened. History is just what historians tell us. There was a pattern, a plan, a movement, expansion, the march of democracy; it is a tapestry, a flow of events, a complex narrative, connected, explicable. One good story leads to another'.And we the readers of history, we scan the pattern for hopeful conclusions, for the way ahead. And we cling to history as a series of salon pictures, conversation pieces whose participants we can easily reimagine back into life, when all the time it's more like a multi-media collage, with paint applied by decorator's roller rather than camel-hair brush (240).
Because of the confusion of sentient existence, 'Our random mutation [love] is essential because it is unnecessary.' (238) We don't NEED it, that's why it means something and how it empowers us.
Simply stated, Barnes' novel (alright, I admit, it is a novel'however NOVEL) wants us to be more conscious of what a blessing it is to be a sentient, thoughtful beings capable of reading novels. It wants us to not get tied up in 'historical facts' and to realize that we can get more out of a fictional account of history which admits to this condition than from revisionist histories around the world that disguise themselves in FACT. Or maybe, it just wants us to read it and enjoy it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Challenging, funny, and worth every minute...
Comment: I am an avid reader with no devotion to any particular genre or author. I read "History" on a recommendation from a friend whose taste I trusted, and I was so pleased that I've read it twice over again in a matter of 3 weeks (more or less - I read certain chapters multiple times, others only once). Even if you have no shortage of self-awareness and literary competence, this book will make you feel noticeably improved in those areas. I couldn't be happier that this book found its way to me.
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Title: Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes ISBN: 0679731369 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 27 November, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: England, England by Julian Barnes ISBN: 0375705503 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 11 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Time's Arrow by Martin Amis ISBN: 0679735720 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes ISBN: 0679736093 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 27 October, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Talking It Over by Julian Barnes ISBN: 0679736875 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 27 October, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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