“Memory is identity, I have believed this since — oh, since I can remember. You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death. I once spent many years failing to save a friend from a long alcoholic decline. I watched her, from close at hand, lose her short-term memory, and then her long-term, and with them most of everything in between. It was a terrifying example of what Lawrence Durrell in a poem called ‘the slow disgracing of the mind’: the mind’s fall from grace. And with that fall — the loss of specific and general memories being patched over by absurd feats of fabulation, as the mind reassured itself and her but no one else — there was a comparable fall for those who knew and loved her. We were trying to hold on to our memories of her — and thus, quite simply, to her — telling ourselves that ‘she’ was still there, clouded over but occasionally visible in sudden moments of truth and clarity. Protestingly, I would repeat, in an attempt to convince myself as much as those I was addressing, ‘She’s just the same underneath.’ Later I realized that I had always been fooling myself, and the ‘underneath’ was being — had been — destroyed at the same rate as the visible surface. She had gone, was off in a world that convinced only herself — except that, from her panic, it was clear that such conviction was only occasional. Identity is memory, I told myself; memory is identity.”
__________
From Nothing to Be Frightened Of
In looking back over the past twelve months, I’m certain that this is, for me, the book of 2012. I’ve read it several times since January, and every return to the text has — like a massive painting or multi-layered movie — brought forth something previously unseen. With each revisit to its pages, you learn something else and feel something new in Nothing to Be Frightened Of. As in the excerpt above, Barnes crafts sentences of the utmost elegance, which form paragraphs brimming with power and poignancy. But the book isn’t all serious. “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him” is the opening sentence of the text, signaling a voice which is as intense as it is ironic, as playful as it is pokerfaced. In his New York Times review of Nothing to Be Frightened Of, Garrison Keillor called it, “a deep seismic tremor of a book,” and that’s what it is: a volume that thunders across your mind, leaving lingering ideas and a lasting impression for days after you put it down.
Read other excerpts from Barnes’s book here:
Because the Universe is Happening to You
Mere Human Love
Nothing to Be Frightened Of
Catherine McCallum said:
Thank you for this post – I now have the book on my kindle. I skipped it at the time it was published and am enjoying it even more than The Sense of an Ending.
jrbenjamin said:
Good to hear. Yeah, I like it more than The Sense of an Ending — though I liked both books a lot. It’s depressing at points, but balanced by Barnes’s witty and humorous take on the weighty issues surrounding death and physical decay.
Thanks for the comment and for following the blog… let me know what you think of Nothing when you finish it.
Jessica said:
I clicked “like” above but what I would rather have had available to click on was “raises haunting and disturbing spectres of several people in my life who have been–or are becoming–lost in this way, through dementia.” My father handled the TOTAL loss of his memory (long-term and short-term) with courageous humor. I wrote a novel about it, New Every Morning. . . My father-in-law, on the other hand, a self-made multi-millionaire, a man who controlled everything in his life until he lost his memory, knew he was losing something and thought it was his money. He would try to pick up and eat the pictures of hamburgers on the menu at Denny’s Restaurant and made sweetly meaningless remarks like, “Nothing tastes as good as a sunset.” Now my brother Tim is being diminished intellectually in the same way. In his prime he told us grandly he had so many brain cells he could afford to lose a few. Now he’s struggling to retain every one he can.
There is a shriveling of the body and a closing down of the brain as some of us age but I don’t think it touches the soul. Once released, I think the soul will be free to soar, expand fully and flourish in ways we can’t possibly imagine now.
jrbenjamin said:
That’s a very interesting take on the paragraph, and a very striking and sad experience with memory and loss. I guess all we can hope for is to maintain some dignity in the face of decay of that sort, and to have children, like you, who will see us through such traumas.
Thanks for the heartfelt comment and for following the blog…
drgeraldstein said:
I have read only two of this author’s books: this one and “The Sense of an Ending.” The latter work of fiction is both haunting and short. I reread it almost immediately and wrote my own blog post about it: http://drgeraldstein.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/beware-of-therapy-past-mid-life-reflections-on-reading-the-sense-of-an-ending/
jrbenjamin said:
Thanks for the words, and your very nicely-written post. I also read Sense of an Ending and really liked it — it sort of fictionalizes some of the anxieties and ideas found in Nothing to Be Frightened Of.
nancytinarirunswrites said:
I just read your blog post on “The Sense of an Ending” because I too read it, thought it wonderful, and wrote a post about it on my blog: http://nancytinarirunswrites.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/book-review-the-sense-of-an-ending-with-a-personal-reaction/
Your post as well as this blog’s post on “Nothing to Be Frightened Of” have deepened my appreciation of Julian Barnes even more. I’m eager to read his latest book! Thank you both for your insights.
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