From the Man Booker Prize-winning author ofThe Sense of an Endingand one of Britain’s greatest writers: a brilliant collection of essays on the books and authors that have meant the most to him throughout his illustrious career.
In these seventeen essays (plus a short story and a special preface, “A Life with Books”), Julian Barnes examines the British, French and American writers who have shaped his writing, as well as the cross-currents and overlappings of their different cultures. From the deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald to the directness of Hemingway, from Kipling’s view of France to the French view of Kipling, from the many translations ofMadame Bovaryto the fabulations of Ford Madox Ford, from the National Treasure status of George Orwell to the despair of Michel Houellebecq, Julian Barnes considers what fiction is, and what it can do. As he writes, “Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.”Preface
The Deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald The ‘Unpoetical’ Clough George Orwell and the Fucking Elephant Ford’s The Good Soldier Ford and Provence Ford’s Anglican Saint Kipling’s France France’s Kipling The Wisdom of Chamfort The Man Who Saved Old France The Profile of Félix Fénéon Michel Houellebecq and the Sin of Despair Translating Madame Bovary Wharton’s The Reef Homage to Hemingway: a Short Story Lorrie Moore Takes Wing Remembering Updike, Remembering Rabbit Regulating Sorrow
Acknowledgements Index A reasoned defense of great writers and great literature. . . . The criticism of a writer like Barnes deserves to be celebrated for its prose at the same time as its intelligence—criticism that functions as its own literary property. —Sanl+
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