Review: 'Levels of LIfe' by Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes' new book, 'Levels of Life' is part memoir, part essay. It examines the lives of several nineteenth century hot-air balloonists and juxtaposes their stories with the grief he experienced (and is still experiencing) following his wife's death in 2008.

Barnes has reached a stage of maturity as a writer where he knows the process of writing well enough to examine it and control it and here he knowingly offers us stories of hot air balloon expeditions as metaphors. Perhaps he decided this would be the best way to explain the grief he felt when his wife died: to have such strong imagery set up to refer to. Or perhaps it was simply the storyteller in him almost listlessly telling compelling stories. Stories always inform life; they cannot help it. These are the eponymous 'levels of life'. We tell stories and then we step back and examine them at another level. This is how we syphon meaning out of life, by comparison, by analogy and patterns.

Whilst it is clear how the story of balloonists crashing to the ground, their innards bursting out upon impact, is a metaphor for how it feels to lose a loved one, it is less clear how the story of the English aeronaut Fred Burnaby's rejected marriage proposal by promiscuous actress Sarah Bernhardt, works as a metaphor. How does this relate to Julian Barnes' story? Does Burnaby's rejection involve a similar kind of grief? Is it an example of people who were not meant to be together, a kind of anti-metaphor? Sarah Bernhardt would not have grieved over Burnaby, theirs was not real love? Maybe there doesn't have to be a clear correlation. 

The last section of the book which describes the grief Barnes felt is  sad, honest and devastating. He contemplates suicide: his preferred method, a japanese carving knife in a warm bath accompanied by a glass of wine; and the self-consciousness of grief: does my grief reflect my love? Am I grieving enough? Compared to other people? How do I respond to other people when they ask me if I'm alright? One of the strongest messages of the book is that other people can have a huge impact on the recovery process. He wants them to talk about her with him, to help him remember her, to tell him new things about her. Writing this book is another important part of the process. How relieving and cathartic it must have been to write it, to get it all out in the open.

The book is written with clarity and wisdom, like all the words are patiently chosen and then slowly and thoughtfully annunciated. It's  concise and pristinely structured in three short sections and makes you realise it takes a truly great writer to write such perfect short books. 

Below is a scan of my copy signed by the author. More are available at City Books, Brighton.

Review: 'This is Life' by Dan Rhodes

Dan Rhodes books make me happy. They are full of quirky people falling in love with other quirky people in unlikely, serendipitous circumstances. There's a gentleness and a direct soft humour to his stories, usually with a hint of melancholy. I find I have to make certain allowances if I'm to enjoy them; the writing style is simple and mundane, and some people might find the world of Dan Rhodes a little saccharine and sentimental and unlikely, but by the end of his books, I always feel warmly satisfied. 

I read 'This is LIfe', expecting a light jaunty read and that's what I got. The main character is Aurélie, an art student studying in Paris. For an art project she throws a stone in the air in a busy street and it lands on a baby in a pram. The mother of this baby is furious and in a moment of strange revenge, insists that Aurélie must look after the baby for a week. The book covers the duration of this week, in which Aurélie comes across various interesting people including the Akiyamas, a Japanese couple on holiday being shown around Paris by Aurélie's best friend, Sylvie, and a world-famous performance artist, known as 'Le Machine'. Le Machine is in Paris performing a show called 'Life' in which he lives naked on a stage for 12 weeks and displays everything his body produces during that time in glass jars.

The portrayal of the pretentious artist seems to begin as a parody but ends as something with real meaning. Dan Rhodes wants you to see the beauty in life. This book is an elaborate construction with that design in mind; all the frivolous characters and their unlikely adventures are really impelled forward purely by this drive to exhibit a manifestation of the true meaning of life. This is, after all, what novels do best, because you can show life in all its slow-motion details, then leave the reader at the end with an appreciation of the whole, all those words, all those details, closed and concluded: a rounded message for what it's worth, a facsimile of death.

(More on this book at Pixelled Wheels Clunk Up Hills.)

Review: 'The Luzhin Defense' by Vladimir Nabokov

Reading a Nabokov novel is like trying to solve a puzzle. Reading any novel is like trying to solve a puzzle to a certain extent: one must try to untangle the different layers of meaning, some unintentional, some so intentional they examine themselves, some so seemingly meaningless they become profound. Who is this omniscient narrator? How much of this is autobiographical? What's the message here? In a Nabokov novel, you assume the narrator to be omniscient, because that's what you're used to, but then you realise that this narrator is fallible and misunderstands the story he/she is trying tell, has ignored a detail that will become significant later on.

I must admit at this point that 'The Luzhin Defense' (spelling is Americanised as such on my copy) is only the third Nabokov novel I have read, the other two being 'Lolita' and 'Pale Fire', and I base all the above generalisations on these books. Perhaps, this being an earlier work, I thought, there might not be this kind of cryptic playfulness, and though there certainly isn't the same kind of fallible active narrator, there is still the hint of a wry smile to the storytelling, a hidden logic that only becomes clear at the end.

The book is about chess. A chess prodigy, Luzhin, has a nervous breakdown brought on by the mental strain of playing a tournament against his rival, the Italian, Tureti. His wife attempts to nurse him back to health by removing every trace of the game from his life, but it's an impossible task. 

Chess is ripe for metaphor. Many a sport has been described as resembling a game of chess at one time or another. Chess is the paradigm of abstract game strategy and logical thinking. Life is like chess, in its goal-directedness, its strict rules, its patterns, its limitations, its frustrating logical deadends. And this is what Nabokov is suggesting; or rather this is what Luzhin comes to believe in the story. The feeling that life is like chess overwhelms him. He sees chess in everything, in the interplay of shadows on the parlour floor, in the diagonal between two opposing urns on pedestals, in a telegraph pole a knight's move away from a lime tree. He cannot tell metaphor from reality anymore. 

Our lives are quests for meaning, attempts to work out the answers to the eternal questions. What would happen if we began to see those quests as games, similar to chess? What happens when we know there's no way we can win?

Review: 'Mortality' by Christopher Hitchens

The internet is a den of compulsion. One of my current online compulsions is watching videos of the late Christopher Hitchens on YouTube. These usually involve him arguing incredibly articulately and passionately about various political and philosophical issues, most commonly atheism. I never tire of his oratorical flair and fierce intelligence, and though he may come across as smug and arrogant, he clearly wanted to change the world for the better.

In December 2011, Hitchens died of oesophageal cancer. Mortality is a collection of his final writings. It's a 'slim volume' and comprises thoughts about his illness and impending death that were intended to become a longer book on the subject. In the writing he is as staunchly rational and fearless as ever. There are no moments of desperation and certainly no suggestions of doubt as to his firm atheism, indeed this non-belief only becomes more firmly entrenched as he nears his end. He describes the letters and emails he receives from religious people, attempting to persuade him to repent; there was even a website where users could place bets on whether or not he would repent his atheism before the end. The possibility of a death-bed repentance for Hitchens only underlines that a god who would accept this kind of cowardly bet-hedging is 'cynical' and unworthy of his belief.

He describes his illness in great detail: the various treatments he underwent, some of them experimental and the resulting physical torments like the loss of his voice, which some religious fanatics claimed was  taken away as a punishment by God, because it was Hitchen's principle instrument  of sin. He remained a public figure until the end and continued to give book tours and take part in debates, and as with every issue he engaged with, Hitchens deals with the horrors of his circumstances by writing about them and analysing them, exploring them, exploring the idea of exploring them, an enquiring mind right 'til the end.

It's a difficult book to read and the most heartbreaking part of the book is the afterword by Carol Blue, his wife. In it, we see Hitchens from a different perspective. We see him without that filter of lucidity and self-preserving intelligence. We see moments of extreme tenderness between husband and wife. We see the real impact of the loss in intimate personal terms. As a writer, Hitchens was academic and polemical, and he was very protective over his private family life, which is what makes the insights of his wife's afterword so moving.

Though these final writings are unfinished and short, they are invaluable as an account of a passionate learned man coming to terms with the end of his life. One wonders how much fear and emotion Hitchens is hiding behind the stoicism of his writing. There are certainly no cries of despair as he looks into the void, not in the writing. However, I don't think this is a case of wearing a public mask and hiding his true feelings, I think he was a man who firmly believed in reason and this reason guided him through his final days. The book is an inspiring account of how to die in relative contentment in a godless world.