Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.
(The Only Story)
Hello friends!
As a part of curriculum we are studying Contemporary Literature.This blog is about The Only Story by Julian Barnes.After completing each and every unit our teacher gave us a task of thinking Activity.This task is assigned by Prof.Dilip Barad sir Many of you may thought that why Critical thinking is important.Well,critical thinking is at the forefront of learning, as it aids a student reflect and understand their points of views. This skill helps a student figure out how to make sense of the world, based on personal observation and understanding.So let's discuss the various points given by sir about this novel.Click here to visit teacher's blog.
Click on the image to visit my blog on the Group Task.
🟦Brief Introduction of Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes is a one of the greatest contemporary English writers.
Born: 19 January 1946 (age 76) Leicester, England
Pen name: Dan Kavanagh (crime fiction), Edward Pygge
Occupation: Writer
Genre: Novels, short stories, essays, memoirs
Literary movement: Postmodernism
Notable awards:
- Prix Femina 1992
- Commandeur of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres 2004
- Man Booker Prize 2011
- Jerusalem Prize 2021
Spouse: Pat Kavanagh(m. 1979,Died: 2008)
🟦About The Only Story by Julian Barnes
The Only Story is a novel by Julian Barnes. It is his thirteenth novel and was published on 1 February 2018. The novel is about the life story of Paul Roberts, who we first meet as a 19-year-old Sussex University undergraduate returning to his parent's house in the leafy southern suburbs of London (Sutton, in Surrey, is suggested as a model.) The time is the early sixties, and there are a few references to current events. Paul joins the tennis club, which is one of the few opportunities such places offer for socialising. In a random-draw mixed doubles, he is thrown together with Susan MacLeod, a 48-year-old married woman with two daughters older than Paul. Improbably, Paul and Susan become lovers and she eventually leaves her family to set up house with Paul in South London. Having nothing to do but a little housekeeping, Susan soon descends into alcoholism and dementia. Paul departs and embarks on foreign travels, picking up jobs and women at random.
Paul is a quintessentially alienated character. With no interest in either politics or religion, and no particular ambition, he takes life as it comes. As he narrates his life in this book, he freely admits that memory is unreliable and he may not be telling us the truth.
🟦Memory Novel - Structurally as well as thematically
In this novel, the idea of memory is dealt by Julian Barnes very interestingly.Memory prioritises when we retell the story as the story narrated in this novel The Only Story.It is said that
"History is collective memory; memory is personal history"
"Trauma is memory"
When we look at the history of nation, history of society, history of human beings we may think that what is that and perhaps it is the memory of everybody.And that collective memory becomes history.Then what is memory? Memory is our personal history.It is a personal life that is lived in personal spaces.The life that is narrated or not narrated,told to anybody or not just told to self also or a history is only written for self and we do not share that with anybody else So it's is memory that is personal history which is not perhaps shared with anybody but it is only for us.When We are all alone we may going back to history our past and then we may be taking about that as a collectively.We go back into time and we write history that is what the forefathers the people on this earth in this society that time has lived and have done all this kind of things.
In form of literature we find that when there is one person (Paul Roberts) sitting there in his old age and going back into the past of his personal life and telling us the story of his life.That person will go back into memory that is only way that we can tell the story of the self.We will have to revisit our memory to tell others.So what is memory,how do we look at the memory? When anybody is revisiting the memory and trying to get historical evidence from his life and telling us the life story.Is it reliable or not? Can we say that well this is a true story because histories are normally considered as a true stories.Somebody individually tell a story is it reliable or not?.
We blindly do not rely on history.If there is the connection between history and memory it means that we also do not rely on memory.It may be our own personal memory.Through this novel Julian Barnes wants to prove that we have to be very careful of our memories.
While discussing this point in classroom sir has gave some others concerns to understand this novel.
🟦Film - Memento
This film is philosophically more significant.Memento is a 2000 American mystery thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and produced by Suzanne and Jennifer Todd. The film's script was based on a pitch by Nolan's brother Jonathan, who wrote the 2001 story "Memento Mori" from the concept. Guy Pearce stars as Leonard Shelby, a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia, resulting in short-term memory loss and the inability to form new memories. He is searching for the people who attacked him and killed his wife, using an intricate system of Polaroid photographs and tattoos to track information he cannot remember. Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano co-star.(from wikipedia)
Memento is kind of film which seems to unreality because it deals with an idea that somebody has a problem with memory.He is suffering from a kind of a mental disease where he is forgetting everything within 15 or 30 minutes.
🟦 Trauma is memory
Dipesh chakravarty in "Memories of Displacement:The Poetry of Prejudice of Dwelling" refers to this not in context of looking at memory narrative or ethical concern or like Memento or Julian Barnes is looking but his concern is more about post colonial about subaltern studies.Sir ga e example of partition literature.
Example : Partition literature is full of trauma,it is all about memory, what went wrong and Nas a part of a memory of what went wrong. Writers were writing stories on that.So that experience is a very traumatic experience.In that way trauma itself is a memory.
Historical narrative and memory narrative goes in opposite way.Historical narrative is public while memory narrative is very personal.Historical narrative speak about outside trauma while memory narrative speaks about internal trauma of individual.
If we talk about this novel then traumatic experience lived by Susam Macleod.
In the novel, we come across the story of Eric and his love affair. So it is the best example of a memory novel. Paul suddenly talks about him. Eric had a relationship with American women and Eric was ready to leave earthly things but at the moment he realised that he was going the wrong way and he saved himself but Paul was not able to do this.
“Then there was the case of Eric. Of all his friends, Eric had truly been a man of good intentions, and therefore had always ascribed good intentions to others. Hence the lack of rebuke after he’d received a kicking at the fair. In his early thirties, working in a local planning department, and with a decent little house in Perivale, Eric had become involved with a younger American woman. Ashley said she loved him; a love which expressed itself as wanting to be with him all the time and never wanting to meet his friends. And Ashley wouldn’t sleep with him, no, not now anyway, but certainly later. Ashley had her faith, you see, and Eric, having been religious himself in his youth, could understand and appreciate that. Ashley wasn’t a member of an established church, because look at all the harm established churches had caused; Eric could see that too. Ashley said that if he loved her, and agreed with her contempt for worldly possessions, then he would surely join her in such beliefs. And so Eric, temporarily cut off from his friends, put his little house up for sale, planning to give the proceeds to some cockamamie sect in Baltimore, after which the couple would move there and be married by some cockamamie religious theorist, or shaman, or sham, whereupon Eric, in exchange for his Perivale house, would be granted squatter’s rights in perpetuity in his new wife’s body. Fortunately, almost at the last minute, some survival instinct asserted itself, and he had cancelled his instructions to the estate
agent, whereupon Ashley vanished from his life for ever.”............
Another reference is that when Eric was beaten that time Paul was run away and afterward he said that he went to help the police, so all such things describe somehow that Pual is a coward, fails and loses character. He made so many wrong decisions throughout his life and his remorse is never ever accepted.
🟦'The only Story’ as a Postmodern Novel.
Julian Barnes belongs to the generation of British postmodernist writers, and postmodernism is not exclusively a literary phenomenon.Barnes’s The Only Story (2018) is quite different from his previous fictional works as it depicts man's absurdity and experience of life's awful powers, like anguish, estrangement, breakup, alienation, and purposelessness skirting either on agnosticism or sustenance.Barnes, in The Only Story (2018) investigates the person's awareness of being isolated from the entire mechanical assemblage of social rituals and ceremonies. He opens the text by uttering the following words:( Nawaz, 2021)
Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there’s only one that matters, only one finally worth telling, this is mine (Barnes,2018, p. 13).
Barnes believes that fatigue, which includes a state of heightened hesitance, holds the key to opportunity.repeatedly. As Barnes speaks through Paul:
The time, the place, the social milieu? I don't know how significant they are in anecdotes about affection. Maybe in the days of yore, in the works of art, where there are fights among affection and obligation, love and religion, love and family, love and the state (Barnes, 2018, p. 13).
🟦Theme of Love (Passion + Suffering)
One of the reviewer of this novel Ellen Prentiss Campbell observe that
"Remember,as you read this small book , generally and specifically about love, remember that suffering is,after all, the Latin root for passion".
This is similar to what Amitav Ghosh is doing in etymological study in Gun While discussing this theme we referred to the root of the word passion.
The Etymology of Passion:
The word ‘passion’ is one of those words where the modern application appears disconnected from the original meaning. The word itself comes from the Latin root word, patior, which means to suffer. It’s first use in English appeared around 1175 AD. Oddly enough the word is more frequently used in writing than in speech.Many of the modern applications of ‘passion’ no longer convey the idea of suffering at all. It’s present use is one describing an intense desire, which is often sexual in nature. (Murrah, “The Etymology of Passion.”)
So we can say that love is the passion but it cannot be isolated without suffering.This is how philosophically Barnes wants to explore the idea of love.In the Only Story the passion turn into suffering.The story of youth of 19 years Paul's passionate attraction towards Susan MacLeod 48 years old married woman of two daughters.This is nothing but a story of passion turning into suffering.
"Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question" (Barnes, 2018, p. 3)
But then we find counter argument by the speaker…
"You may point out – correctly – that it isn’t a real question. Because we don’t have the choice. If we had the choice, then there would be a question. But we don’t, so there isn’t. Who can control how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn’t love. I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love."
Paul is giving his own defence that it was his mistake to fall in love with a middle aged woman.But can we think of all these things when we are in love?well we can't because if we think then we are not in love.That is how he was carried towards suffering, drifted like a wooden log.
“Most of what I’d read, or been taught, about love,didn’t seem to apply, from playground rumour to high-minded literary speculation. ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart/’Tis woman’s whole existence.’ How wrong – how gender-biassed, as we might now say– was that?
At the early stage of his life Paul thought that love is blissful.But as the end of the novel he himself find it full of pain suffering.
Quotes related to the theme of love
“First love fixes a life for ever: this much I have discovered over the years. It may not outrank subsequent loves, but they will always be affected by its existence.”(P-71)
“Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story.”(P-206)
“In love, everything is both true and false; it's the one subject on which it's impossible to say anything absurd.”(P-169)
“Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.”
"And who does not want their love authenticated?”
(P-65)
🟦Critique of Crosswords
In this Novel two people are playing crosswords, one is mr. Gordon Macleaod and another is Joan.In ‘The Only Story’ Julian Barnes has captures the nuances of social life lived in the 20th century England. The crosswords was something so significant aspect of this traditional British activity that several characters of this novel are found meaningfully engaged with it.
It is said that Crossword puzzles have several benefits like:
- They can strengthen social bonds. Completing a crossword puzzle on your own is impressive, but you should never feel bad if you need to ask for help. ...
- They improve your vocabulary. ...
- They increase your knowledge base. ...
- They can relieve stress. ...
- They boost your mood.
However, the postmodernist novelist Julian Barnes is not interested in this traditional meaning involved in crosswords.
See, how Paul Roberts, the narrator of the story, explains the hidden aspects of this British pass-time activity:
“Everyone in the Village, every grown-up – or rather, every middle-aged person – seemed to do crosswords: my parents, their friends, Joan, Gordon Macleod. Everyone apart from Susan. They did either The Times or the Telegraph; though Joan had those books of hers to fall back on while waiting for the next newspaper.
I regarded this traditional British activity with some snootiness.
I was keen in those days to find hidden motives – preferably involving hypocrisy – behind the obvious ones.
Joan’s habit of ‘cheating at crossword':
Paul Roberts has observed during visits to her home that she cheats while doing crossword puzzles. He is quite surprised at this habit of hers. Once he directly asks it to her. Here is her reply:
“‘Why do you cheat at crosswords?’
Joan laughed loudly.
‘You cheeky bugger. I suppose Susan told you. Well, it’s a fair question, and one I can answer.’ She took another pull of her gin. ‘You see – I hope you never get there yourself – but some of us get to the point in life where we realize that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters. And one of the few side-benefits of that is you know you’re not going to go to hell for filling in the wrong answers in the crossword. Because you’ve been to hell and back already and you know all too well what it’s like.’
‘But the answers are in the back of the book.’
‘Ah, but you see, to me that would be cheating.’”
Apart from Joan, it is Gordon Macleod who is found doing crosswords in the novel. On two occasions, he is found solving the crosswords with Paul Roberts. The answers to the puzzle are ‘Taunton’ – a name of a town – meaning continue mocking at – and - ‘TREFOIL, REF – arbiter – in the middle of TOIL – work.’ If we read these words in context of the relations between Paul and Gordon we may find it symbolically significant. Taunton – making mockery of something/somebody and Trefoil – a popular warning symbol signifies triangular relation among Paul – Susan – Gordon. Both these words in the crossword puzzle seems to signify a taunt on Paul’s middling in between Susan and Gondon’s not-so-happy married life.
To conclude, we can say that the reference to ‘Crossword’ is spread across the novel. It is referred critically as a British time-pass activity. It also makes the snootiest critique of this habit. Apart from these socio-cultural references, the crossword puzzle has symbolic significance to study the character of Joan as a counterfoil to Susan. It is also useful to study the strained triangular relationship between Paul Roberts, Susan and Gordon Macleod.(from material)
👉While studying Julian Barnes's The Only Story sir has discussed about the wordle game.If you are on Twitter you would have definitely seen people sharing posts from Wordle, a set with its unique yellow, green, and grey boxes. These posts are accompanied by two numbers. The first indicates the game number and the second is the number of attempts out of six that the player needed to win.
Wordle has become so popular on Twitter that some of the microblogging platform’s users have started muting the word. For those who haven’t figured it out by now, Wordle is a daily word game that can be played online. It’s like a password without clues and can be played only once a day. Every day there is a new word to guess and players get six chances to go at it.
🟦Paul - the unreliable narrator
“You understand, I hope, that I’m telling you everything as I remember it? I never kept a diary, and most of the participants in my story – my story! my life! – are either dead or far dispersed. So I’m not necessarily putting it down in the order that it happened. I think there’s a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. “
Paul is the unreliable narrator of this novel.Beacuse whatever he is telling to readers is based on his personal memory.hHe says that he never kept a diary.So how can we rely on one's own memory.It is very problematic.Paul is not sure about his life experiences. He himself is counter arguing the things in this novel.
🟦Susan - madwoman in the attic
The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination is a 1979 book by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in which they examine Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. Gilbert and Gubar draw their title from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, in which Rochester's wife ( Bertha Mason) is kept secretly locked in an attic apartment by her husband. In their book, Gilbert and Gubar discuss the angel/monster trope in novels written by women, covering the works of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and the Brontës. They claim that 19th-century female writers carried a lot of rage and frustration about the misogynistic world they lived in and the predominantly male literary tradition they tried to enter, and that this gender-specific frustration influenced these writers’ creative output. According to Gilbert and Gubar, their rage was often shown through the figure of the mad woman. They conclude by urging female writers to break out of this patriarchal dichotomy and not to let themselves be limited by its impositions.
The title of the book is derived from Jane Eyre‘s Bertha Mason, who is locked away by her husband Mr Rochester in the attic of Thornfield Hall. She is an ominous character, full of uncontrollable passion, violence, sensuality, and madness, almost bestial in her behaviour.
We can compare the character of Bertha and Susan Macleod. Bertha was suffered by his husband and here Susan is suffering from some kind of this thing. She becomes an alcoholic. She speaks lies to Paul. Somewhere she is stuck with responsibility. She was beaten by his own husband. She had extramarital affair with Paul, she somewhere wants love, some kind of warmness but she was constantly become a victim of hatred, sexual pleasure and was beaten so many times. Susan also become a victim of child abuse when she went to his uncle Hemph’s house. When finally she went with Paul there she feel lonely and that time she become alcoholic like anything. In the end, Paul also abandons her and her daughter Clara taking care of her. Susan’s character is fascinating because there is another character who counterpointed Susan's character.
🟦Joan - one who understood existential enigma
Through Paul's narrative we come to know about the character of Joan.Susan is telling story to Paul.Joan is sister of Gerald.After death of Gerald Joan suffered a lot becau in her family Gerald was very near to Joan that also has does kind of damage to Joan.Joan can save herself from the damage.We may question that was it there nothing wrong happened with Joan as Susan is suffering from her life.Joan was living with yeppers/dog first and the she has another dog called Sibyl.Sybil is a mythical character (an old lady in a prison or jar).In the novel we find the description of Joan's character:
She was a large woman in a pastel-blue trouser suit; she had tight curls, brown lipstick, and was approximately powdered. She led us into the sitting room and collapsed into an armchair with a footstool in front of it. Joan was probably about five years older than Susan, but struck me as a generation ahead. On one arm of her chair was a face-down book of crosswords, on the other a brass ashtray held in place by weights concealed in a leather strap. The ashtray looked precariously full to me. No sooner had Joan sat down than she was up again.
Joan is the tennis player and partner with Paul.Joan has many affairs with the rich man.When Gerald was died Joan was devastated towards life.And when one devastated from life they don't go for human beings but rather find the pet animals.Joann Was doing the same in this novel.Sibyl as her ultimate company.
‘Why do you cheat at crosswords?’ Joan laughed loudly. ‘You cheeky bugger. I suppose Susan told you. Well, it’s a fair question, and one I can answer.’ She took another pull of her gin. ‘You see – I hope you never get there yourself – but some of us get to the point in life where we realize that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters. And one of the few side-benefits of that is you know you’re not going to go to hell for filling in the wrong answers in the crossword. Because you’ve been to hell and back already and you know all too well what it’s like.’
🟦Whom do you think is responsible for the tragedy in the story? Explain with reasons.
This tragedy happed because of Paul. He has the nature to escape from an uncomfortable and tough situation. The ship of his relationship was broken because of his escape, his childisness. When his relationship was broken than he started to blame others.Beacuse when the love story begins at that time Paul is of 19 years old while Susan is 48 years old. here Paul stated blaming Gordon for domestic violence so here Paul blaming that if Gordon had not acted badly with Susan this tragedy might not happen.
🟦References
- Barnes, Julian. The Only Story. Penguin Random House UK. 2018. Book. 24 January 2022.
- Gilbert, Sandra M. The Madwoman in the Attic : the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
- http://newenglishliterature.blogspot.com/2012/02/julian-barnes.html
- Julian Barnes: Official Website, http://julianbarnes.com/
- Nawaz, Arshad, et al. “Postmodern Absurdist Critique of Julian Barnes’s The Only Story.” Global Language Review, 2021.
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