characters introduced a decade ago in Talking It Over — to which this novel has an eerie, freestanding relation. Which is precisely what Stuart felt about his wife Gillian, until his witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. Fabulously engaging and profoundly unsettling.
characters introduced a decade ago in Talking It Over — to which this novel has an eerie, freestanding relation. Which is precisely what Stuart felt about his wife Gillian, until his witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. Fabulously engaging and profoundly unsettling.
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Overview
characters introduced a decade ago in Talking It Over — to which this novel has an eerie, freestanding relation. Which is precisely what Stuart felt about his wife Gillian, until his witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. Fabulously engaging and profoundly unsettling.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780375725883 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/11/2002 |
| Series: | Vintage International Series |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 426,405 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.48(d) |
About the Author
JULIAN BARNES is the author of over twenty books, for which he received the Man Booker Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the David Cohen Prize for Literature and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in France, the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina, and in 2004 he was named Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture; and in Austria, the State Prize for European Literature. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in London.
Hometown:
London, EnglandDate of Birth:
January 19, 1946Place of Birth:
Leicester, EnglandEducation:
Degree in modern languages from Magdalen College, Oxford, 1968Read an Excerpt
i remember you
Stuart Hello!
We’ve met before. Stuart. Stuart Hughes.
Yes, I am sure. Positive. About ten years ago.
It’s all right—it happens. You don’t have to pretend. But the point is, I
remember you. I remember you. I’d hardly forget, would I? A bit over ten
years, now I come to think of it.
Well, I’ve changed. Sure. This is all grey for a start. Can’t even call it
pepper-and-salt any more, can I?
Oh, and by the way, you’ve changed too. You probably think you’re pretty
much the same as you were back then. Believe me, you aren’t.
Oliver What’s that companionable warble from the neighbouring wankpit,
that snuffle and stamp from the padded loose-box? Could it be my dear, my
old—old as in the sense of former—friend Stuart?
‘I remember you.’ How very Stuart. He is so old-, so former-fashioned that
he likes naff songs which actually predate him. I mean, it’s one thing to
be hung up on cheap music synchronous with the primal engorgement of your
own libidinous organs, be it Randy Newman or Luigi Nono. But to be hung up
on the sun-lounger singalongeries of a previous generation—that’s so very,
so touchingly Stuart, don’t you find?
Lose that puzzled expression. Frank Ifield. ‘I Remember You.’ Or rather, I
remember yoo-oo, / You’re the one that made my dreams come troo-oo. Yes?
1962. The Australian yodeller in the sheepskin car-coat? Indeed.
Indeedy-doo-oo. And what a sociological paradox he must have represented.
No disrespect to ourbronzed and Bondi’d cousins, of course. In the
world’s fawning obeisance before every cultural sub-grouping, let it not
be said that I have anything against an Australian yodeller per se. You
might be one yourself. If I prod you, do ye not yodel? In which case, I
would give you honest eye-contact and an undiscriminatory handshake. I
would welcome you into the brotherhood of man. Along with the Swiss
cricketer.
And if—by some happy whim—you actually are a Swiss cricketer, an
off-spinner from the Bernese Oberland, then let me just say, simply: 1962
was the very year of the Beatles’ first revolution at forty-five turns per
minute, and Stuart sings Frank Ifield. I rest my case.
I’m Oliver, by the way. Yes, I know you know. I could tell you remembered
me.
Gillian Gillian. You may or may not remember me. Is there some problem?
What you have to understand is that Stuart wants you to like him, needs
you to like him, whereas Oliver has a certain difficulty imagining that
you won’t. That’s a sceptical look you’re giving me. But the truth is,
over the years I’ve watched people take against Oliver and fall under his
spell almost at the same time. Of course, there’ve been exceptions. Still,
be warned.
And me? Well, I’d prefer you to like me rather than the reverse, but
that’s normal, isn’t it? Depending on who you are, of course.
Stuart I wasn’t actually referring to the song at all.
Gillian Look, I actually haven’t the time. Sophie’s got music today. But
I’ve always thought of Stuart and Oliver as opposite poles of something .
. . of growing up, perhaps. Stuart believed that growing up was about
fitting in, about pleasing people, becoming a member of society. Oliver
didn’t have that problem, he always had more self-confidence. What’s that
word for plants which move in relation to the sun? Helio something. That’s
what Stuart was like. Whereas Oliver—
Oliver —was le roi soleil, right? The nicest spousal compliment I’ve had
in some time. I’ve been called some things in this sublunary smidgeon
which goes by the name of life, but King Sol is a new one. Phoebus.
Phoe-Phi-Pho-Phumbus—
Gillian —tropic. Heliotropic, that’s the word.
Oliver Have you noticed this change in Gillian? The way she puts people
into categories? It’s probably her French blood. She’s half French—you
remember that? ‘Half French on her mother’s side’: that ought to mean
quarter French, logically, don’t you think? Yet what, as all the great
moralists and philosophers have noted, has logic got to do with life?
Now, had Stuart been half French, in 1962 he would have been whistling
Johnny Hallyday’s Gallic version of ‘Let’s Twist Again.’ That’s a thought,
isn’t it? A pungent pensée. And here’s another: Hallyday was half Belgian.
On his father’s side.
Stuart In 1962 I was four years old. Just for the record.
Gillian Actually, I don’t think I do put people into categories. It’s
just that if there are two people in the world I understand, they’re
Stuart and Oliver. After all, I have been married to both of them.
Stuart Logic. Did someone use the word? I’ll give you logic. You go away,
and people think you’ve stayed the same. That’s the worst piece of logic
I’ve come across in years.
Oliver Misprise me not about les Belges, by the way. When some jaunty
little dinner-table patriot ups and demands ‘Name me six famous Belgians,
I’m the one with his hand in the air. Undeterred by the words ‘Apart from
Simenon.
It may not be to do with her being French at all. It could be middle-age.
A process that happens to some, if not necessarily all of us. With Gill
the train is coming into the station roughly on time, steam activating its
beloved whistle and the boiler a tad hot and bothered. But ask yourself
when Stuart became middle-aged and the only area for debate is whether it
was before or after his testicles descended. Have you seen that photo of
him in his pram wearing a little three-piece suit and pinstripe nappies?
Whereas Oliver? Oliver long ago decided—no, knew instinctively—that
middle-age was infra dig, déclassé and generally below the salt as a
condition. Oliver is planning to compress middle-age into a single
afternoon of lying down with a migraine. He believes in youth, and he
believes in wisdom, and plans to pass from wise youth to young wisdom with
the help of a palmful of paracetamol and an eye mask from some exotic airline.
Stuart Someone once pointed out that you can recognise a complete
egomaniac by the way they refer to themselves in the third person. Even
royalty doesn’t use the royal plural any more. But there are sportsmen and
rock stars who talk about themselves like that, as if it was normal. Have
you noticed? Bobby So-and-So’s accused of cheating, to win a penalty or
something, and he replies, ‘No, that’s not the sort of thing Bobby
So-and-So would do.’ As if there’s some separate figure out there, under
the same name, taking the flak, or shouldering the responsibility.
Which is hardly the case with Oliver. You couldn’t exactly
call him famous, could you? Yet he refers to himself as ‘Oliver,’ as if he
was an Olympic gold medallist. Or a schizophrenic, I
suppose.
Oliver What do you think of North-South debt restructuring? The future
prospects of the euro? The smile on the face of the tiger economies? Have
metal traders exorcised the ghost of the meltdown scare? I’m sure Stuart has robust and portly opinions on all
such matters. He will be not so much grave as positively gravid. I’ll bet
you six famous Belgians he doesn’t know the difference between the two
words. He’s the sort of person who expects the word gravid to be followed
by lax, silly old fishface that he is. A billboard for probity, and all
that. But a little, shall we say, lacking in irony?
Gillian Look, stop it, you two. Just stop it. This isn’t working.
What sort of impression do you think you’re giving?
Oliver What did I tell you? The train is coming into the station, puff
puff, huff huff . . .
Gillian If we’re getting into this again, we have to play by the rules.
No talking amongst ourselves. Anyway, who’s going to take Sophie to music?
Oliver: Gillian, in case you’re wondering, is an honorary representative
of The Men Who Guess.
Stuart Are you interested in pork? Real pork, with real taste? Where do
you stand on GM?
Oliver Six, apart from Simenon? Easy-peasy. Magritte, César Franck,
Maeterlinck, Jacques Brel, Delvaux and Hergé, creator of Tintin. Plus fifty percent of Johnny Hallyday, I add as a pourboire.
Gillian Stop it! You’re as bad as one another. No-one knows what you’re
talking about. Look, I just think we ought to explain things.
Stuart As bad as one another. That’s open to question, I think. In the
present circumstances.
All right, I’d like to explain something. Frank Ifield actually wasn’t an
Australian. He may have lived there, but he was born in England. Coventry,
if you must know. Also, while we’re on the subject, ‘I Remember You’ was
in point of fact a Johnny Mercer song written twenty years previously. Why
do culture snobs always sneer about things they’re completely ignorant of?
Oliver Explain things? Can’t we leave that until we reach the Dies Irae,
until some hydra-cocked Pandaemonian prods us with his dipstick and a
bat-headed lizard unwinds our guts on a windlass? Explain things? You
really think we ought? This isn’t daytime TV, let alone the Roman Senate.
Oh, very well, then. I’ll go first.
Stuart I don’t see why he should. That’s absolutely typical Oliver.
Besides, everyone in marketing knows it’s always the first story that
sticks in the mind.
Oliver Baggies I first. Baggies baggies baggies.
Gillian Oliver, you’re forty-two. You can’t say baggies.
Oliver Then don’t smile at me like that. Baggies. Baggy baggy baggy and
another baggy. Go on, give us a laugh. You know you want to. Please.
Pretty please.
Stuart If this is the alternative, I’d rather be middle-aged. Officially
or unofficially.
Oliver Ah, marketing! Always my Achilles heel. Very well, Stuart can be
our lead-off man if he wishes, pattering round the first bend bearing the
baton of truth. Don’t drop it, Stu-baby! And don’t run out of your lane.
You wouldn’t want to get the lot of us disqualified. Not this early.
I don’t care if he goes first. I merely have one request, made on grounds
not of egomania, self-interest or marketing, but of decorum, art and a
general horror of the banal. Please don’t call this next bit ‘The Story So
Far.’ Please don’t. Please. Pretty please?
From the Trade Paperback edition.