Hello Friends,
This blog is my response to the task assigned to us by our Prof. Dr.DilipSir of the Novel The Only Story by Julian Barnes. So read,, understand, and enjoy. Happy Learning!
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About the author: Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes, in full Julian Patrick Barnes, pseudonyms Edward Pygge and Dan Kavanagh, (born January 19, 1946, Leicester, England), British critic and author of inventive and intellectual novels about obsessed characters curious about the past.
Click here to know more about his works.
About the Novel: The Only Story
"Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story."
The Only Story is a novel by Julian Barnes. It is his thirteenth novel and was published on 1 February 2018.
“I think my books often vary quite sharply, one from the last,” Julian Barnes says on this week’s podcast. But he allows that his latest novel, “The Only Story,” has a connection to his Booker Prize-winning “The Sense of an Ending.” The new novel is “about a relationship between a young man and a middle-aged woman, which was central to the other book but absolutely not described,” he says. “The reader had to intuit what happened. It must be related to that, that I thought I would write about it more overtly this time.”
In discussing “The Only Story,” Mr. Barnes talks about the experience of love itself and, among other things, how difficult it is to analyze love, especially the first time you feel it. “It’s a bit like putting in a new kitchen,” he says. “You never get it right the first time. You always have that bit of slate you shouldn’t have, or the taps are in the wrong place. And then you redesign and have another kitchen, and there are different mistakes made.”
1. Memory Novel - Structurally as well as thematically
"I would guess that memory prioritizes whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going. So there would be self-interest in bringing happier memories to the surface first."
"The log of memory splits down the grain. So you can’t remember the quiet times, the outings, the jollity, the running jokes, even the legal studies, which fill the gap between that last exchange and the day when worried by a succession of late returns from the Village, you say to her, quietly and unchallengingly."
"History is collective memory; Memory is personal history."
Trauma is Memory.
Memory and Morality.
Memory Prioritises.
History is what is shared openly and memory is not shared openly.
Is it reliable or not? We don't rely blindly on history. We don't rely on memory, not even personal memory. The way we record facts of life, it may be colored with lies. Lies, truth, the question of morality. To defend ourselves we cheat ourselves by lying to ourselves and this is how things are recorded in the wrong manner.
Who will be responsible for the damages? Everyone will blame others. We have to take responsibility for our life whether things turn out to be tragic or comic and to find solutions to all that problems arise.
Partition literature is full of trauma and memory-based. Internal trauma can't be shared. Many people are not interested in tragedies so we have to tell ourselves only. In one way all are subaltern, Julian Barnes - there are things in life everyone is helpless, then what remains is one's diary. We can't tell others so only self-talk remains.
"History is told by Victor. History is the self-delusion of the defeated."
True friends don't need to talk. They talk nothing but sit silently. They just stay together for a while, and the good atmosphere and silence also make up the best memories of life. And what remains are the glimpses of the happy memories.
2. Post Modern Novel
Julian Barnes belongs to the generation of British postmodernist writers, and postmodernism is not exclusively a literary phenomenon.
Generally, postmodernism is a very paradoxical phenomenon. It is never either/or, it is always both/and at the same time. The contradiction would be the very second name of postmodernism.
Reflections on Postmodernism
No Universal Truths:
Postmodernists rejected the view which culminated with realism, that literature was a reliable source of universal truths, though such view was never before questioned. In the tradition of postmodernism, this assumption is questioned. There are no universal truths, according to postmodernism, there is no one constant, measurable reality, there are only realities.
That art imitates life is questionable
The very assumption that art imitates life is questionable; it could be that life imitates art.
Skepticism – Objective Truth
There is a lot of skepticism, as a typical element of the postmodernist worldview. Postmodernists are also very skeptical about the modernist view that reality is to be found in its inner rather than outer manifestation. So, there are no clear definitions, there are no clear solutions. No realm contains objective reality and objective truth, according to postmodernism, and in this context, we speak of relativism, which is another typical postmodernist trait.
Cult of the genius
Modernists also believed in the cult of genius, which they inherited from the Romantics, according to which artists were the elite, hypersensitive persons who can grasp the ultimate truth, which was another idea of modernists that postmodernists rejected.
Construction or Revelation of Truth
Modernists still pretended that their novels were not constructs but that they somehow revealed the truth, which again the postmodernist challenged. Even the notion of consciousness, personality, mind, was rejected by the postmodernists, who claimed that consciousness was rooted in language which describes nothing but itself according to them. Thus, the world view constructed by the word ‘love’ is questioned in this novel. The word ‘love’ is supposed to give us a worldview of happiness, togetherness, blissfulness, idyllic, peaceful, harmonious, joyful, ecstatic, heavenly life. In this novel, ‘love’ shatters family life, it brings pity and anger, it makes people alcoholic and liars.
3. Theme of Love (Passion + Suffering)
Passion itself is suffering. The more you love, the more suffering you have to undergo, but people feel that life is all about suffering, there is no smooth road, so it's better to suffer in love and passion and there is joy in that suffering but there is no joy in the suffering that life brings.
★ Love and Truth
★ Love and Duty
If Love is a true one then there is mutual understanding, and it rejoices in truth but goes away from lies.
"Duty pours a glass of milk,,
But love stirs in a little chocolate syrup."
So in life duty is an inevitable and an essential part but if love comes then it should help to move the life like an escalator and life without love is like climbing the stairs. But if there is no love and simply passion then it may disrupt the entire beautiful planned well-settled life.
Passion – the Latin root of this words – suffering
Love = Passion + Suffering
Jacques Lacan – The Subject of Desire – Love-object
Love in ‘The Only Story’
The Only Story –
Passion turns into Suffering
• The story of a youth of 19 years, Paul’s passionate attraction towards Susan Macleod, a 48 years old married woman of two daughters – is nothing but a story of passion turning into suffering.
• This is his story of a life-changing, life-defining passionate love affair, from innocence to experience, from youth to age, from infatuation to weariness.
• It is the story of suffering for both Paul as well as Susan, along with all other family members.
Quotes from the novel ‘The Only Story’
♥︎"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. 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."
♥︎Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.
♥︎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.
♥︎“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.”
♥︎“In love, everything is both true and false; it's the one subject on which it's impossible to say anything absurd.”
♥︎“You realize that tough love is also tough on the lover.”
♥︎“Because once you had been through certain things, their presence inside you never really disappeared.
♥︎“And who does not want their love authenticated?”
♥︎“Its a condition of our mortality. We have codes of manners to allay and minimise it, jokes and routines, and so many forms of diversion and distraction. But there is panic and pandemonium waiting to break out inside all of us, of this, I am convinced. Ive seen it roar out among the dying, as a last protest against the human condition and its chronic sadness. But it is there in the most balanced and rational of us. You just need the right circumstances, and it will surely appear. And then you are at its mercy. The panic takes some to God, others to despair, some to charitable works, others to drink, some to emotional oblivion, others to a life where they hope that nothing
serious will ever trouble them again.”
4. Critique of Crosswords
Click on any of the above links to play the Wordle game.
Symbolic significance to Crosswords in ‘The Only Story’
A symbol is anything that hints at something else, usually something abstract, such as an idea or belief. A literary symbol is an object, a person, a situation, or an action that has a literal meaning in a story but suggests or represents other meanings.
In ‘The Only Story Julian Barnes has captured the nuances of social life lived in 20th century England. The crosswords were 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.
Clearly, this supposedly harmless pastime was about more than solving cryptic clues and filling in the answers.
My analysis identified the following elements:
the desire to reduce the chaos of the universe to a small, comprehensible grid of black-and-white squares;
Further addition:
1a) a successful means of taking your mind off the question of love, which is all that counts in the world.
the underlying belief that everything in life could, in the end, be solved;
2b) the further belief that once you have solved something in life, you will be able to solve it again, and the solution will be exactly the same the second time around, thus offering assurance that you have reached a pitch of maturity and wisdom.
the confirmation that existence was essentially a ludic activity;
3b) false confirmation that you are more intelligent than some give you credit for. and
the hope that this activity would keep at bay the existential pain of our brief sublunary transit from birth to death. That seemed to cover it!
Correction to 4). To begin: ‘the hope that this arse-bendingly boring activity would keep …’.”
Apart from these critical interpretations of the crossword puzzle, it quite often recurs in the novel. For instance, it is referred to 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 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.’”
It is in the character study of Joan that we realize how symbolically important is the reference to crosswords in this novel. The cynical observations made by Paul in the earlier instance are useful keys to studying her character. If we take Joan as a counterfoil to the character of Susan then we can find that she is no urge to feel the Laconian ‘gap’ or give an outlet to her ‘repressed desire’ in looking for humans to be her ‘love-objects’. While Susan, perhaps, looks towards nineteen years Paul Roberts who is 30 years younger than her to fill the gap or give an outlet to her repressed desire, Joan, found her love object in crosswords. And hence, all these inferences drawn by Paul seems to be true for Joan:
the desire to reduce the chaos of the universe to a small, comprehensible grid of black-and-white squares;
the underlying belief that everything in life could, in the end, be solved;
the confirmation that existence was essentially a ludic activity; and the hope that this activity would keep at bay the existential pain of our brief sublunary transit from birth to death.
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 the context of the relations between Paul and Gordon we may find it symbolically significant. Taunton – making a mockery of something/somebody and Trefoil – a popular warning symbol signifies triangular relation among Paul – Susan – Gordon. Both these words in the crossword puzzle seem to signify a taunt on Paul’s middling in between Susan and Gordon’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.
5. 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. Do we have access to the algorithm of its priorities? Probably not.
But I would guess that memory prioritises whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going. So there would be a self-interest in bringing happier memories to the surface first. But again, I’m only guessing.
I said I never kept a diary. This isn’t strictly true. There was a point, in my isolation and turmoil, when I thought writing things down might help. I used a hardback notebook, black ink, one side of the paper. I tried to be objective.
There was no point, I thought, in merely venting my feelings of hurt and betrayal.
The above lines from the novel tell that Paul is an unreliable narrator and he first tells one thing and then tells the another thing. And what it says is based on memory. Now Paul is writing the story at the age around 69-70 of his past life starting from his love story when he was around 19 years of age. So there are all chances that things might have faded with time. He might have forgotten some things, some things he might have half-remembered and this is how we can say that whatever Paul is telling is from his perspective and we don't know the other side of the story that is from the perspective of Susan, her daughters, and her husband. So looking at all the above aspects and many more things we can say that Paul is an unreliable narrator.
6. 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 (née Bertha Mason) is kept secretly locked in an attic apartment by her husband.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial novel by Jean Rhys, published in 1966. It gives readers an alternative view of Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre, written from the perspective of Bertha (or Antoinette, as she is known in this novel) – Rochester’s ‘mad’ wife who lives in the attic of Thornfield Hall. It can be seen as a prequel, as it depicts Antoinette’s upbringing in Jamaica as a white Creole heiress, her difficult relationship with Rochester, and the events that contribute to her decline.
"We feel far more sympathy for the confined woman, taken far from her home and everything she knows. It is no wonder that she begins to lose her grip on reality."
In Jane Eyre, Bertha is not given a voice, but is instead declared mad by Rochester. We never learn much about her life before Thornfield Hall. Hearing her story in Rhys’ novel, however, we feel far more sympathy for the confined woman, taken far from her home and everything she knows. It is no wonder that she begins to lose her grip on reality. This sympathy colours the way you view Bertha in Jane Eyre, who otherwise is more symbolic of rampant female sexuality and madness than a fully fleshed-out character.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jane herself is barely mentioned, and Rochester is never explicitly named. However, the reader does also get to read the story from his point of view in addition to Antoinette’s. Rochester – a Byronic hero in Jane Eyre – is manipulative and unfaithful, yet unsure, conflicted and insecure in this novel.
In the Novel The Only Story, Susan Macleod goes mad because the way she is treated by Paul Roberts. She is left with no one, no agency with whom she can share her predicament. So by bearing so much pain in her heart and no one to share, those suppressed feelings and emotions lead her to madness. Then she suffers from mental trauma, depression and then she has to take tranquilizers and pain killers, she is drawn towards addiction to alcohol slowly, day by day when Paul leaves her for his career and goes away then she goes completely mad. Because for him she had left the home of her husband and two daughters but when it's time for him to support her and to be with her then at that time Paul fails in doing so and this how Susan goes completely mad.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette has no space to articulate her choice while in the novel The Only Story, Susan Macleod is not forced by anyone but by being alone at home whereas Paul goes out in college and she being alone at home and not getting enough space to express her feelings and not getting enough love and comfort from Paul she is driven towards madness.
Here Patriarchy operates invisibly, differently, so there are more chances for females going mad than males. In the end, as described in the novel nobody can save her and she has to take so many tranquilizers.
7. Joan - one who understood existential enigma
‘Where’s Susan?’ are Joan’s first words as she opens the door.
‘I’ve come by myself.’ ‘Does she know?’ You like the way Joan always gets straight to the point. You quite enjoy having cold water dashed in your face before sitting down with a streaky tumbler full of room-temperature gin.
‘No.’ ‘Then it must be serious. I’ll shut the little yappers up.’ You sink into a dog-scented armchair and a drink is put next to you. As you are gathering your thoughts, Joan gets in first.
‘Point One. I’m not a go-between. Whatever you say stays in this room and it doesn’t get leaked back. Point Two. I’m not a shrink, I’m not some kind of advice centre, I don’t even much like listening to other people’s woes. I tend to think they should get on with it, stop moaning, roll up their sleeves and all of that. Point Three. I’m just an old soak whose life hasn’t worked out and who lives alone with her dogs. So I’m not an authority on anything. Not even crosswords, as you once pointed out.’
In life, as experienced by Susan and Joan, it can be observed that with everything you will get fed up, boredom will come in life like anything. there is a time in life when there is sunshine and there are cloudy days too, but this is the nature of life and we have to accept life as it is rather than going mad for what it is not. Joan is ready to accept life as it is but not Susan. Joan was also rejected by a man in whose flat she used to live, then she went back to her father's home, her brother also died and she was shattered to pieces because there was no one to provide love and comfort and company to live a good life. Then she managed to keep the life going as it is by having a pet dog, yappers, and then a dog named Sibyl whose name is associated with a myth of Sibyl that what you want in life and she says want death. She played crosswords and to get some happiness, she will do cheating also. So, it can be said that Joan with the help of her own care and skills and intelligence, good understanding, and was able to come out of traumatic events and pains and diverted her attention to other things in life and this is how she was able to cope up with life.
8. Whom do you think is responsible for the tragedy in the story? Explain with reasons.
Ans. In the story, Paul and Susan both are responsible for the tragedy.
Paul is responsible because he left Susan when she needed him the most. He took Susan as a thing like use and throw. When he needed he kept her and when he was fed up he threw her.
Julian Barnes used the metaphor of Link in The Sense of an Ending. So in a chain when one link gets eroded then the entire chain is broken. External as well as internal factors are responsible for the chain to break. So if we consider Susan as one link then she is not strong enough to handle the life situations and Paul can be considered as an external factor due to which the life of Susan got eroded,, spoiled and destroyed. There are other links also in the chain like Gordon, her traumatic childhood events that shaped her life. The harassment from her husband and her uncle are the things that also caused lots of stress in her life of Susan. But there was as if no way for her to come out. So Paul is responsible because he was not able to support her, give her companionship throughout. And Susan is responsible because she should not have left the home of her husband and gone with Paul, there may be good friends but not at the cost of her own marriage. If she had been in her own home then at least both the daughters were there for her to love and care for her.
4,407 Words.
Barnes, Julian. The Only Story: A novel. PDF file, Vintage, 2018.
"Best Quotes from The Only Story by Julian Barnes." Readershook | Online Book Catalogue with User & Critic Reviews, readershook.com/book/the-only-story/quotes. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Julian Barnes". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Jan. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julian-Barnes. Accessed 24 February 2022.
"Julian Barnes on ‘The Only Story’ (Published 2018)." Google, 27 Apr. 2018, www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/books/review/julian-barnes-on-the-only-story.amp.html?espv=1. Accessed 23 Feb. 2022.
Willmetts, Beccy. "The Boar." The Boar, theboar.org/2016/04/wide-sargasso-sea/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2022.