The Sense of an Ending

Text read: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Number of pages: 163

Number of reading days: 1

Why I read this book: Jessica Burstein, one of my favorite English professors, suggested that I read this book as I faced the end of my undergraduate career and my time in London.

Thoughts:

Wow. This novel might be the book of the summer. Short, but beautiful and poignant and strangely relevant.

During one of the key scenes, the narrator, Tony, and his ex-girlfriend meet up on the "Wobbly Bridge" between St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern. I immediately began (mentally) squealing because I have a ridiculous amount of affection for this location. The first day I walked across the Millennium Bridge was sunny and beautiful--my friend and I were walking back from the Damien Hirst exhibit at the Tate Britain--St. Paul's in the horizon--the Thames underneath us. As I crossed that bridge, I remember feeling yes I am alive and that is good. Maybe I needed "to be reminded of [the] instability beneath [my] feet."

"The Wobbly Bridge is the new footbridge across the Thames, linking St. Paul's to Tate Modern. When it first opened, it used to shake a bit--either from the wind or the mass of people tramping across it, or both--and the British commentariat duly mocked the architects and engineers for no knowing what they were doing. I thought it beautiful. I also liked the way it wobbled. It seemed to me that we ought occasionally to be reminded of instability beneath our feet. Then they fixed it and it stopped wobbling, but the name stuck--at least for the time being. I wondered about Veronica's choice of location. Also if she'd keep me waiting, and from which side she'd arrive."

The Wobbly Bridge seemed like a perfect spot for these two characters to meet up. Caught the instability of their relationship perfectly, while also calling to mind the earlier suicide of another character.

This book also explored ideas of memory and history. What is history and how do we remember moments from the past? Reminded me of my American Contemporary Literature class where we discussed theories of history-writing and historical fiction--how there is no one truth and that the telling of history relies heavily on the perspective, background, culture of the historian. In his essay, "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact," Hayden White argues that historical events are inherently meaningless—at most, elements of a story. Historians take these historical events and turn them into narrative using a method called “emplotment”: he or she takes a chronicle of events and suppresses or highlights certain parts of the chronicle in order to match a certain plot structure that is shared with the historian’s main audience. This process is a literary one, making the historical narratives fictional. White maintains that the fictionalization of history is necessary because it is impossible to make an exact representation of historical events. We cannot go back in time; even if we could, it would be too difficult to replicate because of the strange and foreign nature of history. Historians decode and then recode historical events in order to make them more accessible for the present culture. (For more about this discussion, I suggest reading: The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer)

"What had Old Joe Hunt answered when I knowingly claimed that history was the lies of the victors? 'As long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.' Do we remember that enough when it comes to our private lives?"

Sense of an Ending is set up in two parts. In the first, Tony relates his school day memories and details about his relationship with Veronica; in the second, all of these recollections are complicated by new information and old, resurfaced memories. Part two forces the reader to reevaluate everything he or she read in the first half. To look at every character a bit differently.

This book is going on my list of books to reread when I'm in my 50s, along with Mrs. Dalloway. Both of these books deal with the memories of a middle-aged person, reflecting on their late teens and twenties. These stories are incredibly meaningful to me now, and I feel like they might evoke different thoughts and emotions when I am older.

Favorite Passages & Quotes:

"This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was all about: love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn owls. Of course, there were other sorts of literature--theoretical, self-referential, lachrymosely autobiographical--but they were just dry wanks. Real literature was about psychological, emotional and social truth as demonstrated by the actions and reflections of its protagonists; the novel was about character development over time."

"I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.

"...my mother asked, 'Do you think it was because he was too clever?'
'I haven't got the statistics linking intelligence to suicide,' I replied."

"'But if you're very clever, I think there's something that can unhinge you if you're not careful.'"

"But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person, and find them still. The same eyes that were in the same head when we first met, slept together, married, honeymooned, joint-mortgaged, shopped, cooked, and holidayed, loved one another and had a child together. And were the same when we separated.
But it's not just the eyes. The bone structure stays the same, as do instinctive gestures, the many ways of being herself. And her way, even after all this time and distance, of being with me."

"But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions--and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives--then I plead guilty... And if we're talking about strong feelings that will never come again, I suppose it's possible to be nostalgic about remembered pain as well as remembered pleasure."

"When you're young--when I was young--you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that?"

__________________

For other books I'm reading this summer, see: Summer Reading List 2012