Levels of Life Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00CB17PAO | Format: PDF
Levels of Life Description
"You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed..."
Julian Barnes's new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart.
One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as "an unparalleled magus of the heart". This book confirms that opinion.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 3 hours and 10 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: AudioGO Ltd
- Audible.com Release Date: April 4, 2013
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CB17PAO
In this short book, Barnes gives an intimate picture of his on-going grief over the death of his wife in 2008. It is not easy reading as it touches on aspects of grief that most of us will have faced at some time and will either still be going through or will with luck have moved on from. He starts with a contemplation of ballooning as a metaphor for love raising us to a higher level, but the bulk of the book is about how he has lived with his grief, including his musings on whether he would or will commit suicide.
I would prefer not to give this a 'star-rating' as it surely cannot be defined as 'I love it', 'It's OK' etc., but Amazon's review system doesn't allow for the unrated or unrateable. It is undoubtedly skilfully written and moving in parts. It is, and I'm sorry to say it, also self-indulgent - while accepting that other people have undoubtedly undergone grief, Barnes writes as if he is the first to truly experience and understand it. It also seemed strange that this man in his sixties writes as if he is encountering grief for the first time in his life. I suspect he is subtly making a case for the grief of an uxorious husband (he uses the word uxorious himself, several times) being greater than other griefs.
I would, I suspect, have found this deeply moving had it been a letter from a close friend, but its intimacy is too intense - it left me with an uncomfortable sense of voyeurism. He criticises, in ways that I'm sure would enable them to recognise themselves, his friends' attempts to console him with clichéd expressions of condolence and encouragement. Have we not all felt that? But have we not all understood the genuine warmth behind these clichés and forgiven the clumsiness? Indeed, have we not all been as clumsy when the situation was reversed?
"Levels of Life" is about death (in a way like no other) and it is extremely sad (but not maudlin). The first two sections are so matter-of-fact that the third hits you like a ton of bricks. It's all very quick; 124 pages. It's all done with Julian Barnes' deft touch.
"The Sin of Height" skims the highlights of the early attempts to get airborne. We're in the late 19th Century and Barnes compares and contrasts the efforts of Colonel Fred Burnaby and Felix Tournachon with the science and art of ballooning. Barnes is fascinated by the view from above and the view and attitude of those on the ground--how both perspectives were changed by photography in the name of art and understanding. Getting airborne changed the human perspective. At end of this section, Barnes leaps ahead a century to astronaut William Anders, circling the moon on Christmas Eve in 1968 and photographing the Earth, for the first time, with the moon in the foreground. "To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us psychic shock," he writes. But where is Barnes going with all of this?
Actress and ballooning enthusiast Sarah Bernhardt moves front and center in the second section, "On the Level," in which Barnes explores the relationship/courtship between Bernhardt and Fred Burnaby. Barnes imagines their verbal dance, their circling each other--and the impact on Burnaby when Bernhardt ultimately goes her own way. These are two very different people whose worlds have come together, or at least passing in the night.
"On the Level" reads the most like fiction but by now we are lulled into Barnes' plain storytelling style so it's easy to imagine that Burnaby's pleadings and gentle persuasions were recorded verbatim. "Madam Sarah, we are all incomplete.
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