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Julian Barnes, Nothing to be frightened of

Auch beim wiederlesen - oder vielleicht gerade dann - erweist sich das Buch als ziemlich verstörend. Und nachwievor überaus fesselnd und faszinierend natürlich. Und darüber hinaus, jetzt wo ich weiß, dass es kurz vor dem Tod seiner Frau geschrieben wurde, auch ziemlich bedrückend. Er konnte es ja nicht ahnen, und ich traue Barnes auch nicht zu abergläubisch zu sein, aber hie und da konnte ich beim lesen einfach nicht umhin mich zu fragen, ob ihm das Buch, oder einzelne Passagen zumindest, heute doch ein bißchen leidtun.

She, like Sherwin Nuland, sees life as a narrative. Dying, which is not a part of death, but a part of life, is the conclusion to that narrative, and the time preceding death is our last opportunity to find meaning in the story that is about to end. Perhaps because my professional days are spent considering what is narrative and what isn't, I resist this line of thought. Lessing described history as putting accidents in order, and a human life strikes me as a reduced version of this: a span of consciousness during which certain things happen, some predictable, others not; where certain patterns repeat themselves, where the operations of chance and what we may as well for the moment call free will interact; where children on the whole grew up to bury their parents, and become parents in their turn; where, if we are lucky, we find someone to love, and with them a way to live, or, if not, a different way to live; where we do our work, take our pleasure, worship our god (or not), and watch history advance by a tiny cog or two. But this does not in my book constitute a narrative. Or, to adjust: it may be a narrative, but it doesn't feel like one to me.

(Julian Barnes, Nothing to be frightened of, 2008)