Julian Barnes

The Weekly Wrap: March 16-22

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Library Love

“Feel good” stories seem increasingly scarce. This one involved a woman walking into her local library to renew her library card. What is unusual is that Lily Walter is 104 and received her first library card 100 years ago in Latvia. An immigrant to the United States in 1949, she describes her passion for reading in this way: “You learn things by reading, I think. Or you should.” In her eighties and nineties, she worked as a volunteer at the Hubbard Public Library, near my home town of Youngstown.

Lily’s story is one of the reasons I am a passionate believer in the importance of our libraries. It’s why I spent part of Monday this week calling my House and Senate representatives to protest proposed cuts to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. While such cuts are only a small part of most libraries’ total budget, they usually fund targeted programs like veterans outreach or summer reading programs at libraries. This means libraries are faced with diverting funds, raising local levies, or cutting programs.

Lily began reading at four years old. I was a childhood reader as well and a visit to the library was as much fun for me as a visit to the candy store. My family had modest means. The library gave me access to resources wealthier children had at home, enabling me to be valedictorian of my high school class and win an academic scholarship to college. Libraries were a part of my “success story.” That’s what I told my representatives–that, and that I wanted others in my shoes to have the same opportunities.

If you want to know more about the President’s executive order and sign a petition opposing the cuts, visit the EveryLibrary site. And if you want your heart warmed, here is an interview with Lily Walter:

Five Articles Worth Reading

Speaking of reading for life, Ted Gioia, in “My Lifetime Reading Plan” shares how he, though a college grad, largely educated himself through his own reading. He describes the reading practices that helped him. One interesting insight: he read old books when he was young and young books as he grew older.

Have you ever picked up a book you thought was new to you, started reading it, only to realize that you’d read and forgotten it? I have. Turns out we’re in good company, as we learn in “The Patron Saint of Forgetting” on Michel Montaigne’s famed forgetfulness of things he’d read.

We hear of people who have changed their minds and celebrate this as a mark of intellectual honesty. In “It’s Hard to Change Your Mind. A New Book Asks If You Should Even Try,” Kieran Setiya reviews a new work by novelist Julian Barnes that raises questions about the possibility of changing our minds.

I’m a lover of crime fiction of all sorts. One sub-genre is the Private Eye Detective story. This week, The New York Times released “Classic Private-Eye Detective Novels: A Starter Pack” which includes some classics I’ve not yet read.

Can you imagine earning six figures for writing one article? Bryan Burrough describes how much he earned for one article in “Vanity Fair’s Heyday” under editor Graydon Carter, who was at the helm of the publication from 1992 to 2017.

Quote of the Week

Children’s writer and poet Phyllis McGinley was born on March 21, 1905. She observed:

“Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.”

Any of us who have had a friend “ghost” us without explanation know the truth of this.

Miscellaneous Musings

The book sounded intriguing, exploring Paul’s use of narrative, something we don’t usually associate with Paul’s letters. The writer amply made his case, going for a far deeper drive into grammar (in Greek!) than I had expected. I’m neither a grammar nor Greek geek, so this one was really a stretch!

I’m curious about a lot of things but it can get the better of me at times, especially when I try to write a review of a book plainly out of my “wheelhouse.” A recent read on monetary policy was a case in point. I hope the aficionados on the subject will be as gracious as the author, who re-posted the review. It was publicity, and I hope I accomplished what I always try to do, which is to give people enough to decide if they want to buy the book.

I wasn’t looking for another reason not to like Meta and then I learned how they used LibGen, a file sharing site for print articles and books, to train its generative language AI. LibGen itself is under accusations of copyright violations as is Meta. One thing that is clear is that authors neither gave permission for their works to be used in this way nor received any payment for their intellectual property. This Atlantic article describes the allegations against Meta and includes a feature where you can search authors to see what they’ve used. For example, a search of J.R.R. Tolkien turns up just about everything he has written.

Next Week’s Reviews:

Monday: Ronni Kurtz, Light Unapproachable

Tuesday: Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Wednesday: Stanley Hauerwas, Jesus Changes Everything

Thursday: Agatha Christie, The Hollow

Friday: Christoph Heilig, Paul: The Storyteller

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for March 16-22, 2025!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page

Review: The Sense of an Ending

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The sense of an ending

The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes. New York: Vintage International, 2011.

Summary: A bequest that includes a letter and a diary forces a man in his sixties to examine the way he has remembered and conceived of his life.

One of the dangers of reaching one’s sixties is that you begin the process of remembering your life. What is often not considered is that the way we remember it, and tell it may be of our “best self” but not necessarily of our true self. We may not even be aware of it, but there are episodes that are edited out, things done and said that we shove in a mental drawer, or hide in a closet. This novel, a Man Booker prize winner by the author of the more recent fictional biography of Dmitri Shostakovich, The Noise of Time (reviewed here) is a finely written psychological exploration of our constructed memories that shield us from knowing our true selves.

Tony Weber is a retired, divorced late middle aged man living in London. The first part of his book is a remembering of his life. He begins with his adolescence in a boys school, and the heady mix of ideas and awakening sexuality that is part of this period. We meet his friends, Alex and Colin, and the fourth who joins this group, the philosophical Adrian. The boys part but stay in touch during college years. Tony reads history at Bristol while Adrian goes to Cambridge. Much of the story here involves Tony’s relationship with Veronica, his encounter with her “posh” family, and the mother who tries to warn him off her while making him eggs for breakfast. Tony and Veronica have a sexually frustrating relationship and only have intercourse after she breaks off with him. This leads to an even more messy conversation where she tries to get him to be real to her, real to himself. Eventually Veronica gets into a relationship with Adrian, who writes him asking leave for them to see each other. Adrian sends a reply that he doesn’t go into a lot of detail about, and then gets on with his life, going to America and traveling around with a girl for a few months and then parting. When he arrives home he learns that Adrian has committed suicide. Tony and his friends puzzle over this, move on and separate. Tony marries, has a daughter with whom he has a decent relationship, divorces Margaret, his wife, lives a reasonably successful life, and enjoys a quiet retirement of trips and volunteer work. Until…

He receives word one day that Veronica’s mother had died and left him a bequest of five hundred pounds, a letter, and a diary. The money he receives easily enough. The letter and diary are in the possession of Veronica, who will not yield them up, at first. The second half of the book describes a number of encounters, often ending with the refrain from Veronica, “You just don’t get it, do you? You never did and you never will.” First she sends a cryptic page from the diary. Then she gives him the letter, which turns out to be a brutally cruel letter, the letter he had written in response to Adrian’s letter, a letter he had white-washed in his mind.

He begins to see that the memory he has constructed of his life doesn’t fit the reality. Yet he is troubled by what he doesn’t get, and this takes him deeper, into his choice of “peaceableness,” of an unwillingness to feel pain or to take a risk to really live and be responsible for his life. I will not give away the secret why Veronica’s mother gave him the bequest or came to have the letter and diary. What it brings him to is a sobering alternative narrative of his life that he summarizes with these words:

“There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.”

This is a book that holds up a mirror to show us the false selves that we construct with our “best self” memories and the danger of a life lived embracing that false self. It seems to me that facing up to the false selves, the constructed memories, as painful as these are, may be better than living cluelessly. If nothing else, it makes us keenly aware of our need for redemption.

The Month in Reviews: August 2016

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Silence and Beauty

I often take advantage of a lighter schedule in summer to read quite a bit. This month was an illustration of that rhythm. I read a couple of books surveying the Bible for what it says about money (quite a bit), and one on what can happen in our lives spiritually when we don’t have it. I read about Jefferson’s explorers whose coming signaled a threat to the way of life of Native Americans, and some fiction by Sherman Alexie on the realities of reservation life. I began the month with Makoto Fujimura’s reading of Shusaku Endo’s Silence, and ended with Richard Mouw’s reflections on the scholarly life with a fictional exploration of the inner life of Dmitri Shostakovich and a history of the innovatively prolific Bell Labs and much more in between.

Silence and Beauty

Silence and Beauty, Makoto Fujimura (foreward by Philip Yancey). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016.  A “layered” reflection on Shusaku Endo’s Silence by a Japanese-American artist that explores the Christian experience of persecution in Japan, and the connections between silence, suffering, and beauty, that may draw contemporary Japanese to faith. (Review)

Covenant Economics

Covenant Economics: A Biblical Vision of Justice for All, Richard A. Horsley. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. A biblical study of how God’s covenant with Israel, including the New Testament appropriation of that covenant was intended to shape economic life and justice for Israel and “assemblies” in the New Testament era, with application to modern economic life and the “covenant” our government has with its people. (Review)

Jeffeerson's America

Jefferson’s America, Julie M. Fenster. New York: Crown, 2016. An account of how Jefferson used the efforts of four teams of men comprising less than a hundred total to establish America’s hold on the lands west of the Mississippi River. (Review)

Unparalleled

Unparalleled, Jared C. Wilson. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2016. A book that makes the case for Christianity by proposing that the unique elements in Christian faith’s account of God, humanity, Jesus, salvation, history, and the end make it  both worthy and credible. (Review)

Bad Religion - No Religion

The Answer to Bad Religion is Not No Religion, Martin Thielen. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014. Discusses the characteristics of “bad religion”, contending that the answer is not to reject religion altogether but to embrace “good religion”, the marks of which are discussed. (Review)

the lost world of genesis one

The Lost World of Genesis One, John H. Walton. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009. Walton argues from our knowledge of the ancient cultures in Israel’s context that Genesis 1 is a functional account of how the cosmos is being set up as God’s temple rather than an account of material origins. (Review)

The noise of time

The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. A work of fiction, exploring the inner world of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, as he seeks both to survive and maintain artistic integrity in the totalitarian milieu of Soviet Russia under Stalin and Khrushchev. (Review)

Embracing the Body

Embracing the Body, Tara M. Owens. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015. An invitation to move beyond guilt and shame around our embodied selves to discover the goodness of our bodies and how God made us, meets us, and works through our bodied lives. (Review)

Lone Ranger and Tonto

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie. New York: Grove Press, 2013 (20th Anniversary edition, first published 1993).  A collection of short stories all relating to growing up on a Spokane Indian reservation. (Review)

Broke

Broke, Caryn Rivadeneira. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014. The author reflects on the experience of losing nearly all financially, and what she learned by being broke and broken about the provision and abundance of God. (Review)

Called to community

Called to Community, Charles E. Moore (ed.). Walden, NY: Plough Publishing House, 2016. A collection of readings on Christian community centered around the Bruderhof Community but also including theologians and writers from throughout church history. (Review)

The Idea Factory

The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner. New York: The Penguin Press, 2012. An account of the history of Bell Labs, the inventions and innovations they produced, and the confluence of people, resources, and the growth of the telecommunications revolution that drove it all. (Review)

Money-and-Possessions

Money and Possessions (Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church), Walter Brueggemann. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016. A survey of the teaching of canonical scripture on the subject of money and possessions focusing on these as gift of God, meant for the mutual benefit of neighbors, and marred by extractive economics creating disparities of rich and poor, privileged and oppressed. (Review)

Called to the life of the Mind

Called to the Life of the Mind, Richard J. Mouw. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014. A collection of reflective essays by one of the deans of evangelical scholarship on the calling and importance of the Christian scholarly task. (Review)

Best of the Month: As is often the case this is a tough one. Julian Barnes The Noise of Time was an intriguing exploration of the inner tensions Shostakovich may have wrestled with holding artistic integrity and survival in tension. But I have to give the nod to Makoto Fujimura’s Beauty and Silence for its thoughtful exploration of Japanese culture, Endo’s novel Silence, and the troubled history of Christianity in Japan.

Quote of the Month: This eloquently articulated statement summed up for me the central message of Caryn Rivendeira’s Broke and suggested to me that this is a Christian writer we may want to watch:

“We survived. I kept breathing. I kept stepping. And somewhere in the cracks, along the ragged edges of my marriage, in the desperate gasps of sudden poverty and all the questions that came with it, there was God. Big and glittering, soft and warm, smiling and beckoning. Somehow in the shimmers of all that, I began to taste and see, and feel and know, and hear and smell that God is good, and he was there in the broke bits. That he was using our time near the poverty line, treading in debt, to draw me near, to make me over, to answer a prayer bigger than my material needs. In this season of spiritual and financial brokenness, in this time of longing to know what God was up to and to experience his goodness and presence, God worked me over by showing me where and how I could find him. Which is all over the place. In every last thing, He satisfied my wonderlust–my unquenchable desire to feel his presence and to experience his glory. And I found him. And I found him good.”

Coming Soon: I just finished reading a book that will be my “go to” resource with graduating students, After College by Erica Young Reitz. Look for a review of it in the next day or so. I’ve also picked up a compendium of articles titled Eschatology, on this endlessly fascinating question of our future hope and how this may unfold. I’m nearly finished with Muhammad Yunus’ Banker to the Poor, his engaging account of the beginnings of Grameen Bank, a pioneering effort in micro-lending. I’ve just begun Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us, one of her earliest publications about the oceans that occupy so much of our planet’s surface. And I will be reviewing a book soon I’ve already mentioned in a recent post, No Place for Abuse, on the epidemic of physical and sexual violence and what at least churches can do to address the instances of this scourge in our midst. I also have two fun books I hope to read soon from my son and his wife: a baseball book by Michael Shapiro, Bottom of the Ninth and an intriguingly titled book by Jon Ronson, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed on how social media has taken public shaming to a new level.

Oh, and I could add so many more. But I think I will end here and wish you at least a few hours happy reading over the upcoming Labor Day holiday (for those living in the U. S.).

 

 

Review: The Noise of Time

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The noise of time

The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.

Summary: A work of fiction, exploring the inner world of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, as he seeks both to survive and maintain artistic integrity in the totalitarian milieu of Soviet Russia under Stalin and Khrushchev.

A meme spoofing the “Mozart effect” that came across my newsfeed today underscores the dilemma composer Dmitri Shostakovich faced in these words:

 The Shostakovich effect: Child only expresses themselves in parent-approved ways.

Shostakovich lived under a tension between artistic integrity and the requirements of a regime that decided that art must be for the people and advance the interests of Power. Novelist Julian Barnes, winner of the Man Booker Prize, explores the interior life of Shostakovich in a work of fiction through an “inner monologue,” over the course of the composer’s life, as he wrestles with the relationship between artistic and personal integrity, between pursuing one’s artistic muse, and living to compose another day.

The novel proceeds by chronicling three “conversations with Power” that occur at twelve year intervals. The first follows a 1936 performance of his opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which had received much foreign and national acclaim and had attracted the attention of Stalin, who attended a performance and was not please as evidenced in an article in Pravda titled “Muddle and Not Music”, denouncing Shostakovich as a “formalist”. Not only were his works suppressed but he is called in for an interview with Zakrevsky at which he must denounce his work and confess his errors in a second interview. The interview never occurs and Zakrevsky disappears, as do a number of artists. He is not called back, nor “disappeared,” but lives under a cloud and turns to composing film music, which Stalin favors, and the Fifth Symphony, a more conservative work that gained great acclaim and put him back in favor.

The second conversation with Power comes after a second period, following World War Two, when his works had once again fallen in disfavor. He receives a personal phone call from Stalin in 1948, requiring him to go to New York for the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace. He attempts to resist but relents, even beginning to give a speech written for him, only to have the remainder given by a translator. This is followed by an embarrassing confrontation with Nicolai Nabokov, where he is questioned as to whether what was read truly represented his views, to which he assents. Still, because of this, and his composition of Song of the Forests, he enjoys Stalin’s favor and is rehabilitated after the denunciations in the previous years.

The third conversation comes in 1960, under Nikita Khrushchev, where he is asked to become General Secretary of the Composers’ Union, which requires him to join the Communist Party. On the one hand, he can help and represent composers, and yet this appeared and has been criticized by many as another concession to power. Indeed, his access to dachas, limousines, and other perquisites enjoyed by party members set him apart from the struggles of other artists, and also give him greater latitude in his composing work.

And here is the struggle narrated via Shostakovich’s interior monologue. On the one hand, we see a composer who only ever is seeking to write music answering to his artistic vision. Yet we see a man who also lives in fear and conflict with himself, and in his relationships and expects (wants?) to be dead by 1972 (he died in 1975 from lung cancer).

We don’t tend to hold up as heroes those who appear to “toady” to Power. And yet there is the undeniable power of works like Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet, written after some of these accommodations. Barnes novel raises questions of whether the personal conflicts might even shape the artistry of such works. He portrays an artist who hopes in the end his music will rise above “the noise of time” on its own merit rather than heroism or accommodations of the artist to Power. Time will tell, but Barnes, in an elegant and compact work, delves into the complexities that resist our simple verdicts.