Hello
Julian Barnes, wie se Nothing to be Frightened Of onlangs hier bespreek was, het 18 Oktober die Man Booker gewen vir sy nuutste boek, The Sense of an Ending. Barnes is ’n briljante waarnemer en ontleder van die mens se doen en late. Hetsy letterkundig of polities.
Die volgende was saamgestel deur verskeie hande en word aangebied as ’n manier om Barnes se prys te vier.
“It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.” (Flaubert’s Parrot)
“The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.” (Flaubert’s Parrot)
“The first draft is fraught with difficulty. It’s like giving birth, very painful, but after that taking care of and playing with the baby is full of joy.” (Interview, Paris Review)
“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.” (Flaubert’s Parrot)
“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.” (Flaubert’s Parrot)
“(Literature is) a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that, literature is many things, such as delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.
“What can’t be escaped from, and runs all through the collection of stories, is memory. The escapee must always return, mentally or physically, if not both.”
“Well, I'm not going to tell people why they should read me. That sort of thing is for politicians.”
“It’s easy to read the book innocently, trusting the narrator, believing his account of things, and letting yourself be carried along as by an unthreatening breeze. Maupassant is often called ‘a natural storyteller’: that’s to say, a professional, practised, unnatural storyteller.” (“On We Sail” in the London Review of Books)
“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but – mainly – to ourselves.” (The Sense of an Ending)
Dankie
Wouter