His novels England, England (1998) and A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989) criticize the traditional grand narratives of culture and history. Moreover, storytelling plays a central role not only in the mind of the individual, but also in the collective thinking of humanity. It is particularly revealing to discuss Barnesian narrativity in light of the postmodern attitude towards storytelling, the 'grasping' of the past and the stories that influence individual and collective identity formation (Barnes, Flaubert's 7).
That is, stories are now seen as insufficient means of creating valid accounts of the universe. As can be seen, history is considered subjective as well as bearing the marks of the inadequacy of human memory and record keeping. In Barnes' oeuvre, it is Metroland and The Sense of an Ending which, read as fictional autobiographies, illustrate the Barnesian view of memory, truth and the past in relation to identity formation and life writing, illustrating Lyotard's concept of the postmodern small narrative. .
Fictional Autobiographies: Metroland and The Sense of an Ending
Metroland and The Sense of an Ending will be discussed in the following sections as cases of highly subjective personal remembering and self-narrative, while expanding on the formation of the narrative self amid the postmodern perception of the human condition, as well as on the resulting temporary and thematic structures accommodated by the two novels. Their conversations are filled with comments that scorn the suburban bourgeoisie, while their theories about art, life, adulthood, love, marriage and the mysteries of sexuality and the female body are laced with French language and culture, their life belt against uniformity and mediocrity - everything embedded in descriptions of everyday experiences such as school, family dinners and visits to Uncle Arthur. Furthermore, while he spends his days in museums, cinemas, cafes and the Bibliothèque Nationale, reading, writing, drawing and contemplating life and art, he meets a group of English youngsters, Dave, Micky and Marion.
By the third installment, “Metroland II (1977),” and at age 30, Christopher settles back in Metroland with his wife Marion and daughter Amy, no longer showing his initial disdain for suburban life. The first part provides an overview of Tony's past and highlights the formative importance of his school years spent with his friends, Colin, Alex and Adrian. Part of Tony's growing up is detailed in his first relationship with Veronica, including difficulties such as meeting Veronica's family; innocence and sexuality; and the breakup followed by an affair between Veronica and Tony's friend Adrian.
After describing some time spent in the US and an affair with Annie, Tony confronts Adrian's suicide. Part 1 ends with a brief overview of Tony's adult life, which includes jobs; marriage; becoming a father; divorce; and retirement. In the second part, the narrative reaches the present: in further meditations on time, history and life, Tony's present life unfolds.
A letter received after the death of Veronica's mother results in the most disturbing of Tony's life stories presented thus far - in fact, it forces Tony to face his past mistakes. His re-evaluation takes the form of revisiting and rewriting memories described in the first section.
Barnesian Self-Narrators
It is crucial to find an integrated configuration of the self in the above process: integrated both in a synchronic sense (as in accommodating a number of different roles and relationships) and in a diachronic sense (as in combining elements of the itself, separated in time) (McAdams 188-189). Although described in less detail, the same phenomenon of transformation is referenced in The Sense of an Ending: “The school was in the center of London, and we traveled there every day. Similarly, in The Sense of an Ending, Adrian, the teenage role model, and Veronica, the enigmatic ex-girlfriend who Tony doesn't understand, are the characters who are described in detail.
Margaret, Tony's wife is only important in that she is Tony's only human contact in the present. The role of remorse in The Sense of an End will be discussed later, in relation to the problem of responsibility and self-deception. The limits and errors of memory and the role of memory in the story are also discussed in detail in The Sense of an End.
Such self-reflexive comments on behalf of Barnesian and other postmodern narrators inevitably evoke a sense of disbelief and suspense in the reader. This is even more so in the case of autobiographical pieces, as they are vehicles of self-presentation. This concern will also be reflected in the structure of their narrative, to be addressed in the next chapter.
However, the distinction is not so straightforward when it comes to certain explanatory notes and comments. Even more so in the case of purely re-experience accounts, where the boundary between the two versions of the self is almost completely blurred. This problem is expressed in The Sense of an Ending: When Tony Webster recounts his reaction to the affair between his ex-girlfriend Veronica and his best friend Adrian, Tony Webster blocks out the memory of his past actions and fails to face them.
As can be seen, when the problem is encountered in the present from the perspective of the experiencer, an unresolved identity conflict comes to light, which brings with it a tremendous sense of remorse.
Self-Evaluation
Another "comfort list" made by Christopher deals with the reasons why he married Marion - in this case, however, the main purpose of the list is to provide reassurance about a past decision. In addition to Christopher's lists, all three parts of Metroland conclude with a chapter titled "Object Relations," offering reflections and evaluation of the earlier section of Christopher's life. At the end of the first part, Christopher presents his most vivid memory of his adolescence: he remembers sitting in his old room, surrounded by his possessions.
Part two ends with an assessment of the time Christopher spent in Paris: “working on my dissertation. Although part three begins with the aforementioned list of Christopher's achievements, the evaluation is launched at the end of the section by Toni's condemnation upon seeing the vegetable patch in Christopher's garden: "So this is it?" (211) Christopher responds as follows: “Why would you let someone else intervene in your self-blame?” and “Saturday afternoons, keeping a close eye on the lawnmower. The fact that this question evokes anger and defensiveness in Christopher indicates that he was aware of the discrepancy between their shared childhood plans and how his life ultimately turned out.
This can be read as symbolic of the loss of a youthful, imaginative self, the constant gaze indicating a degree of passivity, questioning the possibility of future change. It is in Part Two, when faced with other people's stories, that Tony constantly has to modify his view of the past and reevaluate his life and actions. The turmoil in terms of defining his identity, as well as the lack of a coherent life narrative and the frightening lack of a possibility for change in the future, coupled with a disturbing ending to the novel.
As Peter Brooks put it, all plots are aimed at reaching an ending, since “The longing of the text (the longing of reading)” is the “longing for the end” (qtd. in Kermode, “Forgetting” 309) . In this regard, it is important to note the double meaning of the title The Sense of an Ending.
Past, Present, and Future
As Peter Brooks put it, all plots are aimed at reaching an ending, since “The desire of the text (the desire to read)” is a “desire for the end” (qtd. On the other hand, when 'sentence ' is understood as synonymous with point, meaning or reason one is left with the question of what meaning an ending could have in relation to Tony's life or the novel itself - based on the above, any good ending would soothe the unrest of the closing note As we have just seen, the future in Metroland and The Sense of an Ending can be seen as problematic – the former presents an overly predictable future, while the latter shows the absence of the future.
This can be discussed in the context of the four types of coherence identified by Habermas and Bluck as characteristic of conventional storytelling and life narratives, namely temporal, biographical, causal, and thematic coherence (McAdams 192). Over time, the significance of the memories presented in the first part becomes noticeable in relation to the second part in retrospect. It is these self-defining memories that form the backbone of Metroland and The Feeling of the End, with the fluctuation of the hierarchy of memories characteristic of the latter in particular.
He presents parts of the past that are considered irrelevant to his identity formation as follows: the civil unrest in Paris, 1968, is described as "I can't, to be honest, remember even a smudge of smoke in the sky. I consistent with the vivid nature of self-defining memories, both novels provide extremely detailed accounts of past events, including conversations, then current moods, and recreating the circumstances and impressions of the time.Part 1 of The Sense of an Ending covers Tony's past with commentary from the present self (at the same way like Metroland), while Part 2 focuses on his present constantly broken by flashbacks, returning to memories already told in Part 1, as well as new ones.
It is in such a temporal setting that self-defining memories are presented, while objective time is employed in the narration of everyday events of the present. As can be seen in the oeuvre of the contemporary English novelist and leading figure of postmodernism, Julian Barnes was in a productive interaction with postmodernist concerns such as the inaccessibility of the past, the imperfection of memory and the subjectivity of historiography. His novels England, England and A History of the World in 10 ½ chapters provide a critique of the traditional grand narratives of culture and history, while his interest in individual life stories and personal testimonies is manifested in his two fictional autobiographies Metroland and The Sense of An end.
These phenomena of a psychological nature inevitably affect the structure of the narratives in focus: non-linearity and frequent jumps in time are motivated by the autobiographers' need for revision and self-evaluation; the fragmentation and insertion of meditative sections illustrate the true nature of recollection, highlighting self-defining memories and the fog in between.
