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| Nothing to Be Frightened Of | 
 enlarge | List Price: $24.95 (€19.71)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 11 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1784
Category: Book
Author: Julian Barnes
Publisher: Knopf
Studio: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Label: Knopf
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307269639
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780307269638
ASIN: 0307269639
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
Release Date: September 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Two years after the best-selling Arthur & George, Julian Barnes gives us a memoir on mortality that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction.
If the fear of death is ?the most rational thing in the world,? how does one contend with it? An atheist at twenty, an agnostic at sixty, Barnes looks into the various arguments for and against and with God, and at the bloodline whose archivist, following his parents? death, he has become?another realm of mystery, wherein a drawer of mementos and his own memories (not to mention those of his philosopher brother) often fail to connect. There are other ancestors, too: the writers??most of them dead, and quite a few of them French??who are his daily companions, supplemented by composers and theologians and scientists whose similar explorations are woven into this account with an exhilarating breadth of intellect and felicity of spirit.
Deadly serious, masterfully playful, and surprisingly hilarious, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a riveting display of how this supremely gifted writer goes about his business and a highly personal tour of the human condition and what might follow the final diagnosis.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Always interesting but did not quite fit together.... December 1, 2008
Barnes is bright, entertaining, reflective, and knowledgable and all those positives come together in this discursive treatise on death and many other not totally aligned subjects. I enjoyed my time with him but I kept expecting just a little bit more insight into the main subject: death or rather the fear of death and dying. And yet...I did feel a bit better after finishing the book. Less alone? More aware of the fact that many other people share the same fear? And that many other people have difficult and strained family relationships and awkward memories of things left unsaid and unresolved? I think so. Somehow we do feel that it is all going to come together by the end, even though we must know that it is unlikely to do so. The book brought that vain yet obviously fairly common hope to our attention and dashed it in a pretty gentle manner. For that I am grateful.
 CONCISION December 1, 2008
I'm an off and on again admirer of Mr. Barnes' work, having become smitten with "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" and then befuddled by "The Porcupine" (yes, the problem is clearly mine, not his). But in "Nothing to be frightened of" Barnes finds a compelling form for the application of his encyclopedic knowledge of literature and life. Great fiction, of course, gets harder and harder to invent as the volumes and ideas pile up. What Barnes does here is to reintroduce the personal essay (in an inventive shape), a form capable of more direct and specific communication than the inherently more meaning-malleable novel. And as such, in but one instance, Barnes provides one of the most concise and comprehensible summaries of the author / audience tangle I have ever read. And after reading it, I felt gratitude for such elegant and direct insight.
That response extends to his handling of the main topic at work here: death. Bringing an intricate and accessible weft to the many impressions, inferences, references and experiences surrounding death, often pivoting on a sort of sentimental peg (recognized as such by the author), that is a longing for the reassurance and comfort of faith set beside the knowledge that such reassurance is objectively unavailable. This results in an engaging argument with himself roughly summarized by "if the universe is so big and we're so close to nothing, what's wrong with a bit of self delusion?" a question that spools out across the 200 pages, down thoughtful and entertaining roads. Free of bile and cliche, open minded and open ended, this is all great stuff. And important as well.
 Still Frightened November 11, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Although there were interesting issues discussed about death and dying, Barnes also included a great deal of space to his childhood and memories about his parents with no particular relevance to what I thought was his central theme: reflections on death. The book lacked focus and an overall sense of direction. Barnes relied heavily on his own experience with the death of his parents and a number of French writers of the 18th and 19th century who wrote about this subject. In between writing about death and dying, he would bring up an incident from his youth (for example) when he was pushed by his brother on tricycle into a wall and how different people had different memories of what actually happened. This occurred a number of times and always left me puzzled as to why it was included in the book. Did he not have an editor to keep him on task? I can't really recommend this book and in the end it left me still frightened.
Truthful, a little rueful. November 9, 2008
Julian Barnes is the man I most would like to do lunch with!! Everything he writes is a sardonic conversation between our most cherished delusions and our true nature, whether he is musing on God,as in this book, or fictionalizing what has replaced God in his many novels.There is a kind of innate modesty in his writing that makes his words irresistible.
What's There to Like? November 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The truth is, I did not like this book except where it permitted me to escape its main topic. I am not an embracer of death, nor is Barnes, who hates and fears it, as I do. But he wrote a whole book about it. Are his death obsessions rooted in vanity or cowardice or, golly, mortality? Barnes admits to waking up in the dead of night yelling, "No No NO!" as he dreams of being swallowed up into blackness. And death weaves its way into his entire opus of novels because Barnes has always been obsessed with its ultimate appearance for every living thing.
Who can really accept death? Barnes gives us lots of small talk about the topic from such giants as Flaubert, Stendahl, Stravinsky, and Phillip Larkin, all of whom faced that moment in various states of terror. These are the good parts of his ramblings. In fact, when he's off topic, which is rarely, that's when this book is bearable. But I must say, 240 pages of musings, twistings, and turnings from Barnes on the ultimate moment are enough to depress the hell out of anybody, as there is no escape, not even blind, idiotic acceptance, which perhaps a handful of people have achieved. And even though Barnes poo poos the notion of being a father and passing on the genes as being a mild antidote to our shared mortal dilemma, I wonder how his life would have changed had he been one. Not all the moments he's spent dwelling on death, and death dwelling on him, would even have been available to him, as he'd have been changing nappies and going to parent-teacher meetings instead.
I've always admired Barnes, and this book of unpleasant musings only adds to that admiration. As you might tell, I have mixed feelings toward this book and its grisly theme. Hah! What does it really matter what feelings I have toward death, which also holds true for Mr. Barnes. No spiritual transfigurations here. No comforts, not even that of "artistic immortality." In fact, Barnes does not claim that he writes to overcome death. He writes because he writes, as plumbers plumb and butchers butcher. It's his job. It's what he does.
This book has been reviewed in The New York Review of Books by Frank Kermode and in the New York Times book review section, front page, by Garrison Keillor. They found it meritorious. I found it annoying, like a poisonous growth on my lower lip. So why 4 stars? Because poisonous growths are embedded in true art, and Barnes fully understands that. Besides, just about anything Barnes has to say is worth hearing, even if it's poured into your ear like deadly bile.
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