The Only Story
As Susan sinks into depression and alcoholism, Barnes captures the bleak dynamics of a situation her would-be savior is ill-equipped to handle: "You notice there are times when she seems, not squiffy, but out of focus. Not bleary of face, but bleary of mind," he writes in the most trying, second-person section. When Paul questions her drinking, she snaps, "Don't you turn into a policeman, Paul." There's a sharp disquisition on good sex, bad sex, and — worst of all — sad sex. "Don't give up on me just yet, Casey Paul," Susan beseeches him repeatedly. Paul feels bound to Susan by his love — committed, even addicted to her. "But," Barnes writes in one of this sad story's most forlorn lines, "you begin to wonder — not for the first time in your life — if there is something to be said for feeling less."
The Only Story is the first of Barnes' books not dedicated to his wife, Pat Kavanaugh, who died in 2008. Significantly, the familiar conundrums Paul contemplates pertain just as readily to bereft mourners as to people singed by romance gone awry. "Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?" he wonders. And: "Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more, or love the less, and suffer the less?" This latter query may be, his scorched narrator asserts, "finally, the only real question." But then, Barnes' amatory absolutist equivocates: "If you can control it, then it isn't love. I don't know what you call it instead, but it isn't love." The Only Story is about losing control, but also, losing the ability to lose control.
Julian Barnes has a place with the age of British postmodernist authors, and postmodernism isn't only a scholarly peculiarity.
For the most part, postmodernism is an exceptionally incomprehensible peculiarity. It is never either/or, it is consistently both/and simultaneously. The logical inconsistency would be the exact moment name of postmodernism.
Barnes' books are without any constrained positive thinking. The properties of postmodern words might be supported by books that reflect reality or fiction. In the present postmodern time fiction, genuine 'the truth' isn't depicted. This resembles an assertion of reality, like how a gem mirrors our picture's reality. In a few of Barnes' accounts, the essential characters reflect real pictures as an imaginary picture rather than uncovering their actual properties. Accordingly, a few of Barnes' characters influence the picture and considering Barnes.
For sure, a few of Barnes' works follow an unquestionably postmodern account structure, carrying significant characters to the mark of fabulation (as in Metro Land) and resolving the issue of the mission for outright reality. One such hunt might be both adroit and baffling, yet it comes full circle in a comprehension of the significance of fabulation for the system of stories attempting to impart rational importance into regular daily existence.
Postmodernists dismissed the view which finished with authenticity, that writing was a solid wellspring of widespread realities, however such view was until recently never addressed. In the practice of postmodernism this supposition that is addressed. There are no general facts, as per postmodernism, there is nobody steady, quantifiable reality, there are just real factors.
Paul agonises about the nature of love, even going so far as to keep a notebook of sayings on the subject. He concludes that pain is an inevitable concomitant of love, and wonders if he'd have been happier if he'd loved less, and presumably therefore brought less pain on himself and Susan.
As Paul's story unfurls, obviously it's with regards to adore overall and first love specifically, which, the book contends, is the main story we truly need to tell about ourselves.
Such a case surely enlightens other delightful, tormenting books, like Patrick Modiano's The Black Notebook. In any case, is Barnes' account of Paul and his darling Susan expected to be a useful example regarding how enervating it is for individuals when heartfelt love turns into their main story? Or on the other hand is it a misfortune? Is Barnes saying that individuals are ill-fated to initially cherish being their main critical story regardless of whether that adoration is pitiful, unexpected, and untidy, all things considered with Paul and Susan? Barnes appears generally to buy into the last option recommendation, however with a critical adjustment: their adoration might appear to be miserable - more youthful man meets more seasoned lady, complicity is laid out, affection is culminated, marriage self-destructs, love blurs, liquor addiction suffers - yet it's not really measly by any means, in light of the fact that the narrative of these two sentimental people epitomizes human love as friendly scrupulousness.
Many of Barnes’s recent novels have been constructed like this, out of a handful of scenes that are revisited and re-rehearsed in the memory, generating tangles of story in the retelling. “Most of us have only one story to tell,” says Paul late in the novel, “I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there’s only one that matters, only one finally worth telling.” Sometimes it feels like Barnes himself might have been telling only one story through all his writing. And this is to the good, for his themes are the big, unfashionable, universals — ageing, memory, above all love — and they have remained constant.
The primary segment of the novel, composed as a confession booth in the main individual, covers the prospering sentiment among Paul and Susan. Here the tone is light and windy, loaded with conversational asides: "She was actually my stature, which is five feet nine assuming I am lying and adding an inch," composes Barnes; "You comprehend, I trust, that I'm letting you know everything as I recollect it?" Paul tells us later. Yet, as the tone shifts, so too does the story mode. Portions of the subsequent segment - in which abusive behavior at home, liquor addiction and misuse obscure the story - are written as an outsider looking in, and the last segment is composed dominatingly in the subsequent individual, addressed to a "he" who both is and isn't Paul. "Maybe he saw, and carried on with, his life as an outsider looking in," Paul contends to and with himself, "Which permitted him to evaluate it all the more precisely, he accepted." You start to understand that this may not be a direct retribution with the past by any means, however an endeavor to remove himself from it. It's like even in advanced age Paul can't look up to his recollections of those occasions, as though describing them in some alternate way will exonerate him of their repercussions.
PAUL :-
Paul Roberts is the hero and central matter of-view character of the book. A significant part of the clever's portrayal is outlined as Paul's contemplations as he reflects upon his life all in all. Toward the start of the account, Paul is 19 years of age. He is living in a rural town in England during the 1960s. He experiences passionate feelings for Susan Macleod, a 48-year-old wedded lady. Paul and Susan start to have a prudent heartfelt connection. As a young fellow, Paul despises typical daily schedule and values love as the principle motivation behind life. After Paul moves on from school, he and Susan move to a little house in London. Paul chooses to start examining to be an attorney.
Paul ends up being to some degree upset by Susan's refusal to get a proper separation from her better half, and he ends up being progressively bothered as Susan fosters a drinking issue. In the story's assessment of the different inconsistencies and difficulties innate inside the idea of affection, the account tries to use Paul and Susan's relationship as showing how satisfaction and enduring are inescapable in a close connection, but at the same time are frequently concurrent peculiarities. The story initially presents this thought by opening the novel as follows: "Could you rather adore the more, and experience the more; or love the less, and experience the less?"
Thusly, the account quickly draws a topical association among satisfaction and experiencing that underlies the narrative of Susan and Paul's relationship. A friend of theirs takes care of Susan. Paul dates Anna, a woman of his own age, but the relationship never satisfies Paul. He moves back in with Susan and takes on the work of caring for her. After some years, Susan’s daughter Martha agrees to take over Susan’s care.
SUSAN :-
In a random-draw mixed doubles, Paul is thrown together with Susan MacLeod, a 48-year-old married woman with two daughters older than Paul. Improbably, Paul and Susan become lovers and she eventually leaves her family to set up house with Paul in South London. starved of social contact, Paul joins the local tennis club and signs up for mixed doubles. He is paired with forty-eight-year-old Susan Macleod, attractive but shy, troubled, and married. Paul quickly becomes infatuated with her and they begin a sexual relationship. Paul learns that Susan has not had sex with her husband, Gordon, in two decades. He is abusive, pushing her face into a doorframe in a drunken rage. Paul meets him, and although he is outwardly civil to Gordon, he despises the older man intensely. Paul meets their children, Martha and Clara (whom he refers to as “Miss G” and “Miss N. G.” for “Miss Grumpy” and “Miss Not-So-Grumpy).
Paul and Susan pursue their relationship in secret, while Paul’s infatuation grows. When their affair is discovered, they are expelled from the tennis club. Paul’s parents are outraged. He returns to university, but Susan has become the center of his life. Their relationship undermines his studies and his social life, but although Paul realizes that his love for Susan is taking a toll on his life, perhaps changing its course forever, he cannot relinquish her. Paul sees that Susan is drinking a ton, more than previously. He attempts to check her drinking yet it declines, slowly forming into out and out liquor abuse. At the point when Paul attempts to help her, she either backslides or continues to drink and attempts (ineffectively) to conceal it from him.
As the drinking deteriorates, it makes Susan endure dementia-like side effects of suspicion, temperament swings, and neglect. Paul takes her to a specialist and afterward registers her with a center, yet neither one of the mediations ends Susan's decay. Before long she is preposterous and unfit to really focus on herself.
JOAN :-
Paul is also introduced to Susan’s former tennis partner, Joan, another housewife of the leafy suburbs. Joan is hard-drinking and cynical, admitting that her ambitions have shrunk to nothing more than finding cheaper bottles of gin, but Paul takes a liking to her. She is more responsible than Susan. Many times she tries to understand Susan that what she is doing is wrong but Susan doesn't came up with the sense of understanding.
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