“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes, a London Schoolboy Grows Up

“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes (2011) – 163 pages

“Yes, of course we were pretentious – what else is youth for?”

 When I started “The Sense of an Ending” while reading the amazing first chapter which takes place mostly in London classrooms, I started writing down quotations from that chapter.  At the rate I was writing down quotes, it seemed like I would be copying out nearly the entire novel.  It is important that the reader pay attention to these early classroom discussions for they set the framework for the entire novel.

 Much of the discussion centers on the study of history.
 

“That’s one of the central problems with history, isn’t it sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

 This is a statement by Adrian Finn, the acknowledged genius of the class.  Later during the classroom discussion, Adrian makes a statement that can serve as the premise of the entire novel. 

“History is that certainty produced at that point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

In the classroom, the students and their teacher are discussing the study of history as an academic subject.   After the first chapter, Julian Barnes, for the rest of the novel, applies this premise to his main character’s own personal history.   Here we have an unreliable narrator, but one who is somewhat aware of his own unreliability. 

 Our memories of people and events that happened years and years ago are faulty.  You might say we remember what we want to remember; we recall a version of events that fits into our own carefully built life story.  We block out from our memory occasions where we ourselves were cruel and mean, especially those times we were extremely mean to someone who was very close to us.   There may be letters and diaries related to these events, but they are usually not very revealing and may have been written to conceal what actually happened. 

 It is not very often today where a novel starts with a premise and follows that premise through to its logical conclusion.  We live in a dumbed down world, a world of Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, and George W. Bush.  That’s why it is such a pleasure to read a novel that is smarter than we are.

 Besides this fascinating plot, “The Sense of an Ending” offers a comprehensive definition of literature. 
 

“That was another of our fears: that Life wouldn’t turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents – were they the stuff of Literature? At best they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and by-standers, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things might happen. Like what? The things Literature was all about: love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn owls.”