Julian Barnes

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My Costaway this week is a writer. A clever North London boy, he graduated from Oxford to the review pages of the Upmarket Press, where his views on the latest books and the latest television programmes earned him a reputation as a clever writer.

Presenter0:41

By the time he was thirty four he published his first novel, Metroland, which won him his first literary prize. Since then he has written another eight, and won three more, most famously perhaps for Flaubert's Parrot, a mixture of biography, criticism, and fiction that links its author to his love of France and its culture.

Presenter1:01

Widely admired here in Britain and abroad, he has been translated into thirty languages, he nevertheless remains somewhat enigmatic. The writer makes the rules about what you talk about, he says. He is Julian Barnes.

Presenter1:14

Do I take it from that, Julian, that you just don't like being interviewed?

Julian Barnes1:18

It depends on the interviewer.

Presenter1:20

Somebody described it as trying to get blood from a turnip.

Julian Barnes1:23

Yes, I have my turn at moments, it's true.

Presenter1:26

Have you very firm and proper professional reasons to justify not liking being interviewed, or is it simply that you find it an uncomfortable experience?

Julian Barnes1:35

I find it vaguely uncomfortable. There's a sort of presumption of intimacy, which is false. The other thing is that if you're a writer, you're often asked questions about your books which invite you to simplify your books. The question that you're often asked is, what were you trying to say in such and such a novel? To which the answer is, what I was trying to say was what I did say. And the answers are really in the books. And what you are too often, perhaps, invited to do is either reduce fiction to autobiography, or reduce a sort of complex novelistic structure to some Christmas cracker motto, some little piece of wisdom, which is what you were really trying to say all along.

Presenter2:23

But there is a lot of autobiography in your novels, isn't there? I mean, you couldn't write unless I mean, I think you said yourself that novel writing is one of blending your own personality into a world of your creation. So you're in there.

Julian Barnes2:39

Well, I wrote the books, that's true, and at times there are moments when my own personal experience might be used untranslated. But what's interesting about fiction writers, it seems to me, is what they make up, how they transform what they see rather than what they see.

Presenter2:59

Let me try out on you then what I think I have spotted in your novels about the writer Julian Barnes. I conclude obviously that he has an enormously high regard for Flaubert, if if not for his parrot, that he is an atheist, that he's an ardent Leicester City fan, that he enjoys sex, that he thinks love is more important than anything else in the world, and that he fears, above all things, death. Is that a fair summary?

Julian Barnes3:26

I fear death, that's true, and I fear Leicester City getting relegated. I don't think I'm an an atheist, I I'd say I'm an agnostic.

Presenter3:34

You have a high regard for Flaubert.

Julian Barnes3:35

I have a high regard for Flaubert, and who could go on this programme and deny that they liked sex?

Presenter3:41

And love?

Julian Barnes3:43

Well, who could deny that they that they thought that love was important?

Presenter3:46

More of that to come. Tell me about your first record.

Julian Barnes3:49

My first record is Pergoles' Starbuck Martyr, which is one of the most beautiful works I've discovered in the last few years. You can also treat it as a basic test of humanity in that this is the O quam Tristis, and if, at a point about twenty-five seconds in, your heart doesn't turn over, then I think there's something wrong with you.

Speaker 45:02

Yeah.

Presenter5:11

Au quam tristis from Pergolesi's Starbert Martyr, sung by June Anderson and Cichilia Bartili, with the Sinfonette de Montreal, conducted by Charles Dutois.

Presenter5:21

Did you always intend to write, Julian, or or you know, was it always on the cards?

Julian Barnes5:25

No, it wasn't on the cards. Um I was brought up in a household where um there were books and books were respected. Um both my parents taught French. Uh school teachers. School teachers, yes. Um but it wasn't a background in which it seemed an obvious or

Presenter5:36

School teachers.

Julian Barnes5:43

Defensible thing to do to actually practice the arts rather than enjoy them.

Presenter5:48

You went up to Oxford and were spectacularly inactive, you said. Do you think more so than most, or?

Julian Barnes5:53

Yes, I think more so than most. You know, I didn't work particularly hard.

Julian Barnes5:58

I didn't do all those things you're meant to do.

Presenter6:00

But you were a a bookish sort of chap, as you said. It was a bookish household. Did you go off as as Christopher did in Metroland to Sunday tea with relations, always clutching a book, always wanting to stick your nose in?

Julian Barnes6:10

Oh, no, I didn't. No, I know. No, you see, immediately I m that's something that I made up in one of my books. I don't think I would have been allowed to go to tea with um my grandparents clutching a book. That would have been impolite.

Presenter6:21

But were you a francophile schoolboy, like like um Christopher? Did you sort of speak in sophisticated franglais with your chums?

Julian Barnes6:29

No, I made a bit of that up. I was certainly a francophile. I studied French and Russian at school. I think from that point on, even though at the start there was probably an element of snobbery about it, several of m my most important uh intellectual points of reference are French rather than British.

Presenter6:45

So you didn't rush round um disrupting respectable Londoners by in a in an attempt to est pate la bourgeoisie?

Julian Barnes6:53

No, no, I was much too um timid.

Presenter6:55

It's all fiction this, is it?

Julian Barnes6:56

Yes, amazing what you can make up, isn't it?

Presenter6:57

You didn't lose your virginity in Paris during Les Evenment.

Julian Barnes7:01

No, I didn't know. Absolutely. I wasn't in Paris during Les Evinament.

Presenter7:06

It's sad that. No, I agree. But it's sad because, in fact, you write about that episode of Christopher losing his virginity, and it's terribly touching. It's not.

Julian Barnes7:06

I said

Presenter7:15

At all embarrassing as sometimes descriptions of adolescent sex can be, so somehow one was convinced that it probably was true.

Julian Barnes7:22

Yes, it's funny. I mean, Metroland finally came out in French about a year ago, and there was a little programme about it on French television. And they took me to an area of northern Paris, and I didn't know why they were taking me there. And they sat me down on a park bench. And they said, Do you know where you are? And I sort of said roughly, and they said, Because it's just here, in fact, in that building over there, that Christopher, I mean you, lost his virginity. And they were terribly dashed when I said, Actually, I made it up.

Presenter7:56

It's so reserved that. Why did it take you so long to write, though? It took you eight years, Metroland, your first novel. Yes. Why so long?

Julian Barnes8:03

Oh, lack of self confidence. I didn't think I knew what I was doing. I didn't think that I had the right, the justification, to be a novelist, which seemed an incredibly sort of grand and grown up thing to be.

Presenter8:16

But then it won the Somerset Maugham Prize, so that that that that did something for the confidence, presumably.

Julian Barnes8:18

That

Julian Barnes8:20

Yes, it did, yes. And after that.

Julian Barnes8:24

I've published a novel roughly every two years since.

Presenter8:28

Record number two.

Julian Barnes8:29

Record number two is the great voice of post-war French song, even though he was himself a Belgian, Jacques Brelles, a great singer whom I saw on his final singing tour of France in 1967 before he retired and went off to the South Seas. So A the voice, B the fact that I saw him, and C if I'm going to be on a desert island somewhere in the South Seas, I assume. Brell, interestingly, is buried on the same island and in the same cemetery as Gauguin.

Speaker 19:02

Monpère disaid.

Speaker 19:05

C'est levant du nal, qui the caraquidi gas havening.

Speaker 19:11

A Shavening

Speaker 19:14

Telemont Ford, consequently navigate.

Speaker 19:18

La Maire du Nor

Speaker 19:21

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 19:23

C'est lendor, que tons père s lesiu des endu nor.

Speaker 19:29

Tranzu Valiant.

Presenter9:30

Jacques Prel and Mauper Tizet.

Presenter9:33

So um you didn't on graduating uh Julian Barnes have the confidence to write. In fact, you became a lexicographer for the OED supplement in what you've called the sex and dirty words department. What did you have to do?

Julian Barnes9:45

I have to say that that's my description of the department rather than the Oxford University Press's description of the department. I had to research the history of words, words which had come into the language or usages which had come into the language since about eighteen eighty.

Presenter10:02

It's a pretty solitary job, but one which I dare say appealed to your your sense of precision, your love of facts, your orderliness,'cause that is true about you, isn't it?

Julian Barnes10:11

Yes, though I think it appealed to me because i I was only offered two jobs in the nine months after I left university. And the first was as a tax inspector and the second was as a lexicographer. Guess which you chose. Guess which I chose, yes.

Presenter10:22

Guess what you choose?

Presenter10:25

But but there is an orderliness about you. I mean, as as I as I struggle here to find out something about Julian Barthes. L let me ask you about a more recent experience. You were for five years recently the London correspondent of The New Yorker, and they have a fact checking department. They checked everything you wrote, and you you liked that, didn't you?

Julian Barnes10:42

It was good to write for them, because you knew that they would check everything. I wrote a piece about the Duke of Edinburgh's Committee for the Redesign of Coins and Medals, which meets in Buckingham Palace. One of my informants said that as you walked up the stairs to this office, there was a landseer of such and such a subject on the wall. So I put this into the piece. And the fact-checker, after about fifteen conversations on the piece, said, Oh, by the way, we are having a bit of trouble with the landseer. And I said flippantly, oh, well, why don't you ring up Buckingham Palace? And he said, Oh, I have rung up Buckingham Palace. It's just the trouble is that they refuse to confirm or deny whether there is such a landseer in the palace.

Presenter11:24

But you you approve of I'm I'm hanging on to my point here you approve of that kind of precision.

Presenter11:29

And it's also true, is it not, that Flaubert was

Presenter11:33

also very precise in that kind of way, approved of that kind of thing.

Julian Barnes11:37

Yes, he did.

Presenter11:39

It's also true, isn't it, that that that Flaubert studied law for a while and then abandoned it, which you did too, didn't you?

Julian Barnes11:45

Yes, that I hadn't thought of that. Um further similarity is we both studied it with a certain amount of boredom and indifference, and were relieved when um when we were allowed to stop studying it.

Presenter11:57

But is there more than coincidence here? Do you see a lot of yourself in Flaubert or do you design yourself? I don't know.

Julian Barnes12:04

I don't know. I mean, the other big difference between us is he's French and he's dead. I'm drawn to him because he is the writer's writer par excellence. He's the saint and perhaps the martyr of literature. He's the man who invented the modern novel, in my view. But because he's foreign and that far away, you don't want to write like him now. But there are many.

Presenter12:28

But there are many things that you quote him or seem to quote him. I'm not sure whether they're actually direct quotes from him or not. I mean, let me try some out on you.

Speaker 112:36

Yeah.

Julian Barnes12:36

Uh

Presenter12:36

I pigeonhole my life and keep everything in its place. I'm as full of old drawers and compartments as an old travelling trunk.

Julian Barnes12:43

That's wonderful, isn't it? And that's that's him, that's not me. I don't know.

Presenter12:45

That is you're a collector, you're a hoarder, aren't you?

Julian Barnes12:49

I'm sort of a collector. I don't know whether I pigeonhole my life.

Presenter12:52

But you do keep old tickets and programmes and scrap books. You're again, we're back to this orderliness and neatness. You've got a record of your life tucked away in the war, my red.

Julian Barnes13:01

Yes, th that's true, that's true.

Presenter13:04

Let me try a last one on you.

Presenter13:06

Deep within there is a radical, intimate, and incessant boredom, which prevents me from enjoying anything, and which smothers my soul.

Julian Barnes13:14

No, he was, it's true, restless out of a a sometimes unquenchable boredom. That's not one of my um weaknesses or one of my uh things that irritate me into writing at all. I still feel as if I'm very interested in the world.

Presenter13:30

Record number three.

Julian Barnes13:33

Record number three is the wonderful old shaker song Simple Gifts as set by Aaron Copeland. I like the whole set of old American songs that he wrote. But this one in particular seems to

Julian Barnes13:49

demonstrate and remind us of a tremendous sort of hopefulness that in the nineteenth century and earlier people could go off and start a new life elsewhere in a different way, according to their own principles.

Julian Barnes14:05

And that is something that, it seems to me, has completely gone from the modern world. Now we all tend unless we want to live in an ashram or become survivalists in Montana we all tend to live in roughly the same way, and there aren't new ways to discover of living, and this is about a new way.

Speaker 414:29

Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free, tis the gift to come down where you ought to be. And when we find ourselves in the place just right, we'll be in the valley of love and delight.

Speaker 414:57

When true simplicity is gained, To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed to turn, turn will be our delight till by turning, turning we come around.

Presenter15:17

Simple gifts sung by William Warfield with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Aaron Copeland.

Presenter15:23

So we got to Julian Barnes in his twenties, Oxford graduate in modern languages, lexicographer, turned student lawyer, shy, rather quiet, lacking in confidence, who turns to book reviewing. Apparently at your first attempt, which was for Martin Amis on the New Statesman, I think, you he asked you to review a selection of books and then you reviewed all ten at a breathless pace.

Julian Barnes15:45

This is true. This was one of my early debates as a reviewer. I thought that if you were sent ten books, then that's what you were meant to do, and I devoted a sort of fair eighty five words to each of them.

Presenter15:57

But it was Amos who gave you your first break, was it?

Julian Barnes15:57

But it was a

Julian Barnes15:59

Um no, it wasn't actually. Early on I worked for him on the TLS, but before that I had I had had work elsewhere, yes.

Presenter16:07

But but obviously a friendship with him developed. And but you were literary rivals as w as well as friends. Is it the case that you used to read the final draft of each other's novels?

Julian Barnes16:18

Yes, that's true, though th I don't think that makes us rivals.

Presenter16:22

Well, only in the friendliest sense. I mean, that you you know, you were two people who knew each other who wrote and swapped novels.

Julian Barnes16:24

Hmm.

Julian Barnes16:27

Yes, that's right. No, we used to read the proof, not the final draft, but the proof of one another's works. The thinking behind it was that uh at that late stage you couldn't say um oh, by the way, this is completely hopeless, um throw it away, think again uh you could only say you know the style in that sentence is a bit wrong or this is a repetition or whatever.

Presenter16:49

But you've said before now, and again, I don't know how you said it because I've only seen it in cold print, but let me quote you.

Presenter16:55

Perhaps, and this is of Amos, perhaps beneath our relaxed admiration for one another's work lies the rage to kill.

Julian Barnes17:01

Yes, that was a joke.

Presenter17:03

All right. But you did fall out in the end with Amos. Are you now on speaking terms again?

Julian Barnes17:07

I think it's private business.

Presenter17:09

Right. But the result of your friendship with him and with others in a kind of North London literary circle, you became known as being a a kind of clever jokey clique of of knowing literateurs, I think somebody put, who could ruin literary r a kind of literary mafia. Do do you plead guilty to that?

Julian Barnes17:29

The word mafia, yes. If there was a literary mafia, I wonder what we'd do.

Presenter17:37

Well ruin reputations really, sort of put it about that somebody's work wasn't any good.

Julian Barnes17:43

Oh, but all writers do that, you know. I mean nothing special about that. If you're using words like mafia or establishment, then what you're talking about is power. Power resides, it seems to me, with um the people who actually buy the books, whether they are readers or publishers. But if you're a writer

Julian Barnes18:03

Such stuff most of the time you spend at home writing it.

Presenter18:07

But

Julian Barnes18:08

Wonderful.

Presenter18:08

Yeah.

Julian Barnes18:09

Record number four is chosen for associative reasons. It's King Oliver and Struggle Buggy. But this doesn't remind me of America. This reminds me of France. I think one of the times at which I'm most content is setting off

Julian Barnes18:26

in the beginning of an evening for my dinner, driving through

Julian Barnes18:31

French countryside, with the sun setting and the vineyards running away from one like green corduroy, and then one naturally has one's dinner. And coming back I will often play this particular record, and I'm sure on my island it would return France to me.

Presenter19:44

King Oliver and his orchestra and struggle buggy. In every article I've read about you, Julian Barnes, there's mention of the desk at which you write. So as this is radio, I'm afraid you have to describe it to me. It's it's large, I understand, and it's purpose-built, isn't it?

Julian Barnes19:59

I sort of designed this desk and had it built, and all sorts of complications ensued, and the carpenter who built it nearly went bankrupt as a result. But a friend borrowed the house, who was also a writer, and said afterwards, as he sat at my desk, it felt like being an American newscaster, and he was sort of kept turning to the right to see where the sort of the weather girl was, and she wasn't there.

Presenter20:25

But you write to order, do you you demand of yourself that you go in at a certain time of day and sit there till you've done whatever?

Julian Barnes20:31

It doesn't really work that I make myself go in and write X hundred words a day. In a funny sort of way it often operates negatively that I realize that if I don't write something every day, or at least one day in two, that I get discontented, that a sort of nonspecific discontent begins to invade me.

Presenter20:51

So you enjoy the act of writing. There is a pleasure in it. You don't indulge in any of these delaying tactics that some writers report?

Julian Barnes20:58

I love writing. It gives me immense pleasure doing it.

Presenter21:03

And you you write and you rewrite, don't you? You hone it.

Julian Barnes21:06

Yes, I mean, I think most writing is in the rewriting. I think writers vary according to how

Julian Barnes21:13

Swiftly and smoothly their first draft comes, but the serious writing often begins only after that first draft has been knocked out. I mean Flaubert, to quote him, said, Prose is like hair, it shines with combing.

Presenter21:21

But does this

Presenter21:27

But you also have to make a living at this. I mean, du does that come into the reckoning? Do you think, my God, you know, w what's my next book going to be about? I need the advance? I mean, is there always something there ripening up in your head, or do you panic?

Julian Barnes21:38

I'm not happy writing a novel unless I know what the next project is likely to be. I think that's part of necessary psychologically stabilizing.

Presenter21:49

What the one after the one you're writing? Yes.

Julian Barnes21:49

And after the one you're writing. Yes, yes. I mean, you know, r it's like the the the alcoholic who's only um happy with the whisky if he can see another one lined up on the shelf above him, just within the eye line.

Presenter22:02

More music.

Julian Barnes22:03

Record number five is again associational, and it's again it's a sort of landscape association. I've taken in the last few years to going for long tramps in the English countryside. I think the connection is

Julian Barnes22:19

between um mortification of the flesh over six, seven, eight, nine, ten miles, and then getting in to your car and the first thing you put on the radio uh is Brahms's sumptuous first sextet, opus eighteen.

Presenter23:35

Part of Brahm's String Sextet number one in B flat major, played by Yehudi Menouin, Robert Masters, Cecil Aronowitz, Ernst Valfisch, Maurice Gendren, and Derek Simpson.

Presenter23:45

I think I'm right in saying, Julian Barnes, that the history of the world in ten and a half chapters has been your best seller, hasn't it?

Julian Barnes23:50

Yes, it has.

Presenter23:51

Dare I say that that might be partly because people thought they were buying the the kind of ultimate historical crib, that they were going to be served up all human knowledge in ten and a half chapters.

Julian Barnes24:01

Well, maybe, in which case it was a very cunning title.

Presenter24:03

But a very accessible bit well it seems to be superficially accessible anyway is the last chapter which deals with the the Barnes view of heaven in which Leicester City wins the cup and food is endless breakfasts with crispy bacon rind served separately and there's loads of sex and shopping. It it's it's pretty c pretty cynical stuff, isn't it? What this is one of those questions you don't like, but what are you trying to tell us?

Julian Barnes24:25

What am I well, what I did tell you. Um, it's not the Barnes view of heaven. It was an attempt to cast in fictional form a sort of current view of heaven, which is that heaven is actually remarkably like

Julian Barnes24:38

Real life, except you've had the nose job, or the breast enlargement, or you don't have to make the dinner, and so on and so forth, which seems to me imaginatively and spiritually reduced. I mean, I'm an agnostic, but I hope that if there is some sort of afterlife or alternate life, that God has been imaginative, has been enough of a fiction maker to make something a bit different from what we've got at the moment.

Presenter25:06

But the half chapter of the ten and a half tells us, and it states that this is Julian Barnes speaking. I don't know whether we should believe it, but that's what it says.

Julian Barnes25:13

It doesn't state that it is Julian Buzz, it asks you the question.

Presenter25:15

Because

Presenter25:16

It says that then this is Julian Barnes speaking at one point.

Presenter25:21

Well, it mentions your name.

Julian Barnes25:22

It mentions my name, I Greece.

Presenter25:25

Not cool.

Julian Barnes25:25

Uh

Presenter25:25

All right. Well, let me ask you about it. It says that love is what it's all about, the world. That love is our only hope.

Julian Barnes25:27

It says that the

Presenter25:33

It it becomes evangelical, really. It says how you cuddle in the dark governs how you see the history of the world. Well, is that you speaking then?

Julian Barnes25:42

All fiction is fiction. This is the point where it comes closest to being autobiography, yes.

Presenter25:49

Would you agree, then, if I can try and

Presenter25:52

Pin you down to a theme, if there are themes at all in your books, that love is a fairly constant theme. If not, love.

Presenter25:59

Bordering on obsession.

Julian Barnes26:03

I think, yes, I write I write about love a fair amount. I write about lots of other things a fair amount. I don't know what my what my prime subject matter is. I leave that to people who look at my work from the outside.

Presenter26:15

Well, love props up more than most, I would say.

Julian Barnes26:15

Um

Julian Barnes26:18

Uh okay.

Presenter26:22

Enigmatic to the end, you see. More music.

Julian Barnes26:25

Well, as we're talking about love, this is a piece of wonderful late Romanticism, um C'est a France violin sonata. One of the things I love about it is is when you get to late romanticism and a sort of um soaring and swooping emotions which seem to sort of burst the form in which they're in are displayed in a comparatively austere form like the violin sonata.

Presenter27:51

Part of Cesare Franck's sonata for violin and piano in A major, played by Isaac Stern and Alexander Zarkin.

Presenter27:58

If love is a theme of yours, Julian, then death is also, because it crops up again and again in your books, from Metro Land and Staring at the Sun to History of the World.

Presenter28:11

Let me ask again. Christopher in Metroland says he's scared to death of death. Are you are you scared of death?

Julian Barnes28:17

Yes, absolutely. What he also says is I wouldn't mind dying if I didn't end up dead at the end of it. And that seems to me a sort of fairly sound approach to the matter.

Presenter28:26

It's the being dead.

Julian Barnes28:27

Yes, the being dead, it's the non-existence, the eternity of non-existence, or the probability of an eternity of nonexistence.

Presenter28:28

The non-existent.

Presenter28:35

But did yours begin in adolescence like Christopher's? He says that the arrival of of the fear of the Big D was linked to the departure of God.

Julian Barnes28:43

Yes. Now I confess to you that that part is absolutely autobiographical and absolutely true. And it's also the case that the that the fear of death would always arrive at a certain time after uh the lights had been turned out, and always when I was sleeping on one particular side, and to this day I sleep on the other side.

Presenter29:02

But it's more than just a sort of passing fear of being dead, is it is a kind of paralysing horror.

Julian Barnes29:06

Paralyzing horror. Well, absolutely. It has to be. And and some of your day is spent avoiding looking at it. I suppose I think about death every day, yes.

Julian Barnes29:18

It's partly natural distaste for not being here. It's partly egotism. It's probably partly some sort of chemical thing in my brain. I'm surprised that most people don't think about death more than they do. I think it's one of those things that we aren't al we aren't meant to think about now, or you're not meant to think about them until it's nearer the time. You know, it seems to me that it's always nearer the time, it's always too damn near the time.

Presenter29:41

Perhaps being on a desert island makes it nearer the time. We we like to think that that being on this desert island brings you face to face with your own mortality. Do you think therefore you'll be

Julian Barnes29:41

I'm screaming on it.

Speaker 429:49

Yeah.

Julian Barnes29:49

Do you think

Presenter29:51

extremely miserable on the island because death will seem even closer than it does in Tufnall Park.

Julian Barnes29:56

Yes, I think I'll I'll probably go mad and die, if you want the honest answer.

Julian Barnes30:01

Yeah.

Presenter30:01

Mad First

Julian Barnes30:02

Uh probably mad first, yes. I mean, however nice and comfortable you make the island for me, um it's still solitary confinement, isn't it? And while as a writer I like being alone at my desk, that's again dependent on the idea that, you know, at the end of the day or the week or whatever, I will have society. And if, you know, you've only got an albatross for company, I don't think it's going to be much fun.

Presenter30:24

Type of number seven.

Julian Barnes30:25

Well, record number seven having proclaimed that I intend to go mad and die is music um to die with, um if not to die for, uh is Mozart's Requiem and so why not die to the Die's Erie?

Presenter31:39

The Diezere from Mozart's Requiem with the Monteverde Choir and English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Elliott Gardner.

Presenter31:46

How much store do you set by literary prizes, Julian? You've won quite a few of them. Do do you think they have a value?

Julian Barnes31:53

Yes, they have a value, and it's usually um got a pound sign in front of it. Um beyond that they have a value of giving the writer a sort of important reassurance.

Presenter32:04

But you've dismissed them before now as posh bingo.

Julian Barnes32:07

That's right. I mean, that's the booker should be you see, you don't write in order to win prizes, and therefore um you shouldn't be disappointed if you don't. And therefore the only way to approach them, the only practical way to approach them, is as posh bingo, but you still, you know, don't mind cashing the check.

Presenter32:25

But some authors become obsessed with winning the booker, don't they?

Julian Barnes32:29

Ah, I gather so, yes. Not me.

Presenter32:32

Can't you?

Julian Barnes32:32

Mm-hmm.

Presenter32:33

So the best test of a novel really is is the obvious one, is it? That it stays in print and people buy it and what's more they read it.

Julian Barnes32:39

Yes, and they like it.

Presenter32:40

Which which of yours comes closest to passing that test, in your view?

Julian Barnes32:45

Oh, I guess I'd choose Flobert's Parrot, um, if only because the the success that it had was completely unexpected to me.

Presenter32:54

You're just fifty. Um have you, do you think, a better novel in you yet? Is it possible to say? I suppose if you didn't think you had, you wouldn't write.

Julian Barnes33:01

Yes, that's right. The answer to what's your favorite novel is the next one. Of course you're always aiming to know more and to write better.

Julian Barnes33:10

And if you thought you've done my your best work, then you should stop. I mean, there are there are honourable examples of writers who stop. EM Forster just stopped, and in that odd English way he became more famous with every novel he didn't write.

Presenter33:25

Last record.

Julian Barnes33:26

The last record. Well, I'm assuming that you've given me a very large pair of speakers. I'm assuming that I can manoeuvre them to point them out to sea. I'm also assuming that as I'm in the South Seas, the French Navy will still be patrolling the waters from time to time, intent on blowing up coral atolls and attacking Greenpeace protesters. So I thought that if I saw a sort of little flicker on the horizon, I would turn up the volume very loud and play them Django Reinhardt and the Hot Club of Paris.

Presenter34:58

Django Reinhardt and Stephan Grappelli playing the Marseillais. So if you could only take one of those eight records, Julian, which one would it be?

Julian Barnes35:05

Mozart Requiem.

Presenter35:06

And um you've got, as you know, the Bible and Shakespeare, as you called it in Flaubert's Parad, the bare civilized minimum. What do you want? The

Julian Barnes35:14

I was wondering, I can't trade in the Bible, can I?

Julian Barnes35:17

I was thinking if I could take the joy of cooking instead, because it's got wonderful recipe for cooking squirrel, and I thought that I could probably transfer that to sort of various groundhogs or whatever I might discover. I think it might help me survive for longer than the Bible would.

Presenter35:31

Hm, except that you still presumably want some Flaubert on top of that.

Julian Barnes35:35

Oh yes, yes, that then we come to my point.

Presenter35:36

Well, you can't have the cookery book.

Julian Barnes35:37

I can't have a guru book. Okay. Well, I'll just remember the recipe for squirrel. Um and I'd like to take Flaubert's letters rather than any of his fiction. Uh I'd be writing my own fiction and I thought it would be helpful to pretend that um he was writing to me, that I could read two or three letters a day and imagine that um that I was getting post from the outside world.

Presenter35:59

What about your luxury?

Julian Barnes36:00

It would have to be writing equipment, electric typewriter if I'm allowed it, um, lots of paper, stuff like that.

Presenter36:07

Julian Barnes, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Julian Barnes36:11

Thank you.

Speaker 436:19

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.