Name: Nidhi P. Jethava
Paper: Contemporary Literatures in English
Roll No. : 13
Enrollment Number: 306920200009
Email ID: jethavanidhi8@gmail.com
Batch: 20-22( MA SEM- 4 )
Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English, Maharaja KrishnaKumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
The Only Story as a Memory Novel
‘The Only Story is the thirteenth novel by contemporary writer Julian Barnes. So let’s discuss first Julian Barnes first and The Only Story.
About Julian Barnes.
Julian Barnes is the author of several books of stories, essays, a translation of Alphonse Daudet's In the Land of Pain, and numerous novels, including the 2011 Man Booker Prize winning novel The Sense of an Ending and the acclaimed The Noise of Time. His other recent publications include Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art and The Only Story.
His book The Man in the Red Coat was published in the UK in 2019 and in the US in 2020. He also selected and introduced a collection of John Cheever stories titled A Vision of the World (Vintage Classics, 2021). His new novel Elizabeth Finch will be published in 2022.
Barnes has received numerous awards and honours for his writing, most recently the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2011, the 2011 Man Booker Prize, the 2021 Jerusalem Prize, and the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award. Also in 2021, he was awarded the Jean Bernard Prize, so named in memory of the great specialist in hematology who was a member of the French Academy and chaired the Academy of Medicine.
About The Only Story.
‘The Only Story’ is the story of nineteen year Paul Roberts and forty-eight years old Sussan Macleod. It is a love story that is different than any other love story. The Only Story concerns the pained recollections of an aging Englishman's life-changing only love. Fifty years after he fell hard for a woman nearly 30 years his senior, Barnes' narrator scavenges his memory and probes the scar tissue of his cauterized heart in a way that's frequently painful to read.
The Only Story as a Memory Novel:
‘The Only Story’ is a memory novel. It tuches some points like:
History is collective memory; Memory is personal history.
Trauma is Memory.
Memory and Morality.
Memory Prioritizes.
History is collective memory; Memory is personal history:
“Cinematic and narrational gimmicks apart, `Memento' contained a philosophical and ethical message at its core. If our memory is taken away from us so also is our moral responsibility for our actions. The protagonist in the film was being manipulated by conspirators who wanted to use him as the perfect instrument of murder, in that - having no memory of the crime - he could not later feel any remorse which might prompt him to confess to the deed. (Other examples - Taletell heart – Claudius confession, Arthur in Scarlet letter)
To add a further twist - both to the plot and to the moral question mark that it poses - there is ambiguity as to whether the exploited amnesiac is in fact exploiting the situation so as to make the most of his memory-free state and achieve a godlike - or devil-like - transcendence above and beyond the duality of good and evil. Is our sense of morality rooted in memory, and if we erase memory, do we erase morality along with it? This is the disturbing question raised by `Memento’. Memento' questions not just the concept of a moral self but also the concept of a continuous moral identity - an 'I' - which is responsible for its past actions.” (Dilip Barad)
In ‘The Only Story’ the protagonist Paul is the narrator of the story. The whole story is woven around their memory of him. So Mamonto arises questions like ‘Is our sense of morality rooted in memory, and if we erase memory, do we erase morality along with it? So this novel is also concerned with these questions. The character of Paul is telling us a story and he has remorse so he is hiding something, he is changing the history on his own memory.
Trauma is Memory.
Exploring the trauma and memory we can get some idea from Dipesh Chakraborty “ • One of principal arguments seems to be that “the narrative structure of the memory of trauma works on a principle opposite to that of any historical narrative”.
Julian Barnes in his two important works ‘ The Sence of an Ending’ and ‘The Only Story’ has talked about this. Cate Klanchy in his article talked “Our new hero, Paul, places himself nearer the truth-telling memoirist Barnes than his fictional predecessor, the fascinatingly unreliable Tony Webster in The Sense of an Ending. Paul begins, as if in essay form, with a wide, philosophical question: “Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more, or love the less, and suffer the less?” He constantly keeps one eye on historical context, and is especially astute on architectural detail and the way money is spent; and he is always intent on making himself ordinary, a mere example of humanity. As such, he is anxiously alert not only to the problems of self-heroizing, but its opposite: “There is the danger of being retrospectively anti-heroic: making yourself out to have behaved worse than you actually did can be a form of self-praise.”
Memory and Morality.
Memory and Morality play a very important role. So Susan and paul’s relationship turns to disaster. So is the responsible for this? Is Susan has something wrong? Did Paul feel any regret for his deeds? In the middle of the novel, Paul has written a letter to Susan’s daughter because now he is not able to take care of her. So is he are ruining reality? The answer is yes throughout the novel he speaks lies and tries to run away with his moral duties. He might be able to save Susan but he could not do this and now he has remorse. So he wants to hide that remorse and that’s why he is saving himself.
Memory Prioritizes.
“I would guess that memory prioritizes whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going. So there would be a self-interest in bringing happier memories to the surface first.” His will be, he’s advising us, a story with a time line and an arc: happy first things first, upswing, downswing.” (TOS)
So above lines by Paul show that Paul goes on to introduce another feature of memory that will shape his story.
Illustrating More about this one should remember the episode of Eric. “Eric had become involved with a younger American woman. Ashley said she loved him; a love which expressed itself as wanting to be with him all the time and never wanting to meet his friends. And Ashley wouldn’t sleep with him, no, not now anyway, but certainly later. Ashley had her faith, you see, and Eric, having been religious himself in his youth, could understand and appreciate that. Ashley wasn’t a member of an established church, because look at all the harm established churches had caused; Eric could see that too. Ashley said that if he loved her, and agreed with her contempt for worldly possessions, then he would surely join her in such beliefs. And so Eric, temporarily cut off from his friends, put his little house up for sale, planning to give the proceeds to some cockamamie sect in Baltimore, after which the couple would move there and be married by some cockamamie religious theorist, or shaman, or sham, whereupon Eric, in exchange for his Perivale house, would be granted squatter’s rights in perpetuity in his new wife’s body. Fortunately, almost at the last minute, some survival instinct asserted itself, and he had cancelled his instructions to the estate agent, whereupon Ashley vanished from his life for ever.”
So, Paul talks about this episode of his friend Eric has relationship with Ashely. Eric was ready to abandon everything but he realized that he was doing wrong and without hurting anybody he saved the situation. In the case of Paul, he was not able to do this. So, here that incident is very important.
Conclusion:
In brief, ‘The Only Story’ is different from other so-called romantic stories. It’s based on Paul’s memory. It talks about the morals of life. It talks about different aspects of memory in one’s life. It is the story of remorse from paul wanting to run away by narrating the story his own way. Memory is not reliable and it changes according to the situation.
“Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. Do we have access to the algorithm of its priorities? Probably not. But I would guess that memory prioritises whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going.”
Works Cited
Barad, Dilip. “Memory Novel - Theme of Memory and History - The Only Story - Julian ….” SlideShare, 2 February 2022, https://www.slideshare.net/dilipbarad/memory-novel-theme-of-memory-and-history-the-only-story-julian-barnes. Accessed 17 March 2022.
Barnes, Julian. The Only Story. Random House, 2018.
Chakravarty, Dipesh. ‘Memories of Displacement: The Poetry and Prejudice of Dwelling’ in Habitation of Modernity, pp 116-17.
Clanchy, Kate, and John Grindrod. “The Only Story by Julian Barnes review – an exquisite look at love.” The Guardian, 26 January 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/26/the-only-story-julian-barnes-review. Accessed 17 March 2022.
Characters: 9154
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