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- [00:00]
Terry Gross
Terry this is FRESH air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is the critically acclaimed best selling author Julian Barnes. He was diagnosed six years ago with a rare form of blood cancer, but it's not a death sentence. It's treatable, which means he'll be on a chemo drug for the rest of his life. His 80th birthday is Monday. Tuesday is the publication date of his new book, which he says will be his last. It's called Departures. It's part memoir, part fiction. The memoir sections are about his diagnosis and his reflections on death, why he's agnostic, the power and unreliability of memory and how his memory has been diminishing with age. In a way, his new book is a companion to his book Levels of Life, which was in part about grief and the death of his wife, Pat Cavanaugh, who is also his literary agent. She died in 2008, just 37 days.
- [00:54]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
After being diagnosed with a rare hyper aggressive brain.
- [00:59]
Terry Gross
They'd been married about 30 years. The new York Times review described the book as shattering. Barnes won Britain's highest literary award, the Man Booker Prize, in 2011 for his novel the Sense of an Ending. His breakthrough novel Flaubert's Parrot was shortlisted for the prize. Before Barnes was known for his books, he was a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary Supplement and a book and TV critic for British publications.
- [01:28]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Julian Barnes, welcome back to FRESH air. I really like your new book a lot. I found it very meaningful.
- [01:35]
Julian Barnes
Good, good. That's a good start.
- [01:38]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
It seems like a momentous couple of days next week turning 80 and having.
- [01:43]
Terry Gross
Not only your new book but the.
- [01:44]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Book you call your final book published. So how are you feeling about all that right now?
- [01:50]
Julian Barnes
I'm feeling quite excited. It's been a very strange five months up to now because in August I got married in December, had a serious back operation. First time I've really been seriously put out and given morphine and stuff like that, which is very interesting. And then I get my 80th birthday and then I get my book publication. I can't remember period of months when there's been so much going on. So I'm still, well, alive and enjoying myself.
- [02:24]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
I would rather have a book published than back surgery.
- [02:28]
Julian Barnes
So would I.
- [02:30]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
You okay now?
- [02:31]
Julian Barnes
Yes, I'm fine. Yes. Yes.
- [02:33]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
And I should mention, you know, that you were diagnosed five years ago, I think it was, with a rare form of blood cancer.
- [02:40]
Julian Barnes
Yes. Yes, it was nearly six years ago. It was when just as we were locking down for Covid first month or Two of the year, yes. It came as a great shock. It's a form of blood cancer which is quite rare. I don't boast about that. It just means it's hard to diagnose.
- [03:02]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
What makes you unique?
- [03:05]
Julian Barnes
Well, There are about 500 cases a year in Britain of this sort of cancer. So, yeah, I feel. Well, you can't feel proud of an illness, but I feel it's slightly different. And they pick it up when you have a blood test for something else. And so I had a routine blood test, and then my doctor called me up about two mornings later and says, we haven't had your full results, but I want you to go straight to Accident and Emergency and tell them you've got a very high potassium reading. So I went off and took various provisions from, you know, chocolate to cryptic crossword and so on. And it took a while for them to find out exactly what it was. They thought it was something of the nature of leukemia, but it turned out to be, fortunately, not leukemia, but a sort of. Well, it's not curable and there's no research into this form of cancer. So I'm stuck with taking chemo every day for the rest of my life.
- [04:19]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Pills, right?
- [04:20]
Julian Barnes
Pills, yes, yes. One gram a day and then an extra half gram at weekends just to up the fun. And there's a 5% chance it might mutate into something like leukemia, but it's essentially stable. And they say it probably won't reduce my life expectancy, but who knows?
- [04:50]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
So let's get to your new book. The main character is named Julian Barnes, and he's narrating the book and talks about his own grief through the book. You lost your wife, your first wife, in 2008.
- [05:04]
Julian Barnes
Yes.
- [05:05]
Announcer/Producer
Yes.
- [05:05]
Terry Gross
And she was also your literary agent.
- [05:07]
Julian Barnes
She was indeed.
- [05:09]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
And it was, you know, understandably, a horrible experience for you. She died 37 days after she was diagnosed with a very aggressive brain cancer.
- [05:21]
Julian Barnes
Yes.
- [05:22]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
So part of the book is about that, but it's a character named Julian Barnes. But it's not necessarily all memoir, that part. And then there's a story, another story within it, about how Julian Barnes helps.
- [05:38]
Terry Gross
Two people get together during their college years.
- [05:41]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
They become a couple, but they break apart. And then about 30 years later, Julian Barnes, at the request of the guy in this couple, helps reunite them. So what's that story doing in what otherwise would have been a memoir?
- [05:59]
Julian Barnes
Well, I often write hybrid books, and this is a hybrid. It's not a term that publishers like. They like to have something that says fiction or non Fiction and nowhere to.
- [06:11]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
File it in bookstores.
- [06:13]
Julian Barnes
No, it's a problem for booksellers as well. Once a publisher asked me how I would describe my book, and I just said, well, it's Julian Barnes new book. In a rather irritated way, put it.
- [06:28]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
In the Julian Barnes section. You've written like 27 books or 26.
- [06:35]
Julian Barnes
Yes. And quite a few of them are actually hybrid, which mix autobiography, fiction, non fiction, art criticism, whatever's relevant to my thinking about the book. So I've always been quite relaxed about this. But I know that it does annoy some people. And indeed.
- [06:56]
Terry Gross
My.
- [06:57]
Julian Barnes
The character Julian Barnes is attacked at one point by one of the participants in this love affair and who he hasn't met for 40 years or so. And she says, I don't. I don't like this hybrid stuff you do, you know, I think you should stick to one thing or another. And it was rather enjoyable to have a character rebuking me for the book that I was writing. I sort of enjoyed that. And I get cross with her and I say, well, you may like or not like one of my books, but I want you to know that I know exactly what I'm doing when I'm writing. Which was actually, I overheard another writer use more or less those words, so I sort of pinched them. A reader has, you know, absolute liberty to like or not like your book and to say, you shouldn't have written it this way, you should have written it that. But usually the complaints and the corrections to it fall on rather deaf ears with most writers. You know, what you're putting in. There is something that you've thought about, you've written a number of times, and you've corrected it and corrected and corrected. So it is what you mean to say.
- [08:17]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
So I want you to read an excerpt. And you mentioned that what you have is a rare form of blood cancer. And I said, that makes you unique. So you actually have a passage related to that that I'd like you to read.
- [08:33]
Julian Barnes
Yes. When I thought I had a more serious version of it, I decided to write a little sort of memoir, notes to myself in my notebook. And this is. It only reached about two and a half pages, but these are some of the entries.
- [08:50]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
I should interrupt here and say you got sick just as the COVID lockdown was starting.
- [08:57]
Julian Barnes
Yes, that's correct. This is the start of the ending. I live in the present, but my future is to exist only in the past. The writer quarantined in his own home, suddenly victim of blood cancer, while all around a plague is spreading exponentially. It sounds like a bad or at least derivative novel. And yet there are promising themes. Thus he is meticulous about self isolation because he doesn't want to die of coronavirus. He'd much rather die of blood cancer. It's not just the time scale of it. Three weeks to a strangulating COVID death, which is very nasty to watch, let alone suffer, according to A and E specialists. He would rather die of his own disease, thank you very much, not everybody else's. And without yet knowing its ramifications or the nature of its end, he prefers to have blood cancer. Is this snobbery? A little. He doesn't want lung or liver or bum or whatever, doesn't want bits of him chopped off or out. It feels a more private, personal form of cancer. Whether it will feel like this as it progresses is anyone's guess. And he will still be a carcass at the end of it, assuming the virus doesn't get him first. Also, it's not the sort of cancer that I can feel responsible for and therefore guilty about. Oh, if only I hadn't smoked, drunk so much, eaten so much ultra processed food. It's a cancer caused by the body getting old, starting to break down and turn against its own best interests. It's a cancer rooted in the universe's utter indifference. It's random, it has no significance. It's just the universe doing its stuff. Don't insert morality or purpose into its unrolling and denouement.
- [11:00]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
So how much relief does it give you to know that you can't blame yourself for this disease? It wasn't your behavior that brought it on. No one can be finger pointing, like finger wagging at you, saying, I told.
- [11:16]
Terry Gross
You you should have stopped smoking.
- [11:19]
Julian Barnes
Well, I did used to smoke, but only very lightly. And I stopped some time ago. And I do still drink, but it's not what causes it at all. So it's a sort of. It's a sort of morally neutral feeling. You know, it's just something that happens. It's just as the phrase I use more than once. It's just the universe doing its stuff, which gives you a certain sort of distance and vision about it.
- [11:51]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
You wrote a memoir about, you know, grief for your wife. In this book is. I could say some of it is about grief for your own body.
- [12:08]
Julian Barnes
No, I don't really feel grief for my own body. I mean, it's just. It's sort of. It's pointless to feel that we are these creatures who come into this earth unbidden not consulted. And we live a certain amount of time much longer than our ancestors, which is an upside. But because we live longer, our body begins to break down. The medical costs increase. But I don't feel. I remember when I was told that I had some form of blood cancer. I was sort of strangely detached. I thought, oh, so that's how they tell you. And also I felt interested in, you know, all the medical side of it. I love talking to doctors and consultants and nurses. They stick their needles into your arm and take off pints of blood. It's very interesting, though, of course, it does get, like many things, it does get a bit tedious on the 34th time of taking a pint of blood out of you.
- [13:16]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
And yet you've kind of lived in fear of death your whole life. You thought about death a lot, you've been afraid of death. And although your blood cancer isn't a death sentence, it's not going to help you live longer either.
- [13:32]
Julian Barnes
No, it's definitely not going to do.
- [13:34]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
That, you know, will make your body more vulnerable. So it's interesting that you felt detached when you got the diagnosis.
- [13:45]
Julian Barnes
Yes.
- [13:45]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
And not fearful.
- [13:48]
Julian Barnes
No, I didn't feel fearful and I didn't feel angry either. I'm not quite sure why. I think I found it interesting, you see, with human beings, but also perhaps a novelist's interest, you know, what's the shape and form of this? Who's going to do anything about it? What are they going to do, if anything? Am I a goner or not? And so on. I mean, I've got to know hospitals in the last few years quite well, and I don't feel fear going into them. I think, oh, I wonder what this. I wonder how noisy this MRI scan is going to be and so on. I suppose it's one way of putting off the fear, but it's also genuine interest. Yes.
- [14:34]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
The third sentence of your new book, Departures, says that your interest tends toward the ghoulish and the extreme. So give us a couple of the examples. And why do you think that you're interested in the ghoulish and the extreme of the body?
- [14:55]
Julian Barnes
Oh, just because I'm a sort of sick Brit, I suppose.
- [14:59]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Sick in what way? Physically sick or, like, mentally?
- [15:05]
Julian Barnes
No, I mean, quite a lot of people are interested in awful things that happen or unexpected things that happen, and I think it's a way of confirming that, you know, as I think the Russians have it, life is not a short walk across an open field. There's always something waiting for you. Coming out of the hedgerow at you. So I have a friend who's a consultant radiologist and who sends me clippings from the British Medical Journal. And as you say, she knows that my interest tends towards the ghoulish and the extreme. And so, for example, it's always men somehow who are doing this stuff, men who decide to grow their toenails to a length of several feet so that they're unable to walk. And these examples like this, they usually have photographs with them, so sort of proven. And then there's one case I particularly remember was a man who'd been fitted with a tracheostomy tube. And when he went for a checkup, the doctors were baffled by sort of yellowish stains around the hole into which the tube was fitted. And it turned out that he was a desperate smoker who couldn't smoke through his mouth anymore. But he discovered if he took out the tube, then the cigarette fitted perfectly into the hole and all he had to do was to light up and inflate his lungs. You've got to be pretty clever and curious to come up with that way of smoking, it seems to me, when.
- [16:46]
Terry Gross
Something extreme is happening to your own.
- [16:49]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Body or something tending toward the ghoulish, do you find that fascinating too, or just horrifying?
- [16:57]
Julian Barnes
I find it fascinating, really? Yes. I mean, I find it fascinating until I know exactly what it is and then I might find it horrifying. I was talking to a friend of mine who said, oh, I don't think about death. I'm only 60, I'll think about death when it's nearer the time. And you think, well, death doesn't quite necessarily operate in that fashion. You know, death could be an out of control motorbike coming round a corner and taking you out. He won't have had much time to think in those three seconds before it hits you. One of my French gurus is the 17th century philosopher Montaigne, and he said we should think about death on a daily basis. We should make it our familiar. That's the best way of treating it. Not as some awful sort of, you know, ghastly skeleton with a scythe in its hand coming to chop us off. That we should think. He says we should think of death when our horse shies or when a tile falls off the roof of a house. We should make it sort of. We should almost domesticate it, tame it in this way, and then we should hope to die while planting out our cabbages. That's a wonderfully sort of wise approach to it all I haven't got a vegetable garden anymore. I used to have one, and when I planted cabbages, they didn't do very well. That's the only fault I can find with Montaigne's view of death.
- [18:36]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
But if you take him too much.
- [18:37]
Terry Gross
To heart and obsess about death every.
- [18:40]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Day instead of thinking about it and thinking about it as a kind of natural part of life, that's not great. Where on the scale, where are you? Because it sounds like you've been pretty.
- [18:51]
Terry Gross
Somewhere between thoughtful and obsessed with death.
- [18:54]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
For a good deal of your life.
- [18:56]
Julian Barnes
I've certainly been thoughtful about it. I've certainly been afraid of it. And it's a kind of moot point if you're very familiar with the idea of death and the way it happens. Whether you therefore enjoy life more knowing that it's so passing, I don't know the answer to that.
- [19:22]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Do you feel like you enjoyed life more because of your.
- [19:25]
Julian Barnes
Well, I I actually think that people who don't think about death at all enjoy life probably just as much as people who do. So that's another that's a bit of a downside. There must be some there must be some advantage, you think, in, in realizing and reflecting on the fact that you're not gonna be here forever. And in my case, I won't be here for 10 or 15 years. Definitely not.
- [19:53]
Terry Gross
My guest is Julian Barnes. His new book is called Departures. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH air. This is FRESH air. I'm Terry Gross. Just a heads up here in the next part of our conversation, we briefly discuss suicide. If you're having thoughts of harming yourself or are having a mental health crisis, help is available by calling or texting. 988. That's the national suicide and crisis lifeline. Again, the number to call or text is 988.
- [20:28]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
You finished writing a book in 2012 about your wife's death. She died 37 days after being diagnosed with a very aggressive brain tumor. You describe her as stoic and even in how she handled illness and the approach of death. Your illness has brought the thought of your own mortality to the forefront. Are there ways that watching her die affected how you're handling your own sense of mortality?
- [20:56]
Julian Barnes
Probably. But I don't think of what I've got as in any way comparable to what she had. I've got something which will be with me for the rest of my life, and I may well live a sort of normal span. She had a catastrophic diagnosis and was dead in 37 days. It was like being taken downhill in an avalanche. And every day something got worse. And it was the most. Well, it's by a long way, the most appalling thing that has happened to me in my life. And the most. The blackest. The thing that most deprived you of sort of hope and balance, really. It took me years to get over it, but I don't think I shall mourn my own departure in quite the same way.
- [21:49]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Did your wife give you any directions or even clues about what you could do to help her, about what she needed from you?
- [21:58]
Julian Barnes
No, she didn't give any specific guidance. She was herself as much as possible, right to the very end. I mean, her last complete sentence was, she was brought home from the hospital on a stretcher and she was put in a bed in the sitting room, and the guys who brought her in sort of rather dumped her on the bed. And I said, was that a bugger? And she said, a bit of a bugger, which was wonderfully precise. You know, don't complain, just say exactly what the situation is. And that was her last sentence. And she died about 48 hours later. I suppose you could say that she. She showed me how to die with grace and. And also with a consideration for other people who are coming to see her. She never got cross. She never became tragic or upset. So in some ways it's. She was. We were well suited because I have that sort of temperament as well.
- [23:18]
Terry Gross
You describe yourself as agnostic.
- [23:20]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
You don't believe in God. Do you ever wish you could believe in a loving, comforting God who was your friend and a heaven where you'd be reunited with your wife of 30 years and, you know, things would be calm and beautiful?
- [23:39]
Julian Barnes
No, I never thought that. I've never. I've never had any religious belief. I think that life is all we have and there's nothing after it. It's very hard to believe in a calm and loving God when you look at the state of the world. I remember Stephen Fry, the actor, was on a chat show in Ireland where religion was in better healthier shape than it was in England at the time. And the interviewer said, so give me one reason why you don't believe in God. And Stephen Fry answered, child cancer, which is sort of, kind of unanswerable. I think if he's a loving God, then why did the justice do badly? Why do the unjust succeed? Why do innocent people get suddenly killed? It makes no sense, except that the defense from the religious angle is God moves in Mysterious ways. We simply don't know. We'll find out later. That's sort of not good enough for me.
- [25:06]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
After your wife died, you said that if the grief didn't stop, you would consider taking your life, ending your life. Did you give yourself like a border, like if you reached that border that you would try to end your life?
- [25:25]
Julian Barnes
I remember very clearly when I thought that I might kill myself. It was a few weeks after my wife had died and I was walking home and I looked across at the curb on the other side of the road. And at that moment I still see that curb stone on a daily basis. And I thought, of course you can kill yourself. That's permissible. It's not unforgivable in my morality. I'm extremely unhappy. I'm bereft, I'm lost. Though I have many friends. And I think I said or friend said to me, I can't remember which way around it was, give it two years. I said, okay, I'll give it two years. But before that two year period had elapsed, I discovered the reason why I couldn't kill myself. I wasn't allowed to kill myself. And that's because I was the best rememberer of my wife. I knew her and I had celebrated her in all her forms and in all her nature. And I had loved her deeply. And I realized that if I killed myself, then I would in a way be killing her too. I'd be killing the best memories of her. The they would disappear from the world and I just wouldn't allow myself to do that. And at that point it just turned on its head and I knew I would have to live with grief for quite a long time. But I didn't think an answer to the grief was killing myself.
- [27:10]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
So you're a new wife and you're pretty recently married. How does she feel about you? Having written so much about your first wife, I'm wondering, does she feel in the shadow of that? Does she feel uncomfortable with you talking about how long your grief lasted and all, you know.
- [27:36]
Julian Barnes
Well, I can't really speak for her, but she once said to me, when we've been together for, I don't know, two or three years, she said, I love the way you love Pat. And Pat had been dead for 13 years or something, so she is, she is remarkably open and realistic. It doesn't mean I love her any the less. It's just that I think it's right to remember and to write about the dead.
- [28:08]
Terry Gross
My guest is Julian Barnes. His new book is called Departures we'll be right back. This is FRESH air. You've written a lot about memory, including.
- [28:19]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
In your new book, and so has one of your favorite authors, Proust.
- [28:25]
Terry Gross
The opening chapter of your new book.
- [28:27]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Departures, has a lot of neurological disorders, rare ones that distort memory or cause memory to be so good. You can basically watch a whole video of your childhood memory, which can be.
- [28:39]
Terry Gross
Very intrusive and time consuming because I.
- [28:42]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Don'T think there's necessarily a pause button on that video that plays in your mind.
- [28:47]
Terry Gross
How has your memory been most of.
- [28:49]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Your life, and how has that figured into your writing?
- [28:52]
Julian Barnes
Well, I used to believe, as I think most people do when they're young, that memory was somehow something rather stable that, you know, it was like you had something happen to you and you wanted to remember it. And so you took it along to one of those storage units, which are along the sides of lots of main roads and outside city centers, and you deposited it there. And then when you needed that memory, you went there, you opened the box, you took it out, and there it was, as pure and as truthful as when you put it in. I went along with this sort of view of memory for quite a long time until I realized that actually memory deteriorates like everything else, and that, in fact, the more times you tell a story, the more times you subtly alter it, more times you make yourself come out of it a little better or you add a joke and so on and so forth. So you could say that your best memories, the ones you're fondest of, are your least reliable memories because you've taken.
- [30:13]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Them out so many times, distorting them in the process.
- [30:16]
Julian Barnes
Yes. Yes, that's right. It's sort of our relationship with the brain is very strange. You know, how do we have a relationship with our brain when everything we need to have that relationship is inside the brain? Anyway, it's very paradoxical. And, you know, in the book, I go through various sort of metaphors or versions of what it's like to receive memories from the brain. And the one I come up with eventually is it's like spy fiction. I mean, Freud said that everything was up there, everything that happened to us is up there. So it's a question of what the brain lets us know and lets us see. So I thought of the comparison with spy fiction with John le Carre. We're like an agent running in the field, and the brain is like the spy center, the control. And the brain only tells us what we need to do our next task. So just as control doesn't let the spy know everything that's happening, only lets the spy know what is useful to him in his spying and doesn't over complicate matters. That, I think, is how the brain behaves with us.
- [31:51]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Early in your career, you were a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary, which is considered the definitive English dictionary. So I wonder what you think of the language that we use to describe death. Even the word death itself. You even describe how like if someone's at a dinner party who has lost a spouse, they're often. They won't use the word death because that's too scary to the other people.
- [32:18]
Terry Gross
They'll say, passed.
- [32:20]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
My wife passed.
- [32:21]
Julian Barnes
I hate that. I hate that. It's a way of not using the right word. I always say death. You know, I remember when I first. It's not. It's fairly recent, I mean, last 20 years or so. So people have started saying past. And you say. I was sort of puzzled by it, you know, past your wife has passed. Past water, past blood, past. Oh, passed over. But then passed over means passed to another condition, but she hasn't. She's just passed to a non condition. And I don't like the language. I don't like euphemism. And you know, if people object to it, tough.
- [33:14]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
While we're talking about language, when you were a lexicographer, I think part of your job was deciding what new words or expressions should be entered into the dictionary. Are there any you can take credit for?
- [33:31]
Julian Barnes
Well, I was a very lowly figure on the Oxford English Dictionary. It's a new supplement, but I worked on letters between C and G, and my specialities were sports words and dirty words.
- [33:54]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
So let's go to the dirty words.
- [33:56]
Julian Barnes
No, I don't want to pollute your airwaves.
- [33:59]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Oh, come on.
- [34:01]
Julian Barnes
Okay, I'll tell you.
- [34:02]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
I want to know what the criteria are for dirty words.
- [34:07]
Julian Barnes
Well, the criteria are if they've been used in print more than a certain amount of times. And you might like to enjoy the. You know, the Oxford Dictionary is a dictionary on historical principles, which means that it's illustrated by quotations of the word and its derivatives down the last. You know. Well, since the English language came into existence and the first use, and you can look it up in the dictionary of the C word is actually a street name in the 14th century which is recorded. It's called Grope C Lane.
- [34:58]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
I like that. Grope is in there too.
- [35:01]
Julian Barnes
Yes, yes. And it was obviously a sort of area where. Where the prostitutes gathered. So that it acquired that name.
- [35:11]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Oh, so it was meant to be literal.
- [35:12]
Julian Barnes
Yeah. It's a street name. It's a street name, yes. Like, you know, Goldsmith's Avenue and that sort of thing where the Goldsmiths. It was very useful probably.
- [35:25]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Well, congratulations for getting that into the dictionary. Julian Barnes, it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much. And I wish you stable health and long life.
- [35:39]
Julian Barnes
Thank you. And I'm glad to have expanded your vocabulary.
- [35:44]
Terry Gross
Julian Barnes new book is called Departures. After we take a short break, TV critic David Biancooli will review the new series Star Starfleet Academy. Its stars include Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti. This is FRESH air.
- [36:00]
Announcer/Producer
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- [36:34]
Terry Gross
Today, Paramount introduces yet another series in the Star Trek universe of TV shows. This one is called Star Starfleet Academy, and its stars include Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti. Our TV critic David Biancooli has this review.
- [36:51]
David Biancooli
The newest entry in the Star Trek franchise opens with a graphic logo that says it all, Star Trek 60 it says, an instant reminder that the original NBC show, the one that inspired this new paramount sequel, premiered 60 years ago in 1966. Think of how long ago that was in TV time and in real time, and how much original producer Gene Roddenberry and his successors have given us since. Sure, there's the string of Star Trek sequels, prequels and spinoffs in the movies as well as on tv. But there's also the now familiar science stuff shown in the original series and later brought to life by fans turned engineers. Giant flat TV screens, flip phone communicators, sophisticated computers you address directly to get information. But back in September 1966, when Star Trek launched, its impact was less impressive. It lasted only three seasons and never ended a season ranked higher than 52nd place. Its final episode was televised in June 1969, one month before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. But in syndication in the 1970s, Star Trek grew a large cult following and began its string of successful series and movies 60 years later. The newest incarnation is called Star Starfleet Academy an eight episode first season premiering with a double header on Paramount. Viewers without any Star Trek expertise or with hazy memories can enjoy the new adventures out of context. But there are echoes and Easter eggs throughout for those who catch them. Previous starship captains, including James T. Kirk, are referenced. A few characters from old series reappear, and even the classic Star Date opening is retained. This time it comes from Holly Hunter, who plays Nala Aki, the captain of the USS Athena, which, in time becomes the floating classroom that is part of Starfleet Academy.
- [39:00]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Captain Nala or Braca)
Long ago, Starfleet Academy took the finest minds, hearts and spirits of every generation and taught them to be lifelong explorers of space, our final frontier. Then one day, fate handed us an unimaginable loss. And it all went away.
- [39:30]
David Biancooli
Starfleet Academy is in a rebuilding phase. The first episode has the retired Captain Nala. She's half human and more than 400 years old, becoming Chancellor of the Academy with the Athena as its university in space. The faculty members allow for some familiar faces from previous Star Trek series, including Tig Notaro from Discovery and Robert Picardo from Voyager. But the focus is just as much on the students, which allows relative unknowns like Sandro Rasta and Bella Shepard to not only reach for the stars, but try to become them. Another young standout is Charis Brooks, who plays Sam. She's a sentient hologram, the first of her kind. She finds a particular delight when describing herself to Robert Picardo's the Doctor, a holographic physician who, like Captain Nala, has been around for centuries.
- [40:23]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Sam)
I enjoy normal teenage things like hanging with friend groups, studying and reasonable acts and rebellion. You know, occasional acts and rebellion. Okay, there probably won't be any rebellion.
- [40:35]
Character in Starfleet Academy (The Doctor)
May I ask how long have you existed?
- [40:38]
David Biancooli
You may.
- [40:39]
Julian Barnes
Thank you.
- [40:40]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Sam)
I was programmed to feel 17, but I've only existed a little over four months on CASC.
- [40:44]
Character in Starfleet Academy (The Doctor)
And Cask is a colony of holograms.
- [40:47]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Sam)
We prefer photonics.
- [40:48]
Terry Gross
Hmm.
- [40:49]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Sam)
Doctor, I can't help noticing you seem more mature than expected.
- [40:53]
Character in Starfleet Academy (The Doctor)
I prefer distinguished, professorial, ruggedly sophisticated. About 500 years ago, I added an aging program to my matrix to put organics at ease.
- [41:04]
David Biancooli
Of course, Paramount has made six of the first season's eight episodes available to critics, and they're a strong addition to the canon. Creator Gaia Violo and showrunner Noga Landau have worked with their staff of writers, directors and production designers to give Starfleet Academy a modern, youthful sheen. The sets are brighter, the dialogue is sharper, with more expletives than expected from the elders, as well as the kids and the Character development is strong across the board. Paul Giamatti has a standout recurring role as Braca in Evil Mercenary. And when he and Holly Hunter share the screen, it's as much fun as any Star Trek in the series. In the premiere episode, Braca appears on the bridge of the USS Athena after attacking the ship. And he and the Captain go at it immediately.
- [41:54]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
Did you come for the cadet?
- [41:56]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Captain Nala or Braca)
Cause you can't have him.
- [41:57]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Braca or other antagonist)
Absolutely not. I'm a businessman. I came for your war drive.
- [42:01]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Captain Nala or Braca)
Then you're a businessman. Cause it's too big for your ship.
- [42:04]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Braca or other antagonist)
Very true, but sold off piece by piece. It's worth my time. So I'm gonna need you to clear all personnel, including security from engineering. And then since our transport is working just fine, I'll pop over with a team and break down your drive. Then we'll beam it off the ship and poof, flutter away.
- [42:28]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Captain Nala or Braca)
I need 10 minutes to clear my people out of engineering and override the biometric locks.
- [42:35]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Braca or other antagonist)
Oh, and you lie to me, Captain.
- [42:37]
Julian Barnes
I'll admit it's hot.
- [42:39]
Character in Starfleet Academy (Captain Nala or Braca)
Otherwise, the minute your team touches our controls, anti tampering protocols will activate. You guys will have to take it apart all by stem seal. You could just rip it out, but your buyers aren't gonna pay top dollar for broken components.
- [42:58]
David Biancooli
Passion for the original Star Trek series was kept alive by reruns as it reached new younger viewers with access via streaming, especially on Paramount. The same is true today. Of all the sequels. And now 60 years on Star, Starfleet Academy has the chance to build an audience of its own. In our fractured TV universe. The odds may be slightly against that. But remember, the original Star Trek series never finished in the top 50.
- [43:27]
Interviewer (likely Terry Gross or another NPR host)
David Biancooli is Fresh Airs TV critic.
- [43:30]
Terry Gross
He reviewed the new Paramount series. Star, Star, Starfleet Academy. Fresh Air's executive producers are Danny Miller and Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne Marie Boldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman, Susan Yakundi and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nessberg. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.