Julian Barnes in conversation with Ian McEwan (Part Two)

Summary

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Julian Barnes in Conversation with Ian McEwan (Part Two)

Podcast: Intelligence Squared
Date: February 3, 2026
Event: Live at Union Chapel, London

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Episode Overview

In this rich, reflective conversation, celebrated novelists Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan discuss Barnes’s new and final novel Departures, ruminate on a lifetime of reading and writing, the craft of the opening line, the meaning of endings, autofiction, mortality, and their literary influences. The event, marking Barnes’s 80th birthday, features warm anecdotes, literary analysis, philosophical musings, audience interactions, and Barnes’s farewell reading.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Practice and Pleasure of Rereading ([02:05]–[04:47])

• Julian Barnes recounts having recently reread Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Prue Shaw’s edition of Dante’s Commedia.
  • “About 30 years ago, I thought, Inferno: great. Purgatorio: pretty good. Paradiso: boring... And it’s not like that at all.” [02:27]
  • Praises Shaw’s integrated translation and commentary for illuminating the political and contemporary aspects of Paradiso.
• Ian McEwan shares an anecdote about failing to reread War and Peace after knee surgery due to “the strange effect of very powerful OPA painkillers.” [04:06]
  • “I read the first page seven or eight times and then thought, I’m not up to this. I cannot do this.” [04:37]

2. The Artistry of First Lines ([04:50]–[12:24])

• McEwan quotes memorable first lines from Barnes’s books and others, sparking discussion:
  • From The Porcupine: “The old man stood as close to the window as the soldier would allow.” [05:17]
  • From Departures: “She stood before us without notes, books or nerves. The lectern was occupied by her handbag. She looked around, smiled, was still, and began.” [06:05]
• McEwan likens starting a novel to entering a silent, expectant room.
  • “It’s as if you enter a sort of crowded room and everyone falls silent and you have to speak.” [06:27]
• Barnes describes his unpredictable process:
  • “I never assume that the first line I write down... is going to be the first line of the novel... Sometimes the start... just begins to emerge and says, move me forward, move me forward.” [07:47]
  • Discusses the tension between control and liberty in opening a book.
• Discussion of famous first lines as “complete lies,” e.g. Austen’s and Tolstoy’s.
  • “Happy families are not all the same... Nice things are nicer than nasty things.” – referencing Kingsley Amis and Iris Murdoch [09:12 – 10:50]

3. Life, Reading, and Writing: A Venn Diagram ([12:24]–[14:56])

• McEwan quotes Barnes: “Life and reading are not separate activities. When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.”
  • “What you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths.” [12:53]
• Barnes admits to the sentiment but jokes about his “slightly pompous tone” [13:13], insisting writing must also be “drenched” in lived experience.
• Both authors agree on the inseparability and interpenetration of life and reading.

4. Jimmy the Dog: Literature and Animal Minds ([15:01]–[18:12])

• Barnes reminisces about his Jack Russell, Jimmy, who is immortalized, by full name “James Russell,” in his fiction.
  • “You could stroke him in the daytime, but not once the sun had set.” [15:31]
• McEwan points out a line in Departures, “he doesn’t even know he’s a dog,” which Barnes attributes to a witty comment McEwan once made during a real-life dog encounter.
  • “Doesn’t know he’s an old dog. He doesn’t even know he’s a dog. Maestro.” [17:33]
• Leads to dialogue on animal consciousness and philosophical questions about being.

5. Mortality and the Final Novel ([18:12]–[26:32])

• McEwan introduces the subject of death, referencing Larkin and philosopher Thomas Nagel:
  • “If death is the unequivocal and permanent end to our existence, the question arises whether it is a bad thing to die.” – Thomas Nagel [19:55–20:22]
• Barnes: “I would say, on the whole, yes, it is and will soon be a very bad thing to die.” [20:22]
• Barnes describes his decision to make Departures his last book:
  • “I thought, well, maybe I’ve played all my tunes, maybe this is the last cadenza... the more as time went by, I just became convinced that it was the right time to go.” [23:45]
  • Cites Ingmar Bergman: “I take my hat while I can still reach the hat rack.” [25:16]
• McEwan posits that being a novelist is “a way of being,” suggesting Barnes may never truly stop noticing and thinking as a writer. Barnes concedes he’ll notice things as a human being, even if not for fiction.

6. Changing One’s Mind and Reviews ([26:32]–[27:02])

• Light-hearted exchange about whether Barnes might retract his retirement from writing:
  • McEwan: “For which you’re free to do. Which you’re free to change your mind.” [26:26]
  • Barnes: “Oh, I see... That would be rather sneaky.”
  • McEwan jokes that declaring a “last” book gets nicer reviews, referencing the Financial Times: “And it works.” [26:37]
• Barnes replies: “I’m a much more straightforward person than that.” [26:54]

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Audience Q&A Highlights

On Illness and Attitude ([28:41]–[29:43])

• Healthcare professional: Asks if Barnes’s diagnosis changed his approach to life.
• Barnes: “It didn’t really change me... It wasn’t part of my decision to make this my last book.” [29:43]

On Unfinished Books ([30:08]–[32:17])

• Audience: Contrasts Barnes’s desire for a completed "final novel" with Flaubert dying before finishing Bouvard and Pécuchet.
• Barnes: Argues B&P is “almost fittingly unfinished,” as the characters’ quest for totality was impossible. [31:17]
• Adds that the task’s impossibility suits the novel’s incomplete state.

Booker Prize Reflections ([32:22]–[34:08])

• Audience: Asks which of their books should have won the Booker.
• Barnes: Jokes about being “defeated” the same year as McEwan, who downplays the awards system: “Can’t win it every year.” [33:42]
• McEwan: “I should have won it for Atonement, of course.” [34:03]
• Barnes: “I should have won it for Flaubert’s Parrot.” [34:05]

Advice for Young Writers ([34:37]–[35:02])

• Audience: What advice for writers in a reading-averse world?
• Barnes: “Read more. Whenever someone young says, ‘I want to be a writer.’ What should I do? I say, read, read, read.” [34:37]
• McEwan: “How about write?” [34:46]
• Both agree you must read before writing.

View on Autofiction ([35:12]–[37:52])

• Audience: Thoughts on autofiction as memory approach?
• Barnes: Views are mixed: “Autofiction depends on someone having an interesting life. ... Some ... just have a great interest in their own lives.”
• Calls some autofiction “maximalist minimalism.” [35:16]
• Cites Le Notaire du Havre as an early autofiction.
• McEwan (via Henry James): “The deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer. Autofiction from a very, very interesting mind will be a very interesting autofiction. If you don’t have an interesting mind... don’t become a novelist.” [37:52]
• Barnes: “You heard it tonight. Don’t do it.” [37:52]

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Finale: A Farewell Reading ([38:06]–[41:41])

• Julian Barnes shares the poignant last page of Departures, a literary goodbye to his readers, blending gratitude, mortality, and the intimacy of the writer–reader relationship.
  • “I shall miss you, whatever that means. Each word in that phrase is weakened and undermined by death... Instead, let me thank you for your sturdy presence, invisible, yet lurking like my cancer... I would be nothing without you. So I’ll just rest my hand briefly on her forearm. No, don’t stop looking. And then slip away. No, don’t stop looking. Thank you.” [38:06–41:41]
• Ian McEwan:
  • “Julian, do not slip away too soon and know that we’ll either be there before you or right at your back. So thank you very much.” [41:41]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

On reading Dante’s Paradiso:

• “I thought, Inferno. Great. Purgatorio. Pretty good. Paradiso. Boring. ...But it’s not like that at all.”
  – Julian Barnes [02:27]

On first lines:

• “I never assume that the first line I write down when I’m beginning a novel is going to be the first line of the novel... It’s a mixture of control and liberty.”
  – Julian Barnes [07:47]

On life and reading:

• “Life and reading are not separate activities. When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.”
  – Julian Barnes [12:53, as quoted by McEwan]

On the meaning of finishing:

• “I take my hat while I can still reach the hat rack.”
  – quoting Ingmar Bergman [25:16]

On autofiction:

• “Autofiction depends on someone having an interesting life, seems to me. And sometimes some autofictionists don’t. They just have a great interest in their own lives.”
  – Julian Barnes [35:16]

On the writer-reader relationship:

• “I do not write ex cathedra. Novelists shouldn’t speak down to readers from an assumption of greater wisdom... Instead, I prefer an image of writer and reader on a café pavement in some unidentified town...”
  – Julian Barnes (final reading) [38:06–41:41]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Rereading Classics & Dante: [02:05]–[04:47]
• On First Lines & Narrative Openings: [04:50]–[12:24]
• Interplay of Life, Reading, Writing: [12:24]–[14:56]
• Jimmy the Dog & Animal Consciousness: [15:01]–[18:12]
• Death, Endings, and Departures: [18:12]–[26:32]
• Booker Prize and Friendly Rivalry: [32:22]–[34:08]
• Advice to Young Writers: [34:37]–[35:02]
• Autofiction Discussion: [35:12]–[37:52]
• Final Farewell Reading: [38:06]–[41:41]

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Closing Tone

The episode brims with literary wit, reflective wisdom, and the easy rapport of two literary giants. Julian Barnes’s candor and modesty complement Ian McEwan’s probing and playful questions, resulting in a conversation as insightful as it is entertaining—a fitting tribute to a storied literary career and a moving meditation on creativity, mortality, and the enduring bond between author and reader.

Transcript

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[Mia Sorrenti]

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. For this episode, we're rejoining for Part two of our recent live event with novelist Julian Barnes. Barnes joined us recently at Union Chapel to discuss Departures, his new and final novel, and to reflect on a lifetime of writing. As he marked his 80th birthday, he was in conversation with fellow novelist Ian McKeown. If you haven't heard part one yet, do just jump back an episode to get up to speed. But now let's rejoin the conversation live at Union Chapel in London.

[Ian McEwan]

So what's the last book you reread? Can you remember?

[Julian Barnes]

Well, on the last day of my 79th year, two days ago, I think it was two days ago, I started rereading War and peace. Oh, I'm 50 pages in. But before that, the last book I reread was a wonderful edition by Prue Shaw, who's a great Dante scholar of the commedia. It's not called the Divine Comedy. Dante didn't call it that he called it the Commedia. And then later on some priestly figure turned it into the Divine Commedia. And it's a brilliant addition. I mean, I read the. I can't remember which translation, but about 30 years ago, something like that, and I thought, Inferno. Great. Purgatorio. Pretty good. Paradiso. Boring.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah, yeah, boring. Happiness writes white.

[Julian Barnes]

And it's not like that at all. This is an edition which is probably about 360 pages. And it's partly a translation and it's partly a commentary. But the commentary and the translation and the notes all run through the same page. They're set in different typefaces, so there's none of that. Oh, I must look at the original Italian. And then I'll look at the translation, then I'll look at the commentary, then I'll look at the notes, then I'll, you know, you get it all in one go and it's brilliantly done. And she sort of cuts out the boring bits. Oh, well, there are some boring bits. But also it made me understand the Purgatorio. It was the Paradiso as I never had before. I was rather lazy with it. And also how contemporary it is, and I mean to its time and how political it is.

[Ian McEwan]

If only it were true. If only it were true.

[Julian Barnes]

Oh, well, that's another thing.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah. Funny that. I had to go to hospital for a new knee and I thought, well, I only allowed to do 80 steps a day for some weeks. And I thought, I'll reread War and Peace. But I hadn't accounted for the strange effect of very powerful OPA painkillers that I read the first page and realized I couldn't remember anything.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

And I must have read. So, talking about rereading, I read the first page of I seven or eight times and then thought, I'm not up to this. I cannot do this.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes, yes.

[Ian McEwan]

So related to structure. Let me read you something, because there's something about this. It strikes me as perfection. The old man stood as close to the window as the soldier would allow. It's the first line of your novel, the Porcupine.

[Julian Barnes]

Is it?

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah, and it's bloody good.

[Julian Barnes]

I didn't recognize it at all. Right.

[Ian McEwan]

Can you read it again? Yeah. The old man stood as close to the window as the soldier would allow.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

It's great, isn't it?

[Julian Barnes]

Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

So who is this old man? Well, he's the ex head of state and he's about to go on trial. The soldier doesn't want him committing suicide by Jumping out of the window or escaping or whatever.

[Julian Barnes]

Great in science.

[Ian McEwan]

But anyway, it's bare and spare. And so it made me think. So let's talk about first lines in your books and any other books. Here's another one. You'll get this straight away. You'll start off at 10. Okay? She stood before us without notes, books or nerves. The lectern was occupied by her handbag. She looked around, smiled, was still, and began. She then, whoa.

[Julian Barnes]

I guessed it.

[Ian McEwan]

Well done, your last novel.

[Julian Barnes]

My last novel, yes.

[Ian McEwan]

Well done. It's as if. I mean, my sense of first lines is. It's as if you enter a sort of crowded room and everyone falls silent and you have to speak. In other words, your last book was two, three, four years ago. Someone comes into a bookshop, said, what's Barnes up to? And here he is again, speaking to me, and it better be good. The other day. Now, any sentence that begins the other day, you know immediately it's a lie. I mean, because, of course, it wasn't the other day in any real sense. The other day I discovered an alarming possibility. No, worse, an alarming fact. Okay, the hook there is, how does a possibility become a fact? And you've actually partially, partially explained that. So I wanted you to reflect on first lines. Are they difficult? Do they just spontaneously emerge from the material and there's no problem about them? Do you chew the end of your pencil?

[Julian Barnes]

Well, I never assume that the first line I write down when I'm beginning a novel is going to be the first line of the novel. I start in different places. Sometimes I start with a scene which encapsulates the majority of conflict that is going to happen, and then I have to go back 300 pages before to get to the start of the novel. Sometimes the start, and not just the first line, but the first movement, just begins to emerge and says, move me forward, move me forward. And then you hit the start and say, yes, of course. That's obviously the start. It's a fluid process, isn't it? And it's a mixture of control and liberty.

[Ian McEwan]

It feels a bit risky sometimes, doesn't it? Sometimes you absolutely know this is right.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

Sometimes you think, this could be superb, but maybe you have to sit with them a long time.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

And if they still seem good, and.

[Julian Barnes]

Sometimes you think, well, I can bluff this bit. I've read it five times. Seems good to me. No one else is going to read it five times. I can get away with it.

[Ian McEwan]

Can you get away?

[Julian Barnes]

They are going to read it five times.

[Ian McEwan]

The most famous first lines are often, I think, absolutely complete lies. I mean, it isn't universally acknowledged that. And nor. And I think we will agree on this, happy families are not all the same. And you point out in this novel, actually, there are lots of ways of being happy. But misery does have a kind of. A lot of powerful links in common with every wrong about lots of things. I came across an untypically marvelous line from Kingsley Amos on this matter. He said, there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty things. So I'll read that again. There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty things. In other words, nasty things do have a lot of things in common, whereas there are all kinds of ways in which nice things are better than nasty things. And I think someone else, and I think it was Iris Murdoch, picked this up somewhere in an essay and said, this makes me realize that part of the uselessness of fiction when one's hunting for a moral is in it can largely be boiled down to nice things are nicer than nasty things.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes, well, she was keen on having morals in fiction, and she did prove.

[Ian McEwan]

The nice things in ISO. The nasty things. Not that it needed prove we like it.

[Julian Barnes]

I met her once and I was hanging around at dinner, what I was doing at a party, and she said, what do you do? I said, well, I don't really know what I do. Can't decide what to do. And she said, you should go into the civil service. It's very good for making moral decisions. I thought, God, she's only met me 20 seconds ago.

[Ian McEwan]

She clearly didn't like you.

[Julian Barnes]

No. She worked in the civil service, did she not? First line. Mine. One of my favorite first lines. My mother died today, or perhaps yesterday, is absolutely sensational.

[Ian McEwan]

And this is the saddest.

[Julian Barnes]

This is the saddest story I've ever heard.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah, that's pretty good.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes. How could you stop reading the Good Soldier?

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah, how could you stop reading?

[Julian Barnes]

And it's also one of those first lines which isn't quite true either. It's not a story he's heard. He says, I'm going to tell you the story I've heard, but it's a story in which he. He. That this person speaking has been in it up to the neck, you know, he hadn't heard it. He's making it sound as if it's more distant from him than in fact it is. Yeah.

[Ian McEwan]

The first line of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. I'd been in Brighton. One hour before I learned that someone wanted to kill me. Pretty good. Yes, but rather low. Little section here called Life versus Books. Okay. I like quoting you, Julian, because it brings a sort of frown to your face as you're struggling to remember if this is you or not.

[Julian Barnes]

If it's good, I'll claim it.

[Ian McEwan]

Okay. Life and reading are not separate activities. When you read a great book, you don't escape from life. You plunge deeper into it. What you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths.

[Julian Barnes]

That is me. At a slightly pompous tone of voice. But I backed it.

[Ian McEwan]

It's the way I read it. Yeah.

[Julian Barnes]

Yeah, it's the way you read it. Yes. Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

You were responding to that. Often quoted. You know, some people say that life's a thing, but I prefer. Me. I prefer books or something. Reading. I only ask because your fiction is absolutely drenched in your reading. And it seems to me that this quotation for that essay, which was published in a pamphlet form, is a kind of explanation that that one's reading then becomes one's experience. And that experience shapes one's writing. And writers team through this book. I mean, you mentioned Proust already, but many of your familiars are there. Frobert, of course, Larkin, Baudelaire, Gaultier, Mauriac. And it's not about erudition. I think it's about how reading rewires your mind, your brain, and it's very strong in what you write.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes, but I jib at the idea that your writing should be drenched in reading. It should also be drenched in your experience of life and your knowledge of life.

[Ian McEwan]

But you're saying the two are the same.

[Julian Barnes]

Am I?

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah. They're not separate activities.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

So you're allowed to do it.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes, yes. They absolutely interpenetrate one another. Yeah.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah. I got to talk to you about the dog.

[Julian Barnes]

The dog? Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

I mean, dogs do appear in literature from time to time. Virginia Woolf, obviously. Kafka. Investigations of a Dog. Gunther Grass. But there's a rather marvelous dog in this novel. It's a real dog. I mean, it's a dog that was in your life called Jimmy.

[Julian Barnes]

Jimmy.

[Ian McEwan]

Jack Russell.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

You would need plenty of warnings before meeting him. In other words, you could stroke him in the daytime, but not once the sun had set.

[Julian Barnes]

Yeah. So on the back, it was a specific space. Shaking on that until. At the sunset. Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

He bites you, then he bites your thumb. He's the only. Well, when you gave him dog food, he would look at it, glare at it for a while and make you feel that you've let him down. Because he only really liked human food.

[Julian Barnes]

He tend increasingly. He liked human food. Yes, but you met him.

[Ian McEwan]

I met him deep.

[Julian Barnes]

You met him.

[Ian McEwan]

That's why I was startled to find him immortalized in fiction.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes, yes, yes. He's also. He's not just that, but he may be the only dog who's acknowledged at the end of a book. And here he is, James Russell. Ah, see? So she likes named Smith, Mayor partner, Ryan Roberts, James Russell and Galen Strauss. Yeah. Now you've all found out my private joke.

[Ian McEwan]

I completely missed that because I. Because you didn't say jack, you said James.

[Julian Barnes]

Okay.

[Ian McEwan]

Anyways, an interesting discussion goes on within the novel in which the conclusion is that what Jimmy knows, and Jimmy doesn't even know this is the conclusion that he doesn't even know that he's a dog.

[Julian Barnes]

Do you know where that line came from?

[Ian McEwan]

No.

[Julian Barnes]

Ah, it's interesting. Came from your mouth.

[Ian McEwan]

My bon mots are so enormously. How can I remember them?

[Julian Barnes]

Well, Rachel, my now wife, and I were down with Jake. Jimmy at your house. And you had a West Highland terrier. West Highland? No, West Highland. What's your dog? What sort of dog?

[Ian McEwan]

A border collie.

[Julian Barnes]

Border collie called Rab. Yeah, Rab. Very large, very friendly. So we bring Jimmy into the kitchen, he looks around, swaggers across to your dog's bowl and starts eating it. To which your dog didn't mind at all. Anyway, a certain point. Point I was saying, Jimmy, I mean, he's an old dog now, and it's sort of sad. He doesn't know he's an old dog. And you said rather sharply, doesn't know he's an old dog. He doesn't even know he's a dog. Maestro.

[Ian McEwan]

What I've written here, and this is just. So this is partial memory in my notes, it said. So you talk about he doesn't even know his dog. Funnily enough, I've had that same conversation about our dog. He didn't know he was a border collie. He didn't know he was a dog. Then I thought maybe we should talk to our philosopher friend Galen Strawson about this, because I thought, yes, but he knew exactly how to behave like a dog. So he knew something. Yes, he never put a paw wrong. So I didn't get very far talking about the structure of departures in the fifth part because I was saving it up a bit. It's about that subject that is still kind of Hardly a subject at all. We suppress it, unlike the Victorians and the Jacobeans. And that is death itself. And I know that you, like me, carry around in your head all those little bits and pieces of Larkin. Not to be here, not to be anywhere Crouching below extinction's alp from the old fool.

[Julian Barnes]

Not to be anywhere. And soon.

[Ian McEwan]

And soon. Yeah. Nothing to think with. I mean, anyone who's woken in the night and is older than 55, I think, would be. The one I like most is most things may never happen. This one will.

[Julian Barnes]

This one will.

[Ian McEwan]

So there's a book I wanted to give you, Reflections on Ordinary Matters by the great American philosopher Thomas Nagel, as you know of him. So he wrote in 1970, if death is the unequivocal and permanent end to our existence, the question arises whether it is a bad thing to die.

[Julian Barnes]

I would say, on the whole, yes, it is and will soon be a very bad thing to die.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah.

[Julian Barnes]

Actually, it's interesting you brought up his name, because in my first novel, Metroland, where there's stuff about death, unsurprisingly, I read at one point, I wouldn't mind dying if I didn't end up dead at the end of it, which sort of summed up my attitude to it. And then about 20 or 30 years down the line, someone says, I read some Nagel when I was writing a book called Nothing to Be Frightened of, which is about family and death. He said exactly the same thing, and just about six months before me, the bastard. Well, you just have to say, great mindsling delight, don't you?

[Ian McEwan]

Exactly.

[Julian Barnes]

I would do that.

[Ian McEwan]

I will guide great Mindsick alike. Nagel goes on to say, you know, that we don't feel it was that bad before we were born, when we were nothing at all. But of course, then we were going to become. And there's a lovely line again in the Old Fool's Larkins that makes exactly the same point as Nagel. And Larkin has this phrase, then we will become the million petaled flower of being here. Which is an exquisite formulation I can recommend. I mean, I'd recommend Departures on the fifth chapter alone, because you spend some good while on this. And it brought me back to the thought of you announcing that this will be your last book. Does it make the rest of life a little easier? Something complete and rounded off? And why announce it rather than just fade away? Why just bring the curtain down?

[Julian Barnes]

Well, I like the idea of a coup d', theatre, I suppose.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah.

[Julian Barnes]

It had been. I first thought about the problem of your last book five years ago or something like that. And I remember a great friend of mine, Brian Moore, the Canadian Irish writer, who you must have known, wonderful writer. And he said, I don't want to die in the middle of writing a book because then some bastard will come along and finish it off for me.

[Ian McEwan]

As happened with Nebuchadnezzar.

[Julian Barnes]

As it happened, he did die in the middle or at the start of a book, but his widow didn't get it finished. I think she probably burnt it. And I thought, well, yeah, that's one way of ending.

[Ian McEwan]

Or.

[Julian Barnes]

I could write a book which was my last book and not publish it, but have it in place so that when I write two or three more books and then I'm chopped off in chapter three of one, that doesn't matter because I've got my last book there in place. And so I started writing it.

[Ian McEwan]

And.

[Julian Barnes]

As I wrote it, I realized that maybe it would be correct to publish it now. And I went through, you know, I've always had, as you do, books of ideas and thoughts and, well, this might turn into a novel or whatever. And I went through all the ones and been crossed off or ticked or whatever. And they were all ideas for books which I might have written five years ago, ten years ago, but not ideas which I felt the slightest urgency or proximity to now. And so I thought, well, you know, maybe I've played all my tunes, maybe this is the last cadenza or whatever. And the more as time went by, I just became convinced that it was the right time to go, you know, is there any odd Swedish in the audience or who speak Swedish? I tell you what, I've been reading Ingmar Bergman's autobiography, it's called the Something Lantern. And he has this wonderful bifurcated career of cinema and theater. And at one point, the cinema is getting more and more hard for him. It's hard to get sponsors, it's hard to get money, it's hard to get. And he wants to go back to the purity of the theater. And so he says about leaving the cinema, he says, I take my hat while I can still reach the hat wrap, which is a wonderful. So if there's anyone Swedish here, I want to know if this is an old cliche in Swedish or whether it is an original thought and a wonderful thought by Ingmar Bergman. You can put it on a postcard if you prefer.

[Ian McEwan]

So I have a theory about this, that I mean, writing novels is not a career, it's a way of being so even if you don't publish another book or write another book. You can't stop being a novelist because you'll have to go on noticing.

[Julian Barnes]

Yeah, but I'd be noticing as a human being. Yeah, but not as one turning it into a novel, but organizing. I'll come back and tell you once in a year or two.

[Ian McEwan]

But also, lying on my shelves was a little pamphlet called Changing My Mind.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

For which you're free to do. Which you're free to change your mind.

[Julian Barnes]

Oh, I see. Yes, I see. That would be rather sneaky. I think it would be.

[Ian McEwan]

According to the Financial Times, by announcing that this is your last book, you get nicer reviews. And it works.

[Julian Barnes]

Why do you think my mind works like that?

[Ian McEwan]

It worked.

[Julian Barnes]

I'm a much more straightforward person than that.

[Ian McEwan]

I read your reviews with some despondency.

[Julian Barnes]

Yeah, you were hoping I did a good kick. Yeah.

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[Ian McEwan]

Okay, it's time for a question or two. There's a hand right here.

[Julian Barnes]

Hello.

[Healthcare Professional Audience Member]

Great honor to be here. I work in healthcare and I was talking to a consultant in palliative care about the time to give a patient a diagnosis and how it's underrepresented how important a milestone can be as a choice in a person's life, because we think a big decision is what job you're going to do, whether you get married, when you have kids. But that time is a time when your patient chooses how they're going to live the rest of their lives, and whether they will choose to face it with joy and a new purpose, or whether they'll decide to bask in sorrow and regret of what was or wasn't or what will never be. So I was wondering, when you were diagnosed, whether you made such a conscious decision about how you want to shape the rest of your life, however long that might be.

[Julian Barnes]

It didn't really changed me. I mean, I don't Won't go into detail. You can read the detail in the book. I don't think it changed my attitude to life, and it didn't change my. It wasn't part of my decision to make this my last book.

[Ian McEwan]

Let's have another question from.

[Audience Member]

Thank you very much, Julian. I want to challenge what you said on unfinished books. Your favorite French author, Flaubert, didn't finish Bouvard and Picochet. And so the question is, one of you must be wrong. Is it Flaubert writing Bouverin Pecuchet and not finishing it, or you making a decision that it will be your last book, and what will change your decision to write another book after this one?

[Ian McEwan]

It was about Bouvaire Jean, which was unfinished.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes, it was. Because he died. Yes, Yes.

[Ian McEwan]

A very poor excuse, in my view.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes. Yes. And Bouvier Perquichet was James Joyce's favorite book. It's interesting. And it is unfinished at the same time. It's sort of finished with, because it was going to be in two parts. And the first one is the story of these two Parisian clerks who decide to retire and spend the rest of their lives investigating every aspect of human knowledge. And each one, each investigation comes to a dusty answer. And then the second part, which is sort of amazingly ambitious, was to be a dossier of all the things that they had discussed and the things that they'd read. And quite a bit of the dossier exists because Flobert collected it all. But in a way, it's sort of. Almost. It's almost fitting that he didn't finish that book, because the task that his two retired civil servants or minor civil servants was doing was impossible. And so the fact that you just get a few bits of the dossier, I mean, his dictionary of received ideas, which is often published by itself, that was going to be part of the dossier.

[Ian McEwan]

There's one right at the back down here. Thank you.

[Julian Barnes]

Thank you. The Booker Prize.

[Audience Member]

I have my views, but for each.

[Julian Barnes]

Of you, which of your books do.

[Audience Member]

You think should have won it?

[Julian Barnes]

Well, I can think of one of the ends that shouldn't have won it, Because I was one of the defeated in the same year and we were walking in the Chilterns at the start of the year and I said, I'm publishing a novel in September, whenever it is. And he said, oh, I'm doing the same. And I thought he was winding me up. And I said, are you really? He said, yes, it's called the spoiler. And boy, did he spoil me.

[Ian McEwan]

But it came out as Amsterdam, actually.

[Julian Barnes]

And you get me a copy and put Ostoff. And it said, AKA spoiler.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah, sorry about that. Well, obviously I should have won it for several of my books.

[Julian Barnes]

But you.

[Ian McEwan]

Can'T win it every year. It's one of the rules, I think. So you have to live by the rules, as Donald Trump said. Here's one from the.

[Julian Barnes]

Do you think you should have won it for a different novel? That's the question.

[Ian McEwan]

Oh, yeah, I should have won it for Atonement, of course.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes. I should have won it for Flibus Parrot.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah, I think that too. You should have won it for Float. Hard luck, mate. That's 50 grand. The new conservatory or whatever. Too bad. So here's one. It's a familiar one, but it's got a nice twist to it. What advice would you give to emerging novelists in a world that is reading less than ever?

[Julian Barnes]

Read more. Whenever someone young says, I want to be a writer, what should I do? I say, read, read, read.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah. How about write? Well, you want to be a writer, do some writing.

[Julian Barnes]

Yes. But then you enter. Then you enter the fray. Unclothed. Yeah.

[Ian McEwan]

Oh, you have to read.

[Julian Barnes]

Of course.

[Ian McEwan]

Can we see any more hands? One more. Oh, on this side, this lady here.

[Julian Barnes]

What do you think of autofiction as.

[Mia Sorrenti]

An approach to memory?

[Julian Barnes]

I have mixed feelings about auto fiction. Autofiction depends on a. Someone having an interesting life, seems to me. And sometimes some auto fictionists don't. They just have a great interest in their own lives. So it's kind of tricky and at its worst, it can be a sort of maximalist minimalism. It's also been going on for a long time. It's interesting that Ian and I, a couple of years ago, were discussing a book we were both set to read in French class. In adolescence, do you remember this? Yes, yes. It was Le Notaire du Havre by Georges Duhamel. And it's a story about a. It was published in 1920, something like that. And it's a story about a French family living in Paris who are on the slide and they keep moving, you know, downsizing, and they're waiting for an inheritance which will come via the Notaire du Barrev lawyer in Le Havre. And they sort of write to him and then one of them visits him and it sort of never comes. I didn't realize until I found a second man French copy that A, it was the first of, I think, a series of four the Pasquier novels, and B, there was an introduction in which it was patently clear that it was absolutely autobiographical. Is absolutely autofiction.

[Ian McEwan]

Yeah.

[Julian Barnes]

Well, I'm going to have a last reading.

[Ian McEwan]

Yep. But wait a minute. Just to answer the question on autofiction, I happened to write down something from Henry James, who's always good at Weissens, and he says something that's so obvious, but it needs to be remembered. He says, the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer. In other words, autofiction from a very, very interesting mind will be a very interesting autofiction. If you don't have an interesting mind. The corollary of this is don't become a novelist.

[Julian Barnes]

You heard it tonight. Don't do it. He knows how to do it. I'm going to finish by reading the last. The last what?

[Ian McEwan]

One more? Yes, please.

[Julian Barnes]

This is the last page of the book. In which the Julian Barnes character is saying goodbye to his readers. I shall miss you, whatever that means. Each word in that phrase is weakened and undermined by death that shall becomes or will become meaningless. And now, at the last, I have no grand pronouncements to offer, no famous last words, though I came across a good example recently, the first Lord Grimthorpe's urgent dying message to his wife. We are very low on marmalade. Instead, let me thank you for your sturdy presence, invisible, yet lurking like my cancer. When asked how I see our relationship, I reply that I am not a didactic writer. I do not tell you what to think or how to live. I do not write ex cathedra. Novelists shouldn't speak down to readers from an assumption of greater wisdom. Instead, I prefer an image of writer and reader on a cafe pavement in some unidentified town, in some unidentified country. Warm weather and a cool drink in front of us. Side by side, we look out onto the many and Varied expressions of life that pass in front of us. We watch and muse. From time to time I will remember things like what do you make of that couple? Married or having an affair? Look at those fashion victims. So pleased at being themselves. It's almost touching. Where's that priest off to in such a hurry? What does that kiss mean? An old couple holding hands. That always gets to me. Do you think he's a tramp or an artist? Is that a quarrel or just a lover's playful riff? It's a bit Jacobian. Look, a Jack Russell. Now there's a lucky omen. There can't be rain in the air, can there? Do you think there's a God? You know I don't. And why are they looking at us all of a sudden? Ordinary conversational mutterings. One or none of which might possibly metastasize into a story. Out of the corner of my eye I see that you share my attending this, but I rarely catch your replies. You're sitting on my death side, I'm afraid. Still, I hope you've enjoyed our relationship over the years. I certainly have. Your presence has delighted me. Indeed. I would be nothing without you. So I'll just rest my hand briefly on her forearm. No, don't stop looking. And then slip away. No, don't stop looking. Thank you.

[Ian McEwan]

Julian. Do not slip away too soon and know that we'll either be there before you or right at your back. So thank you very much. Happy publication day after tomorrow. And there are signed copies of Julian's books wherever. The signed copies are signed by me, not by him.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Ginny Hooker and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a [e-mail] membership and to join us at future live events, head over to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us, Sam.