Barnes, Julian (Dan Kavanagh) (1946- ) novelist, journalist, essayist

Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England. Both of his parents were French teachers, and the family moved to Northwood, a London suburb, while Barnes was still young. After winning a scholarship, he attended the City of London School. In 1964 he enrolled at Magdalen College, Oxford, to study languages. He spent the 1966-67 school year teaching in France, graduating from Oxford with honors the following year.

After university, Barnes worked for several years as an editorial assistant for the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1972 he moved to London, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. During this time he also began writing book reviews for the New Statesman, eventually accepting a position there as assistant literary editor. In subsequent years, Barnes worked as deputy literary editor for the Sunday Times and as television critic for the Observer. In 1979 he married Pat Kavanagh.

While working as a journalist, Barnes also began writing fiction. His first novel, Metroland (1980), reveals his interest in love and jealousy, themes he would pursue in many novels. Metroland also introduces Barnes’s use of postmodern narrative, characterized by a heavy use of parody, an ironic tone, and a general skepticism toward art’s ability to explain life. Barnes repeatedly explores the relationship between life and art, and his narratives question the ability of individuals to understand either one. The main character of Metroland, a teenager named Christopher Lloyd, and his friend Toni initially reject the middle-class lifestyle of their parents for a liberated, artistic existence. But as Lloyd ages, he marries, starts a professional career, and shelves his artistic aspirations. Toni, however, becomes an artist, and the novel urges the reader to compare Lloyd’s acceptance of a normal life with Toni’s rebelliousness.

Barnes’s second novel, Duffy (1980), written under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh, is a crime thriller. Its main character, Nick Duffy, is a bisexual private detective who has left the police force after being blackmailed by corrupt officers. Barnes has written three subsequent novels as Dan Kavanagh, each featuring Duffy. These novels, unlike those published under Barnes’s own name, employ more conventional plots and narratives and contain many of the characteristics of the hard-boiled American crime thriller.

In 1984 Barnes published his best-known novel, Flaubert’s Parrot, which is presented as a nonfiction account written by an English doctor named Geoffrey Braithwaite. While in France, Braithwaite sees a stuffed parrot in a museum.

The parrot supposedly belonged to Flaubert while he wrote his short story “Un Coeur Simple.” But Braithwaite soon sees another parrot bearing the same claim. As Braithwaite continues his research, he discovers more and more stuffed parrots, each supposedly having belonged to Flaubert. Braith- waite is unable to discover any evidence that would allow him to eliminate any of the parrots. The novel highlights Barnes’s doubts about ever knowing the truth, but it also reinforces his belief that truth exists. As the critic Merritt Moseley notes, “Braithwaite doubts the possibility of finding out which was the ‘real’ Flaubert’s parrot, but this does not lead him to conclude that there was no real parrot.”

Barnes artfully combines the search for truth with his fascination with love and jealousy in the novel Talking It Over (1991). The main character, Stuart, marries a beautiful woman named Gillian, but his friend Oliver also falls in love with her and eventually seduces her. This novel provides the best example of Barnes’s narrative experimentation, as each character addresses the reader through a first-person account. Stuart, Oliver, and Gillian separately defend their own actions and comment on the motives of the other two. The multiple narratives also raise doubts about each character’s veracity, causing the reader to question the truths each offers up during the course of the novel.

Barnes continues to work periodically as a journalist. In 1995 he published Letters from London, a collection of essays he had previously written for the New Yorker. He was also honored in France as an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Although some critics have described his postmodern narrative techniques as disjointed and unstructured, Barnes is repeatedly praised for his narrative variety and is humorously referred to as the best British author never to have won the Booker Prize. Merritt Moseley claims that Barnes’s “unique mixture of literary experimentation, intelligence, and dedication to the truths of the human heart . . . makes every book an adventure.”

Other Works by Julian Barnes:
- Before She Met Me. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Cross Channel. New York: Knopf, 1996.
- A History of the World in 101А Chapters. New York: Knopf, 1991.
- Staring at the Sun. New York: Knopf, 1987.

A Work about Julian Barnes:
- Moseley, Merritt. Understanding Julian Barnes. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997.