Assignment: Paper 207: Contemporary Literatures in English

Name: Divya Sheta

Roll No.:06

Paper Name: Paper 207: Contemporary Literatures in English

Paper Code no.: 22414

Topic Name: ‘The Only Story’ as Memory Novel

Enrollment No.:4069206420210033

Email ID: divyasheta@gmail.com

Batch:2020-23

MA SEM-IV

Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University.

 ‘The Only Story’ as Memory Novel

Introduction: 

Julian Barnes is an award-winning British writer born in Leicester in 1946. He graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford in modern languages and worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement before becoming a literary editor and reviewer. He has received numerous awards and honours for his writing, including the Man Booker Prize in 2011 for The Sense of an Ending. He has written several novels, short stories, and essays and is known for exploring themes of history, reality, truth, and love. He also translated a book by French author Alphonse Daudet and a collection of German cartoons by Volker Kriegel. Barnes lives in London.

Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question. You may point out – correctly – that it isn’t a real question. Because we don’t have the choice. If we had the choice, then there would be a question. But we don’t, so there isn’t. Who can control how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn’t love. I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love. (Barnes, 2018, p. 11)

Love, Shared Singularity, and The Only Story 

The narrator provides the readers with some background information regarding the circumstances that led to his psychological propensity for an affair in part one. The narrator feels "unrepentantly bored" at home towards the conclusion of his first year of college due to the "laboriousness of communication" (2018, p. 15) with his parents. He then makes the decision to sign up for the neighbourhood tennis club where he first met Susan. They unintentionally end up in the same playing group, and as a result of their interactions, they developed a certain level of "complicity," which "made me a little more me and her a little more her." (2018, p. 25)

The most crucial factors in their attraction to one another are the contextual reality. Susan believes she is a member of a "played-out generation," which is comparable to Paul's mental state at that time. (2018, p. 52). As a result, she and Paul both regard him to be satisfactory. She elevates his spirits as he discovers a true buddy for the first time in his life who "laughs" (2018, p. 55) at what he laughs and gets him. He is fascinated by her actions. He describes his sexual encounter with her and paints her as a virgin. He talks about her nose, ears, and teeth as physical features. He finds more desire in her body the more he "explore[s]" (2018, p. 90) it. Physical contact is the foundation of his understanding at this point and definition of love.

The narrator realises that his younger self's perception of love was intrinsically linked to his solipsistic ego. He was unable to understand unconditional love. He was unable to be convinced by Susan's explanation of love: "Love is elastic. It is not a matter of diluting. It increases. It leaves nothing behind. Therefore, there is no reason for concern. (2018, p. 97). He also learns that he was "overconfident" and had an unquenchable want to be with her. He was also "tactically naive" (2018, p. 22). She and he belonged nowhere, respectively. His impressionable mind was unable of comprehending the nuanced nature of love, just as it was unable to comprehend Susan's various responses to their expulsion from the tennis club.

He portrays himself as an object of sex and as lacking any understanding of what love is. Furthermore, the narrator freely confesses that he disliked entering the adult world, or the Symbolic Order, because it required him to conform to established social mores, or the adult order, which was mostly represented by his own parents.

The first section is primarily portrayed as romantic. The narrator describes his fantasy of playing the part of a lover whose adored was Susan. The baby's perception of the outer world as an extension of her own self during this developmental period is comparable to Lacan's understanding of the Imaginary Order. Paul's egocentrism and his notion of love are linked at this point. He learns that his confusion about love was caused by the fact that the only way to justify love is to feel it. Consequently, he draws the conclusion that his relationship with Susan didn't last because he and she couldn't share each other's uniqueness and couldn't comprehend love. He does this by focusing on the first phase of their connection. 

The Uncertain Examination of Love 

The article discusses the second phase of Paul's affair with Susan, which takes place in London. During this time, Paul experiences the adult world and realizes that love and sharing two egos is complex. The narrator shifts to second person narration and presents a mixed-up combination of experiences, feelings, and thoughts in different phases of their shared life. Paul begins to notice the real problems and takes distance from his passionate and absolutist perspective towards love. He becomes more aware of the different and complicated character of Susan's personality and her inability to break away from her family and marriage institution. Paul pretends to redouble his commitment to Susan while slowly moving away from her. He finds his new and unusual life more interesting and justifies his situation with counterfactual behavior. The narrator represents himself as passive and inactive during his life with Susan in part two.

Reconstructed Memory of Love

This passage summarizes the third part of Julian Barnes' novel, "The Only Story". The narrator discusses his past relationship with Susan, and how he gradually replaced his need for her with other satisfactions. He relies on memory to come to terms with his traumatic past, and part three represents the most experimental part of the novel. The narrator reconstructs his memory through imagination, which allows him to transfigure his memories into what he desired to have. He begins to realize his own shortcomings and ignorance in terms of love, sex, and his relationship with Susan. He has learned to be more realistic, flexible, and concerned with his duty to himself. He also discovers new aspects of his own character, such as his cowardice.

Despite his emotional and cognitive development, the narrator doesn't look for repentance or forgiveness. The minimalistic version of his old existence quickly goes through his shifting consciousness as he just decides to accept its truths. In the end, the possibility of his future existence is what most worries him because of the radical shift in his attitude towards his past life and experience: 

I looked at her profile, and thought back to some moments from my own private cinema. … But after a few minutes of this, my mind began to wander. I couldn’t keep it on love and loss, on fun and grief. … I didn’t feel guilty about any of this; indeed, I think I am now probably done with guilt. But the rest of my life, such as it was, and subsequently would be, was calling me back. (2018, p. 383)

A lengthy and ongoing internal conflict that has tormented Paul's soul for around fifty years is finally resolved. He comprehends the role that extra-personal elements like time, societal structures, individual differences, and the illusory and manufactured character of memory play in determining human relationships and emotions. He finally succeeds in taming his interrogative, critical, and tediously repeated perspective on his romantic experience and the resulting perceptions of it later in life. He enters a new stage of his life as a result of this perspective shift. 

 

The reconstructed nature of memory allows The Only Story to expose the deception of love and shared singularity. Through his narration, the narrator is able to understand that his relationship with his beloved was largely motivated by unmet expectations on both sides. The expectations of each other's egos were difficult for them to meet. According to Lacan's interpretation of this idea, their relationship ended because their love did not free them from a severe sensation of lack. The narrator describes his experience with love as an exceptional occurrence that took place in European society in the 1960s. Paul was conceived during this decade's sexual revolution. In his society, he was a pioneer of the modern generation.

He was a person with a strong sense of ego. The fictitious community depicted in the village does not support its residents' pursuit of their individuality while still fostering sharing among them, in contrast to Kristeva's idea of shared singularity. As a result, the residents are unable to acknowledge or even share one another's singularities. Thus, a significant portion of the main barrier separating them is created by their unyielding private reality. They were unable to create a shared singularity that could ensure the trouble-free continuance of their romantic relationship because they were unable to transcend the dominance of their respective subjectivities.

Conclusion: 

In conclusion, he portrays himself as a representation of individualism. His values and those of the others, especially Susan's and those of his own family, were difficult for him to reconcile when he was in his twenties. There is rarely any sense of sharing between his reality and the portrayed world of the other characters, not even in his act of storytelling. He consequently spends the majority of his life as a wanderer since he lacks a sense of belonging to any community, which is typically founded on mutual sharing, as a result of being an outcast in his own civilization. Paul can discover genuine love towards the end of his storytelling act by including his beloved's viewpoint, ideas, and emotions.

Work Cited 

Barnes, J. (2018). The Only Story [eBook edition]. Vintage. 

Nayebpour, Karam, and Naghmeh Varghai̇yan. ‘Reconstructed Memory of Love in Julian Barnes’s the Only Story’. Hacettepe, vol. 38, no. 2, Hacettepe University, Dec. 2021, pp. 336–347, https://doi.org10.32600/huefd.693265.

Julian Barnes: Official Website, https://www.julianbarnes.com/index.html. Accessed 30 March 2023.