In his north London study, Julian Barnes sits before a vintage electric typewriter.
Activating the machine, a distinctive sound permeates the room.
“A hum that says, ‘I’m here when you need me. Just alerting you to the fact that I’m turned on and ready,'” the acclaimed novelist describes.
The typewriter “suits the way that I think as a writer,” he elaborates, before commencing to strike the keys. A reassuring clatter ensues as individual letters imprint themselves onto the blank page:
The other day I discovered an alarming possibility…
This is the opening line of his new novel, Departure(s).
While the fictional discovery may be alarming, perhaps more unsettling for his readership is Barnes’ announcement that he intends to cease writing novels.
Departure(s) is slated to be his final work, coinciding with his forthcoming 80th birthday.
“You get a sense of having played your tunes,” he explains. “As I wrote this book, I both thought, this feels like the last book, and it should be.”
Will he miss the craft of fiction?
“I will miss it, but at the same time it would be foolish to do it if I didn’t do it with full conviction… I think it’s just a correct decision.”
Is Departure(s) a fitting culmination to his career? “I think so, yes,” he affirms. “I hope so.”
Barnes’ prolific career encompasses 14 published novels, with three adapted into film. His works have been translated into 50 languages, selling 10 million copies globally.
Since his debut, Metroland, in 1980, he has ascended to the forefront of contemporary literature.
Recognized by Granta in 1983 as one of Britain’s leading young novelists, he is featured in the iconic group photograph alongside literary luminaries such as Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Rose Tremain, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ian McEwan. (Salman Rushdie, also on the list, was absent from the shoot.)
Granta’s once-a-decade selection serves as a key indicator of Britain’s evolving literary landscape, and the 1983 photograph showcases some of its most distinguished figures.
“I was excited to be in a generation of novelists, all under 40, and all being celebrated. It was a strange time because it was a time when fiction suddenly became sexy, and also suddenly money was available.”
Barnes received the Booker Prize in 2011 for his 11th novel, The Sense of An Ending, after three previous nominations.
His 15th, Departure(s), embodies classic Barnes, artfully blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Described as a blend of fiction, memoir, and essay, it centers on a love story between two individuals who reconnect years after parting as students.
When asked about the veracity of the characters, Barnes enigmatically replies, “That’s for me to know and my biographer to find out.”
The novel is narrated by a writer named Julian, a north London resident with blood cancer whose wife has succumbed to a brain tumor.
“I don’t think it’s my most autobiographical work… but it’s obviously a personal book,” he reveals.
Julian Barnes, in reality, is living with blood cancer, and in 2008, his first wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, passed away from a brain tumor a mere 37 days after her diagnosis.
Kavanagh represented notable authors including Joanna Trollope, Robert Harris, Margaret Drabble, and, for over two decades, Amis.
Barnes expresses that he’s “completely at ease” with his cancer diagnosis and supports assisted dying, emphasizing that “that’s not related to my cancer”.
“My condition is stable and it’s kept stable by taking chemo every day of my life.”
He later shares, “The phrase I came up with when my wife was dying of brain cancer and I was struggling with sanity was, it’s just the universe doing its stuff.”
The theme of death has been a recurring motif in his work. “I have had a lifelong engagement with death, both theoretical and actual, and have written about it many times,” he notes in Departure(s).
When questioned about his fascination with death, he appears almost bewildered by the query.
“I think we should think about death more,” he asserts.
Until roughly a decade ago, he would awaken in the night with a start and “the notion of oblivion, and I’d be out of the bed, often out onto the landing before I really woke up, shouting ‘I’m going to die!'”
“What a banal remark,” he reflects, adding, “That’s how I’m constituted. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy life just as much as anyone else.”
“In fact, you could argue that if you’re aware that it’s all going to come to an end suddenly, possibly, or after a long illness, you appreciate more the hours and the minutes that you’re going to be alive.”
This provides insight into the mind of the author who gained prominence in 1984 with his third novel, Flaubert’s Parrot, which revolves around a retired doctor consumed by the renowned French author of Madame Bovary.
The novel showcased Barnes’ adeptness at blending fact and fiction, along with his deep understanding of French literature.
In 2017, France bestowed upon him the prestigious Legion D’Honneur for his contributions to literature and engagement with French culture.
As a young man, Barnes admits to feeling insecure. He aspired to be a writer but questioned, “what have I got to bring to the table?”
It was only after the success of Flaubert’s Parrot that he felt confident enough to list ‘writer’ on his passport. “It felt bloody marvellous.”
Barnes famously had a falling out with Amis, a colleague from their days as journalists at the New Statesman in the 1970s, after Amis dismissed Kavanagh as his agent. When asked if he regrets the dispute, his response is a firm, “No, not at all.”
“He behaved deceitfully towards my wife… While you can forgive a hurt done to yourself, it’s much harder to forgive a hurt done to someone you love. So our relationship didn’t really entirely recover, but we got back a bit, towards the end of his life.”
He remains close friends with McEwan, who calls him during the filming of the interview in his study.
In the presence of one of Britain’s greatest living novelists, another one calls!
Despite stepping away from novel writing, Barnes intends to continue writing journalism and affirms, “I decline to be pessimistic about the future of the novel,” acknowledging the emergence of new and diverse voices in literature.
He also advocates for measures to protect writers’ works from being exploited by artificial intelligence without proper compensation.
Before the interview, an AI chatbot was prompted to write an opening paragraph in the style of Julian Barnes. It produced:
“He had always believed that memory behaved like a courteous guest – arriving when invited, leaving when ignored – but lately it had begun to loiter, hands in pockets, humming tunelessly in the corners of his mind.”
The real author dismisses it as a combination of plagiarism and banality.
“If I’d written that sentence, ‘He’d always believed that memory behaved like a courteous guest’, I’d stop there because all the stuff about ‘loitering hands in pockets, humming tunelessly in the corners of his mind’ is just crass”.
Overall, he finds the AI-generated paragraph lacking. “It doesn’t make you laugh and it doesn’t make you cry. It doesn’t move you. It’s just a pastiche.”
“They need to have some sort of law which says you can’t just scrape things and then publish it as an original work.”
Spending time in the company of a man who has been at the heart of British literary culture for nearly 50 years is balm for the soul.
I was first introduced to his writing in the early 1990s when I read A History of the World in 10½ Chapters and was beguiled by its playful retelling of events from unexpected perspectives – the story of Noah’s Ark is told by a stowaway woodworm.
It was a treat to be shown the notebook in which he began Departure(s), filled with his neat handwriting exploring creative ideas and potential dialogue as well as newspaper cuttings that sparked his imagination.
He has always started his novels in notebooks, he says, before typing a first draft on his trusted typewriter, then moving onto a computer.
I wonder why the book title Departure(s) has the “s” in brackets.
“Because there’s one main departure, which is our departure from life, and then there are several others referred to in the books, which are departures from love and so on.”
He tells me, with a smile, that “it’s a slightly enigmatic, possibly annoying title, but I like it.”
Indeed, the title feels appropriate. His departure marks a significant moment in the literary world.
“I shall miss you,” he writes to his readers towards the end of the book. “Your presence has delighted me.”
Departure(s) is published on 22 January.