Julian Barnes's Theses on History (In 10 1/2 Chapters)

Abstract

n 1984, Julian Barnes published Flaubert's Parrot, critically acclaimed account of an academic's rummage through the surviving trash of Flaubert's life in vain attempt to string this detritus together into meaningful whole. Hailed as postmodern tour de force of parody and parrotry, the novel treats literary form as playfully as it treats literary history. In 1989, as many cultural theorists were morosely contemplating the postmodern condition and Francis Fukuyama was cheerfully sounding his first proclamation of the end of History, Barnes published A History of the World in 10 Chapters. Barnes's fifth novel announces shift from literary to global historiography and, it would appear, move from biographical failure to historical success. The title alone suggests that the goal that eluded the narrator of Flaubert's Parrot is, paradoxically, attainable when surveying the sweeping stage of human history. Moreover, that breadth can be meaningfully encompassed in under eleven chapters. Or so it seems. Certainly, Barnes's ten full chapters evoke the academic solemnity of authoritative universal history or the distilled substance of popular account, but the dangling halfchapter addendum undercuts the sonority of the proclaimed endeavor. Even cursory perusal of the volume's contents quickly verifies the fragmented focus of Barnes's snapshot historical vision. Closer inspection reveals random series of apparently unrelated episodes with little rightful claim to the grand narrative paradigm that a history of the world suggests. Since the novel opens with vi-