Pulse by Julian Barnes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"For some, the sunlight catches on the telescope out there in the lagoon; for others, not. We choose, we are chosen, we are unchosen."

This striking quote comes from Carcassonne, one of the stories in Julian Barnes' collection titled Pulse (2011), an unusually diverse set of literary pieces. Some pieces are proper stories, others are vignettes, impressions, or just captured dialogue. What unites the pieces is the outstanding prose and the author's wisdom about all things human. I had a great time reading the book and being unable to offer any synthetic or summarizing observations, I will comment on some of my favorite pieces.

East Wind, the first piece in the collection, is in fact a proper story. A divorced real-estate agent meets an Eastern European waitress in a British coastal town. They enter a relationship and the story ends with a major twist that has political undertones.

At Phil and Joanna's is a four-part account of a conversation between a group of six friends: they have dinner together and they talk freely on various topics: love, sex, drinking, the essence of Europeanness, immigration, economy, well, even Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The conversation is slightly boozy and at places it reminds one of a "thought diarrhea" but - at least to me - it is compulsively readable. It is also quite "meta": there are metaphors about metaphors and puns about puns. A choice piece for anyone who is or aspires to be an intellectual.

My other favorite is the short, sad, and lyrical piece called Marriage Lines: a recently widowed man comes back to an island where he an his wife had been happy together:

"He had thought he could recapture, and begin to say farewell. He had thought that grief might be assuaged [...] But he was not in charge of grief. Grief was in charge of him."

Mr. Barnes is a particularly astute observer of relationships in couples: the story Trespass and the wonderful vignette Complicity are studies in the dynamic of building, sustaining, and ending relationships.

Harmony is a story that will likely stay in the reader's mind. Set in the 18th century it is an account of a noted physician, named by the author only as M---------, who uses magnetic therapy to cure blindness in a young and gifted pianist, Maria Theresia von P----------. The story refers to actual historical events: Franz Mesmer was famous in the second half of the 18th century as a Vienna-based physician who studied the so-called animal magnetism and tried to use magnets in the therapy. Obviously, the author is less interested in the story and more in its psychological and sociological dimensions.

Three and three quarter stars.




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