Read Online Levels of Life (Vintage International) By Julian Barnes
Read Online Levels of Life (Vintage International) By Julian Barnes
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Ebook About Julian Barnes, author of the Man Booker Prize–winning novel The Sense of an Ending, gives us his most powerfully moving book yet, beginning in the nineteenth century and leading seamlessly into an entirely personal account of loss—making Levels of Life an immediate classic on the subject of grief. Levels of Life is a book about ballooning, photography, love and loss; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded Barnes the 2011 Booker Prize described him as “an unparalleled magus of the heart.” This book confirms that opinion. “Spare and beautiful...a book of rare intimacy and honesty about love and grief. To read it is a privilege. To have written it is astonishing.” —Ruth Scurr, The Times of London“A remarkable narrative that is as raw in its emotion as it is characteristically elegant in its execution.” —Eileen Battersby, The Irish TimesThis ebook edition includes a reading group guide.Book Levels of Life (Vintage International) Review :
Having lost my 6-year-old son to cancer, I've read plenty about grief. And, as a Christian, I've read plenty about faith and grief. Leave it to an atheist to write the best book I've read yet. Julian Barnes is a highly respected novelist and essayist who wrote "Levels of Life" after his wife, Pat Kavanagh, died after nearly 30 years of marriage.This is not a typical book about grief. In fact, much of it does not look like it deals with grief at all, which is where the genius comes in. Barnes splits his short book into three sections. The first section, "The Sin of Height," is about early adventurous folks and their foray into ballooning. "You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed." Such is the world of people and balloons, or photography and balloons, or two people together. So, what is the sin of height? Is it our desire and willingness to rise about ourselves? What else is love other than the rising above yourself by being with another. "Together, in that first exaltation, that first roaring sense of uplift, they are greater than their two separate selves." Put together two things and you have something new and, in love, better than what you had before. So what is the sin? The desire to be more than we are?We come down to "On the Level," the second section of the book. Back on the ground, we deal with life as we find it. We can fly above the world, but we most come down. "But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings." So, why when we are on the ground do we constantly aspire to more? Because love is where truth and magic meet. It may be photography (truth) and ballooning (magic), but it may also be two people. And even though we are aware of the dangers of combining truth and magic, or rising in a basket below gas and hot air, we seek to rise above ourselves. But that goal to rise above our ground level leads us to a new level, "The Loss of Depth."In this final section, Barnes finally directly addresses the loss of his wife and the resultingbarnes-and-kavanaghJulian Barnes and Pat Kavanaghgrief. The first two sections lay the groundwork to help people understand better the loss of depth or the depth of grief. Some of the writing in this section could not be more accurate to the experience of grief. He opens. "You put together two people who have not been put together before. Sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a hydrogen balloon to a fire balloon: do you prefer crash and burn, or burn and crash?...Then, at some point, sooner or later, for this reason or that, one of them is taken away. And what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible."These stunning last two lines are written by Barnes in relation to his wife, but they apply to any relationship. My son has been taken away from me and my wife, but what is taken away is greater than what we had. Our relationship is greater for the loss, a mathematical impossibility. But love is not confined to our mathematical structures. Later he returns to this apparently illogical formula. "Grief is the negative image of love; and if there can be accumulation of love over the years, then why not of grief?" Everyone expects loss to diminish over the years, but can it not increase? Note that he does not say grief is the opposite of love. It is the "negative," like a negative of a photo. It is the other aspect we do not see except in special circumstances."This is what those who haven't crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn't mean they do not exist." Barnes tells about friends who refuse to talk about his wife, even when he repeatedly raises her name. Others encourage him to move on, but he has no interest in moving on from the memory of his wife. He keeps her alive by remembering her. Why would he stop? However, Barnes does not offer space for people to hide in their grief. "There are many traps and dangers in grief, and time does not diminish them. Self-pity, isolationism, world-scorn, an egotistical exceptionalism: all aspects of vanity.Look how much I suffer, how much others fail to understand: does this not prove how much I loved? Maybe, maybe not....The griefstruck demand sympathy, yet, irked by any challenge to their primacy, underestimate the pain others are suffering over the same loss." Or, perhaps, any loss.So, what does Barnes offer to overcome all of this? Nothing. Instead, it is a call to understand those in the midst of grief. A challenge for people to look at death, which we avoid, and the loss others can have for people. His only nod to Christianity is a sharp jab at a Christian who notes that Christ also suffered. He responds, is that all your God has to offer? But here Barnes slips because he assumes that Christianity offers an answer to suffering. Instead, it offers a model. And, it respects the grief we experience, just as Barnes is seeking from others. Perhaps he has considered this since the book -- he is more recently called agnostic. I bought Levels of Life because I thought it was another of Barnes’ novels. While it is novel, it’s not exactly accurate to call it a novel. In fact, it’s hard to place it in any one genre. However, to paraphrase John Updike, the invention of genres is the scourge of writers who just want to tell a story. And that may simply be the burden of any author who wants to write something thoughtful, intelligent, and fresh that has not been churned out before in some manner in a writing laboratory’s beaker. Barnes writes with all of those characteristics in this book.Levels of Life is part history, with what I’m sure must be fictionalized dialogue, and part intensely personal rumination about Barnes’ grief over the death of his wife, Pat Kavanagh. She was a remarkably beautiful woman. We know this because of the benefits the Internet bestows us. More importantly, according to Barnes’ own telling and the brief biographies available to anyone interested enough to ask Google, we can infer she was also his intellectual equal. What conversations they must have had. What bond, what strength of love, what “uxoriousness,” what sense of a complete and total giving over to each other. What inconsolability.I dare say, this is not a book for the first-time Barnes reader. Start like I did with The Sense of an Ending, which is a novel and a good one at that. Then read Levels of Life with one caveat: the emotion of the third part may be too raw if someone you love has recently died. Then again, you may take comfort in sharing someone else’s sorrow. It’s up to you. At any rate, I have preordered Barnes’ newest book, The Only Story, and await its release.It is too bad that Julian Barnes doesn’t believe in an afterlife where he can be reunited with her. He might derive some comfort from it. If I were to be fortunate enough for him to read this or to address him directly, I would say: Mr. Barnes, you don’t have to accept anyone’s doctrine or dogma to accept the reality of a continuation of life. Another level of life. 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