3. 4. POSTMODERN NOVEL. JULIAN BARNES, GRAHAM SWIFT.

Background: modernism and comparisons with

postmodernism
Both modern and postmodern literature represent a break from 19th century
realism, in which a story was told from an objective or omniscient point of view. In
character development, both modern and postmodern literature explore
subjectivism, turning from external reality to examine inner states of
consciousness, in many cases drawing on modernist examples in the stream of
consciousness styles of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. In addition, both modern
and postmodern literature explore fragmentariness in narrative- and characterconstruction, reflective of the works of Swedish dramatist August Strindberg and
the Italian author Luigi Pirandello.
Unlike postmodern literature, however, modernist literature saw fragmentation and
extreme subjectivity as an existential crisis or a Freudian internal conflict. In
postmodern literature this crisis is avoided. The tortured, isolated anti-heroes of,
say, Knut Hamsun or Samuel Beckett, and the nightmare world of T. S. Eliot's The
Waste Land, make way in postmodern writing for the self-consciously
deconstructed and self-reflexive narrators of novels by Vladimir Nabokov, Vladimir
Sorokin, John Fowles, John Barth, or Julian Barnes.
The 1941 death of Irish novelist James Joyce, one of modernism's last and biggest
giants, is sometimes used as a rough boundary for postmodernism's start.
Another common divide is the end of the second world war, which saw a critical
assessment of human rights in the wake of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, The Holocaust, and Japanese American internment. It also coincides with
the beginning of the Cold War, the American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
and the beginning of movements which worked towards: (a) the end of
Colonialism, (b) the Partition of India, (c) the 1947 UN Partition Plan, and (d) the
development of Postcolonial literature [1]. Finally, it reflects the influence of the
computer which garnered new importance during the war. During this time,
computers became integrated within postmodern fiction often referred to as
Cyberpunk [2].
Literature of this era does not set itself against modern literature as much as it
develops and extends the style, making it self-conscious and ironic.
The postmodern position is that the style of a novel must be appropriate to that
which it depicts and represents.
Many modernist critics attack the maximalist novel as being disorganized, sterile
and filled with language play for its own sake, empty of value as a narrativeand
therefore empty of value as a novel.
JULIAN Patrick BARNES (born January 19, 1946 in Leicester) is a contemporary
British writer whose novels and short stories have been seen as examples of
postmodernism in literature. He has been shortlisted three times for the Man

Booker Prize (Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur &
George (2005)). He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.
Following an education at City of London School and Magdalen College, Oxford, he
worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. Subsequently, he
worked as a literary editor and film critic. He now lives in London and writes fulltime.
Flaubert's Parrot is a novel by Julian Barnes that was shortlisted for the Booker
Prize in 1984. The novel recites amateur Flaubert expert Geoffrey Braithwaite's
musings on his subject's life, and his own, as he tracks a stuffed parrot that once
inspired the great author.
The novel follows Geoffrey Braithwaite, a widowed, retired Englishman, visiting
France and the Flaubert landmarks therein. While visiting various small museums
related to Flaubert, Geoffrey encounters two incidences of people claiming to have
the stuffed parrot which sat atop Flaubert's writing desk for a brief period. While
trying to differentiate which is authentic Geoffrey ultimately learns that, in fact,
neither could be genuine, and Flaubert's parrot could be one of hundreds stored
away in a major French museum.
Although the "main focus" of the narrative is tracking down the parrot, many
chapters exist independently of this plotline, consisting of Geoffrey's reflections eg.
Flaubert's love life and how it was affected by trains, animal imagery in Flaubert's
works and the animal with which he himself was identified (usually a bear).
One of the central themes of the novel is a figurehead of Postmodernism:
subjectivism. For example, the novel provides three sequential chronologies of
Flaubert's life: the first is optimistic (citing his successes, conquests, etc), the
second is negative (citing the deaths of his friends/lovers, his failures, illnesses
etc.) and the third compiles quotations written by Flaubert in his journal at various
points in his life. The attempts to find the real Flaubert mirror the attempt to find
his parrot, ie. apparent futility. This theme recurs when addressing Emma Bovary's
eyes, which are assigned three different colours by Flaubert.
England, England (1998) is a philosophical novel by Julian Barnes which was
shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel is set in the Britain of the not-too-distant
future, and chronicles the creation of a giant England themed amusement park,
called "England, England", which also operates as an independent state.
On the one hand, the novel is the fictional biography of Martha Cochrane, a clever
and ambitious Englishwoman with a rural lower middle-class background who, after
graduating from university, attempts to climb the ladder of success within
corporate Britain. As a woman of about 40, she reaches the zenith of her career
when she is employed by the eminent British entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman whose
final project -- a miniature re-creation on the Isle of Wight of all that is essentially
English, something more than, and superior to, a theme park -- she helps to
realize. After she has dethroned the ageing Pitman by threatening to expose to the
world his monthly visits to a high-class brothel, she holds the post of Chief
Executive Officer for a few years. But then she breaks up with her lover and
accomplice, Paul Harrison, is dismissed as a result and, as persona non grata,
leaves for the Continent. After some years of aimlessly travelling the world she reenters the real Britain, which by now has regressed to an unimportant, insular and

almost pre-industrial existence. It is there, somewhere in Wessex, that she spends

her final days, solitary, thoughtful and not altogether unhappy.
On the other hand, England, England is the story of Sir Jack Pitman's gigantic
project of draining England of everything that is essentially English (including the
royals), reassembling it on the Isle of Wight and turning that island into an
independent member state of the European Union -- a project which quite soon
develops its own momentum and which survives its founding fathers and mothers.
At the end of the novel, which reaches well into the 21st century, "Old England",
which has adopted its old name, Anglia, is a depopulated country (there is talk of
"boat people") reduced in size (after a blitzkrieg, it only consists of the old AngloSaxon heptarchy) and characterized by atavism (cf. "Deep England"), while
England, England (the former Isle of Wight) is still going strong both as a major
tourist attraction and a sovereign state in its own right. In the course of the novel,
Pitman becomes "Island Governor", but in reality he wants to turn the island into a
quasi-dictatorship run solely on the principles of the free market.
On yet another level, England, England is a novel of ideas -- mainly ideas that
correspond to the criticism of society voiced by French philosophers of the second
half of the 20th century. The seminal work in this respect is Jean Baudrillard's
(b.1929) L'change symbolique et la mort (1976), in which Baudrillard claims that
in the course of the 20th century reality has been superseded by "simulacra", by
representations of the original which -- in a world where technology has developed
the means to replicate each and everything, including works of art (cf. Walter
Benjamin's 1936 essay "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit") and humans (by means of cloning) -- acquire an independent
and increasingly higher status than the original: because they are safer, easier to
handle, more cost-effective, ubiquitous and thus more easily accessible,
renewable, and predictable.
This is exactly the purpose of Pitman's final project: he wants his island to
epitomize everything that is truly English. As a fervent patriot, he wants to put
England in a nutshell for all the world to see and to cash in on England at the same
time: he does not mind that the real thing takes a turn for the worse and
eventually deteriorates.

By having his characters uninhibitedly subvert all of England's long-standing

customs and traditions, Barnes inadvertently also collects, registers and
critically assesses these myths. For the sake of simplification, however, in
the novel old English folklore, customs and legends, but also historical facts,
are altered to fit the overall purpose of the Project.
Because the actors sooner or later over-identify with their roles, some of
the other attractions go terribly wrong. Robin Hood and his band actually
start hunting their own food in the Island's heritage parks and old-English
farmyards; the smugglers really start smuggling (cf. Adam Smith's approval
of smuggling); and the "Samuel Johnson Dining Experience" turns out to be a
flop because Doctor Johnson is regularly rude to the guests who dine at his
table.
Barnes' first novel, Metroland (1980), follows the adventures of a young man
escaping English suburbia in Paris in 1968. It was followed by Before She
Met Me (1982), a story of jealousy and obsession. His next book, the
3

acclaimed Flaubert's Parrot (1984), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for
Fiction and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Narrated by a retired
doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, the novel combines literary criticism,
biographical digression and a tragic personal narrative as Braithwaite travels
through Rouen and Croisset on the trail of the celebrated author of Madame
Bovary.
Staring at the Sun (1986) narrates the life story of Jean Sergeant, from the
Second World War through to the first decades of the new millennium. A
History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989) explores the relationship
between art, religion and death, through a number of stories linked by
images of shipwreck and survival, while Talking It Over (1991), winner of the
French Prix Fmina, is the story of a triangular love affair. The Porcupine, a
political novel set in Eastern Europe, was published in 1992. Cross Channel,
a collection of short stories about English men and women living in France,
was published in 1996 and was followed by a dark satire of contemporary
English 'theme-park' culture, England, England (1998), which was shortlisted
for the Booker Prize for Fiction.
Julian Barnes' work has been successful both commercially and critically on
both sides of the English Channel.
GRAHAM SWIFT. Graham Colin Swift (born May 4, 1949) is a well-known British
author. He was born in London, England and educated at Queens' College,
Cambridge.
Some of his works have been made into movies, including Last Orders, which
starred Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins. The novel was a controversial winner of
the Booker Prize, due to the debt the plot owed to William Faulkner's As I Lay
Dying.
Waterland is a novel by Graham Swift, made into a 1992 movie starring Jeremy
Irons. It is considered to be the author's premier novel.
Waterland follows the narrator, a history teacher, in a non-chronological sequence
through his teen years, late years, and through the lives of some of his ancestors.
Waterland is concerned with the nature and importance of history as the primary
source of meaning in a narrative. For this reason, it is associated with new
historicism.

Novelist Graham Swift was born in London in 1949. He was educated at

Dulwich College, Queens' College, Cambridge, and York University. He was
nominated as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists' in the Book
Marketing Council's promotion in 1983.
He is the author of seven novels. The first, The Sweet Shop Owner (1980), is
narrated by disillusioned shopkeeper Willy Chapman, and unfolds over the
course of a single day in June. The narrator of his second novel, Shuttlecock
(1981), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, becomes obsessed with
his father's experiences during the Second World War.
Waterland, his acclaimed third novel, was published in 1983. Narrated by
4

history teacher Tom Crick, it describes his youth spent in the Norfolk fens
during the Second World War. These personal memories are woven into a
greater history of the area, slowly revealing the seeds of a family legacy that
threatens his marriage. The book won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. It was followed by Out of this World (1988),
the story of a photojournalist and his estranged daughter, and Ever After
(1992), in which a university professor makes a traumatic discovery about
his career.
Swift's sixth novel, Last Orders (1996), which won the Booker Prize for
Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), recounts a
journey begun in a pub in London's East End by four friends intent on
fulfilling a promise to scatter the ashes of their dead drinking-partner in the
sea.
Graham Swift's novels are all ambitious in their own ways in their thematic
and narrative scope. Swift tackles ideas of narrative, history, conflicts
between the generations, the place of an individual in the larger scale of
events. His novels are frequently organised around an underlying mystery,
and his oblique and non-linear narrative technique lends itself to a gradual
revelation of events in a manner reminiscent at times of the nineteenth
century detective novel.
Swift questions the nature of narrative through questioning the reality of
history, a theme that is central to Shuttlecock (1981), Waterland (1983), Out
of This World (1988), and Ever After (1992). In all these novels Swift
considers the nature of the relationship between personal and public
histories, between self-created and orderly narratives and the disorderly
nature of actuality.
History as narrative is for Swift primarily a personal rather than a factual
reality, a fact reflected in his use of a predominantly first person narration in
what is almost a stream of consciousness manner. Story telling is central to
Waterland, as Crick debates the very nature of history and the relationship
between past and present. The novel is essentially a dramatic monologue.
Graham Swift's novels deal with the extraordinary in the ordinary. In their
settings, language and characterisations Swift's novels are sparse and
consciously drab. His protagonists are often ordinary men, middle-aged
clerks or teachers or accountants. In their voices Swift ponders some of the
bigger issues of life - death, birth, marriage and sex - as well as the
everyday politics of relationships and friendships. His intricate narrative
patterns raise questions about the relationship between personal histories
and world events, between personal and public perceptions. He highlights
the impossibility of creating a single objective reality, fictional or otherwise,
and through fiction investigates the very nature of fiction.