Levels of Life

Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer 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), and won the prize for The Sense of an Ending (2011). He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.Following an education at the City of London School and Merton College, Oxford, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. Subsequently, he worked as a literary editor and film critic. He now writes full-time. His brother, Jonathan Barnes, is a philosopher specialized in Ancient Philosophy.He lived in London with his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, until her death on 20 October 2008.

出版者:Jonathan Cape

作者:Julian Barnes

页数:128

出版时间:2013-4-4

价格:GBP 10.99

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9780224098151

图书标签:JulianBarnes英国文学英国英文原版朱利安·巴恩斯小说外国文学non-fiction

You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes's new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion.

"Affecting, profound." (Guardian )

"An alluring-sounding melange of history, fiction and memoir." (Sunday Times )

"While one might expect a Barnes book to impress, delight, move, disconcert or amuse, the last thing for which his work prepares us is the blast of paralysingly direct emotion that concludes Levels of Life. The extraordinary power of the final segment, in which Barnes writes with astonishing precision about mourning and grief, those areas of human experience so often camouflaged with evasion and silence. It's writing so intense that one has trouble meeting its gaze: a love song to "the heart of my life, the life of my heart" as well as a fearsome acknowledgement of the depths of a survivor's grief, when "what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there"." (Tim Martin Daily Telegraph )

读后感

很私人的写作。与其说是写给读者看的，不如说是Barnes自己的碎碎念。前面热气球的部分读者不知其所然，第三章悼念亡妻的文字却是真诚动人。人与人之间本质上时无法对痛苦感同身受的，Barnes不断写到旧友们小心翼翼的态度、问他是否好点了、有没有新伴侣，这些都让他如何的痛苦...  

很私人的写作。与其说是写给读者看的，不如说是Barnes自己的碎碎念。前面热气球的部分读者不知其所然，第三章悼念亡妻的文字却是真诚动人。人与人之间本质上时无法对痛苦感同身受的，Barnes不断写到旧友们小心翼翼的态度、问他是否好点了、有没有新伴侣，这些都让他如何的痛苦...  

我一开始就是喜欢巴恩斯多过麦克尤恩，虽然只看过一本终结的预感。这本书讲的是一个热气球飞行家和 法国女演员的故事，最后一章他开始讲自己妻子的死。于是热气球飞行家和法国女演员的故事就变成了一个寓言，他的瘸腿，疯狂的爱，和死亡像轮回一样，先交付在作者身上，又因为作...

我一开始就是喜欢巴恩斯多过麦克尤恩，虽然只看过一本终结的预感。这本书讲的是一个热气球飞行家和 法国女演员的故事，最后一章他开始讲自己妻子的死。于是热气球飞行家和法国女演员的故事就变成了一个寓言，他的瘸腿，疯狂的爱，和死亡像轮回一样，先交付在作者身上，又因为作...

我一开始就是喜欢巴恩斯多过麦克尤恩，虽然只看过一本终结的预感。这本书讲的是一个热气球飞行家和 法国女演员的故事，最后一章他开始讲自己妻子的死。于是热气球飞行家和法国女演员的故事就变成了一个寓言，他的瘸腿，疯狂的爱，和死亡像轮回一样，先交付在作者身上，又因为作...

用户评价

我想，我真是特别喜欢通过他的视角看世界和感受人事。温和，沉郁，深厚，感伤。听他自己读的有声书真是不能再动人。他的声音在作家里大概是少有的好声音。

Julian Barnes 这本书最大的看点是他的虚构性叙事，不同年龄段的心理感受，人生的不同层级。讲热气球和摄影都是为了最后讲死亡和失去对于人的意义。前部分讲到男人对女人的爱慕，男女之间的博弈。后一部讲失去伴侣后的感受，那种失落感真的太过于真实和刻骨铭，各个时间段心理变化。

Pattern and level, a corroborater of your life.

Narrated by Julian Barnes. “Every love story is a potential grief story.”

如果谁有权评价这本书，应该是巴恩斯自己。太私人了，去讲究里面的深度啊文学技巧啊之类的，个人觉得都没什么意义。这本书只是让作者寻求一个他能接受的形式，以表达的。大半在讲热气球，摄影，可字里行间的隐喻，调子都特别伤感。金庸经历丧子之痛后，在《倚天屠龙记》的后记里说，张三丰目睹张翠山死去的片段写得太肤浅了，真实人生中不是这样的，「因为那时我还不明白」。我以为Barnes也会说，《福楼拜的鹦鹉》那本书里鳏夫的感受是不对的。结果他却说，讶异于自己在三十年前就准确预言了如今的感受。我不知道这两者哪个让我更难过（葬礼上念Pure Story那章，太虐了）。翻一些review的时候看到巴恩斯的近照，他真是老了，头发全白了。