Conversations with Julian Barnes (Literary Conversations) by unknown (2009) Paperback

by Vanessa Guignery

Conversations with Julian Barnes collects eighteen interviews, conducted over nearly three decades, by journalists and correspondents throughout the world with the author (b. 1946) of such highly praised novels as Flaubert’s Parrot and Arthur & George. The interviews collectively address the entirety of Julian Barnes’s varied works and provide readers the most vivid portrait yet of contexts and influences behind his ten novels, his short stories, and his essays. The interviews focus not only on the author’s fiction but also on his essays, translations, and pseudonymous writings. Barnes’s evolving understanding of the themes developed in his works (history, truth, love, art, and death), his views on the art of the writing process, and the role of authors in contemporary society are also discussed at length.

Paperback

First published April 23, 2009

About the author

Vanessa Guignery is Professor of Contemporary English Literature and Postcolonial Literature at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon (France), after having taught at the University of La Sorbonne in Paris as Assistant and Associate Professor from 1996 to 2009. She was Visiting Professor at the University of Texas in Austin in 2011 and Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University in Evanston (Illinois) in April 2017. She was a Fellow at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas in Austin in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2016, and has been a University Affiliate and Scholar there since 2010 for periods of one up to six months. She was a Junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France between 2012 and 2017, and is now a Honorary member. In 2020-21, she was awarded a one-year delegation with the CNRS research unit ITEM, specialised in genetic criticism.

Vanessa Guignery is the author of several books and essays on the work of Julian Barnes, including Julian Barnes from the Margins. Exploring the Writer’s Archives (Bloomsbury, 2020), The Fiction of Julian Barnes (Macmillan, 2006), and Conversations with Julian Barnes (Mississippi Press, 2009), co-edited with Ryan Roberts, the webmaster of julianbarnes.com. She has published articles on Jonathan Coe, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Jeanette Winterson, Michèle Roberts, Alain de Botton, David Lodge, Janet Frame, Ben Okri, Zadie Smith, Caryl Phillips and Alice Munro, as well as several essays and a monograph on B.S. Johnson, Ceci n'est pas une fiction (Sorbonne UP, 2009). She translated Jonathan Coe’s biography of B.S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, into French (Quidam, 2010) and edited the correspondence between B.S. Johnson and Zulfikar Ghose (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015). She is the author of Seeing and Being: Ben Okri's The Famished Road (PUF, 2012) and of a monograph on Jonathan Coe for Palgrave Macmillan (2016). She is the editor and co-editor of about fifteen books on contemporary literature in English and regularly conducts interviews with writers. From 2000 to 2009, she co-directed the research center ERCLA ("Writings of the Contemporary Novel in English") at the University of La Sorbonne. She is a permanent member of the CNRS research unit IHRIM.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julian Barnes says in the last interview here "I can't think of any biography [of a writer]... that has actually made me understand the work better." While this is only a collection of interviews, it is the closest thing we have to that for him. And I find myself not quite in agreement with Mr Barnes: for me this volume - helpfully organised chronologically by its compilers - *did* make me realise some things that I hadn't been fully aware of when reading the book in question. I would argue that it even uncovers some common strands in works that on the face of it seem quite unalike, in spite of the author's protestations to the contrary. If nothing else it has left me with a want to re-read Julian Barnes' books to see whether I get more out of them second time around. That can only be a good thing.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5. You can read a full review here:

http://www.jeffbursey.com/downloads/C...

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of Julian Barnes and found this collection enlightening and informative,

[Gisela]

Inspired to read this by the current GR reviews.

See, for example: @Robert and @JeffBursey, whose full review can be found at: http://www.jeffbursey.com/downloads/C...

Loved this quote:
“But the main lesson would be a general one: to take the idea you have for a novel and push it with passion, sometimes to the point of recklessness, regardless of what people are going to say—that is the way to do your best work.” There’s really no other way to do it, though it can be a lonely road.