Julian Barnes - A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters

Inspired Barnes is a dazzler.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

This is a playful, witty and entertaining gathering of conjectures by a man to whom ideas are quite clearly crucial: a quintessential humanist, it would seem, of the pre-post-modernist species.

The New York Times Book Review

Barnes is an important writer who continues to grow, blessed as he is with both ambition and self-irony.

San Francisco Chronicle

Sensational the book is utterly novel. A History of the World in 10 Chapters really strings together fictional conceits that dance and prance and mug the kind of crowd pleasers that Twain or Wilde might have read on tour a fabulous independent voice.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Barness literary energy and daring are nearly unparalleled among contemporary English novelists.

New Republic

A challenging, readable and entertaining collection Julian Barnes takes us on a marvelous trip.

Dallas Morning News

Barnes leapfrogs easily from fabulism to reportage to criticism to the personal essay. There are shafts of brilliance and a saving taste of the bitterness that breeds effective satire.

Christian Science Monitor

JULIAN BARNES
A HISTORY
OF THE WORLD
IN 10 CHAPTERS

Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England, in 1946, was educated at Oxford University and now lives in London. His first four novelsMetroland, Before She Met Me, Flauberts Parrot and Staring at the Sunhave brought him international acclaim.

Metroland

Before She Met Me

Flauberts Parrot

Staring at the Sun

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, DECEMBER 1990

Copyright 1989 by Julian Barnes

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd., London, and in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1989.

A portion of this book was originally published in
The New Yorker.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barnes, Julian.

A history of the world in 10 chapters/Julian Barnes.

Ist Vintage international ed

p. cm (Vintage international)

eISBN: 978-0-307-79786-5

I. Title. II. Series

PR6052 A6657H5 1990

823. 914dc20 90-50161

Author photo copyright Miriam Berkley

Facing page 124: Gricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819.

Louvre Museum, Paris. Runion des Muses Nationaux.

v3.1

to Pat Kavanagh

T HEY PUT THE BEHEMOTHS in the hold along with the rhinos, the hippos and the elephants. It was a sensible decision to use them as ballast; but you can imagine the stench. And there was no-one to muck out. The men were overburdened with the feeding rota, and their women, who beneath those leaping fire-tongues of scent no doubt reeked as badly as we did, were far too delicate. So if any mucking-out was to happen, we had to do it ourselves. Every few months they would winch back the thick hatch on the aft deck and let the cleaner-birds in. Well, first they had to let the smell out (and there werent too many volunteers for winch-work); then six or eight of the less fastidious birds would flutter cautiously around the hatch for a minute or so before diving in. I cant remember what they were all called indeed, one of those pairs no longer exists but you know the sort I mean. Youve seen hippos with their mouths open and bright little birds pecking away between their teeth like distraught dental hygienists? Picture that on a larger, messier scale. I am hardly squeamish, but even I used to shudder at the scene below decks: a row of squinting monsters being manicured in a sewer.

There was strict discipline on the Ark: thats the first point to make. It wasnt like those nursery versions in painted wood which you might have played with as a child all happy couples peering merrily over the rail from the comfort of their well-scrubbed stalls. Dont imagine some Mediterranean cruise on which we played languorous roulette and everyone dressed for dinner; on the Ark only the penguins wore tailcoats. Remember: this was a long and dangerous voyage dangerous even though some of the rules had been fixed in advance. Remember too that we had the whole of the animal kingdom on board: would you have put the cheetahs within springing distance of the antelope? A certain level of security was inevitable, and we accepted double-peg locks, stall inspections, a nightly curfew. But regrettably there were also punishments and isolation cells. Someone at the very top became obsessed with information gathering; and certain of the travellers agreed to act as stool pigeons. Im sorry to report that ratting to the authorities was at times widespread. It wasnt a nature reserve, that Ark of ours; at times it was more like a prison ship.

Now, I realize that accounts differ. Your species has its much repeated version, which still charms even sceptics; while the animals have a compendium of sentimental myths. But theyre not going to rock the boat, are they? Not when theyve been treated as heroes, not when its become a matter of pride that each and every one of them can proudly trace its family tree straight back to the Ark. They were chosen, they endured, they survived: its normal for them to gloss over the awkward episodes, to have convenient lapses of memory. But I am not constrained in that way. I was never chosen. In fact, like several other species, I was specifically not chosen. I was a stowaway; I too survived; I escaped (getting off was no easier than getting on); and I have flourished. I am a little set apart from the rest of animal society, which still has its nostalgic reunions: there is even a Sealegs Club for species which never once felt queasy. When I recall the Voyage, I feel no sense of obligation; gratitude puts no smear of Vaseline on the lens. My account you can trust.

You presumably grasped that the Ark was more than just a single ship? It was the name we gave to the whole flotilla (you could hardly expect to cram the entire animal kingdom into something a mere three hundred cubits long). It rained for forty days and forty nights? Well, naturally it didnt that would have been no more than a routine English summer. No, it rained for about a year and a half, by my reckoning. And the waters were upon the earth for a hundred and fifty days? Bump that up to about four years. And so on. Your species has always been hopeless about dates. I put it down to your quaint obsession with multiples of seven.