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 character-construction, 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 full-time.
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 re-enters 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 Anglo-Saxon 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 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 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
4

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.