Julian Barnes's 'The Only Story' as a Memory Narrative.

1. Julian Barnes's 'The
Only Story' as a
Memory Narrative
Paper N/o., Subject Code, Name : 207 : 22414 :
Contemporary Literatures in English
Prepared & Presented By : Nirav Amreliya
Batch : 2021 - 2023 (M.A. Sem. 4)
Enrollment Number : 4069206420210002
Ro. N/o. : 18
Submitted To : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,
Vidhyanagar, Bhavnagar - 364001
(Dated On : 07th March, 2023)

2. Introduction to the Novel : The Only Story :
● Published on : 1st February, 2018
● Genre : Psychological Fiction
● Writer : Julian Barnes
● Like his Man Booker-winning 2011 novel ‘The Sense of an Ending,’ and
indeed his 2008 memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of, Julian Barnes’s
latest novel is narrated by an older man puzzling over the meaning of
existence. (Clanchy)
● Not that the older Paul allows us to exult in his bravery or the
romance. He is dry about everything: his revolutionary impulses, his
rebellion against his parents, his expulsion from the tennis club, even
the sex. (Clanchy)
● “I can’t remember when or where we first kissed, who made
the first move, or whether it was both at the same time. And
whether perhaps it was not so much a move as a drift.”

3. ➢ ‘The Only Story’ as a Memory Narrative :
➔ The issue of temporal point of view, retrospect, is key here. Paul is, as he tells us, re-visiting (and, he admits,
inevitably if unintentionally, revising, re-visioning) personal history and emotional experience. His is not a
retrospective vantage point of tranquility; his distance does not clarify. (Campbell)
➔ “You understand, I hope, that I’m telling you everything as I remember it? I never kept a
diary, and most of the participants in my story—my story! My life!—are either dead or far
dispersed…Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the
rememberer.”
➔ Julian Barnes’s novel The Only Story (2018) can be read as a monograph on the complications of love.
(Nayebpour)
➔ “Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. Do we
have access to the algorithm of its priorities? Probably not. But I would guess that memory
prioritises whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going. So
there would be a self-interest in bringing happier memories to the surface first.”
➔ The purpose of his story is to achieve something in fiction that he could not in reality. However, when his
illusions are shattered under the effect of his reconstructing memory, he finds it impossible to achieve a
unity or sense of wholeness with his beloved. Thanks to his act of storytelling, he realizes that love should be
something more than a solipsistic emotion as it is a socio-culturally determined behaviour. (Nayebpour)

4. ➔ He reiterates his story to himself so that he might understand his experience
better. He is mostly remembering, and even fictionalising whenever his
memory fails him, his past experiences when he was in his early twenties. In
this part, Paul shares with us not only what he experienced but what he thinks
about his experience. (Nayebpour)
➔ Dipesh Chakrabarty has also given the appropriate phrase that is “Trauma is
Memory” in his book titled as ‘Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake
of Subaltern Studies’ (2002) as the very phrase can be allocated in the
character study of Susan Macleod, especially when she narrates her bitter
experiences with her uncle Humphrey in past to Paul Roberts and also tells
that what has made her “frigid” in the sequence when she converses with Paul
in matter of a belief in the idea of Hell and Heaven, Justice and Punishment. :

5. ➔ “‘I had an uncle. Uncle Humph. For Humphrey. I used to
go and stay with him and Aunt Florence. After my
mother died, so I would have been eleven, twelve. My
aunt would put me to bed and tuck me in and kiss me
and put out the light. And just as I would be getting off
to sleep, there was a sudden weight on the side of the
bed and it would be Uncle Humph, stinking of brandy
and cigars and saying he wanted a goodnight kiss too.
And then one time he said, “Do you know what a ‘party
kiss’ is?” and before I could reply he rammed his tongue
into my mouth and thrashed it around like a live fish. I
wish I’d bitten it off. Every summer he did it, till I was
about sixteen. Oh, it wasn’t as bad as for some, I know,
but maybe that’s what made me frigid.’” (Barnes)

6. ➢ Memory in Psychology :
➔ As and when we discuss or just refer to Memory as a field for
cognitive studies in Psychology, some juggernaut psychologists such
as sir Sigmund Freud, sir Carl Jung, Jean Piaget, sir Jacques Lacan,
sir William James, who gave their major portion of neurons in the
pursuit of human behavioural studies.
➔ In his groundbreaking book titled as ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’
(1899), Freud makes a critical case for Memory in context of its
relation with dreams and the functioning methods of human mind :
➔ “The entire memory of the dream is open to an objection
calculated to depreciate its value very markedly in critical
eyes. One may doubt whether our memory, which omits so
much from the dream, does not falsify what it
retained….The perceptions that come to us leave a trace in
our psychic apparatus which we may call a “Memory trace.””
(Freud)

7. ➢ Memory in Narratology :
➔ Janet considered “the memory system as the central organizing apparatus of the mind,
which categorizes and integrates all aspects of experience and automatically integrates
them into ever – enlarging and flexible meaning schemes.” (Schmid)
➔ ‘But I would guess that memory prioritises whatever is most useful to help keep
the bearer of those memories going. So there would be a self-interest in bringing
happier memories to the surface first. But again, I’m only guessing.’ (Barnes)
➔ “Memory” and “narrative” are technical terms in the academic fields of psychology,
linguistics, communication, history, and literary studies, with a variety of definitions in
each field, in addition to their nontechnical uses….Both narrative and memory are
constructed. Memories of what is understood to be the same event change over time, as
the person changes, and in response to the responses of audiences for the story. (Linde)

8. ➔ Arguably, the most fundamental scene of all narrative is oral storytelling. One
major mode of such oral narration is storytelling as part of everyday conversation:
children tell their parents what happened at school, grandparents tell their
grandchildren what happened in the war. In many ways different from such everyday-
life forms of conversational storytelling is a second important mode of oral
narrative, that of the epic. From Homer’s ‘Iliad’, which, as Milman Parry (1971) has
pointed out, is based on an ‘oral poetics’, to those manifold epic stories which were
told in preliterate societies and have never found their way into the written
medium—such stories are usually about a shared, mythical past, and often about
battles and heroic deeds. (Erll)
➔ Memoir is rooted in autobiographical fact, but it is also art. It selects, arranges, and
sometimes exaggerates, retouches, or mythologizes its materials in order to bring out a
deeper truth, define an identity, establish a public image, deal with trauma, or simply
tell a better story. (Department of English, Washington University in St. Louis)

9. ➢ The Purpose of Memory Narration in Post-Modernist Writings :
➔ The purpose of bringing memory narratives into literary authorship can
be to form the rigidly conservative minds of the readers and spectators
into a doubting and questioning minds which can probe for truth rather
than relying on just what comes as sacred ancient scriptures or holy texts.
This can be seen in context of Indian Vaidik Knowledge System where
there is a base division in scriptures, one part of it constitutes of Shruti
(Listened to Knowledge) like Vedas whereas another constitutes its part
by Smriti (Memory or Recollected Teachings compiled into Scriptures)
such as Puranas.
➔ As the statement “Language bears within itself the necessity of
its own critique.” forms the base of “Deconstruction” concept
originated by sir Jacques Derrida, it can be taken to probe
through the texts we come across in order to get clear
perspective.

10. ❖ Works Cited :
❏ Barnes, Julian. The Only Story. J. Cape, 2018.
❏ Campbell, Ellen Prentiss. “The Only Story, by Julian Barnes.” Fiction Writers Review, 17 Apr. 2018,
https://fictionwritersreview.com/review/the-only-story-by-julian-barnes/.
❏ Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. Univ. of Chicago Press,
2004.
❏ Clanchy, Kate. “The Only Story by Julian Barnes Review – an Exquisite Look at Love.” The Guardian, Guardian
News and Media, 26 Jan. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/26/the-only-story-julian-barnes-
review.
❏ Erll, Astrid. “Narratology and Cultural Memory Studies.” De Gruyter, De Gruyter, 4 Sept. 2009,
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110222432.212/html?lang=en.
❏ Freud, Dr Sigmund. “The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.” Translated by A. A. Brill, Project Gutenberg,
12 Aug. 2021, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66048.
❏ Linde, Charlotte. “Memory in Narrative - Wiley Online Library.” Memory in Narrative, NASA Ames Research
Center, USA, 28 Feb. 2015, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781118611463.wbielsi121.
❏ Nayebpour, Karam, and Naghmeh Varghaiyan. “Reconstructed Memory of Love in Julian Barnes’s the Only ... -
Dergipark.” Dergipark.org.tr, 4 Apr. 2021, https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/979900.
❏ Schmid, Michael. “Narrative Memory and the Impact of Trauma on Individuals with Reference to One Short