primary agents of public shaming.
Today most authors will tell you (pri-
vately) that what they really fear is
becoming the target of left-wing activ-
ists, which can result in death threats
( JK Rowling), staff revolts (Woody
Allen, Jordan Peterson), parting com-
pany with their publishers (Kate
Clanchy) or leaving the industry entirely
(Gillian Philip, Rachel Rooney).
To offset this possibility, publishers
have started to employ “sensitivity
readers” to spot problematic phrases,
situations and tropes before publica-
tion. “I think that’s a bit suspicious,”
Barnes says, when I raise the spectre
of a professional class of wrongthink
diviners. Does he not use one? “Oh no,
no, no.” However, he does submit all
his fiction for a legal reading, some-
times with unexpected results. His 1992
novel The Porcupine, about a trial in a
fictional postcommunist country, “got
a super legal reading, [which] said
that there are four people who can suefor libel
on this:
[Mikhail] Gor-
bachev, the Pope,
Nancy Reagan and, I
think, Frank Sinatra. And,
seriously, there is no defence.”
Worried about this, Barnes went to
the publisher’s managing director and
asked what he should do. “He said,
‘Well, publish, of course.’ And I thought,
‘Getting sued by the Pope would be a
good one.’” He hoots with laughter.
“Not so sure about Frank Sinatra. He
might send his boys around.”
One of the stranger aspects of the
sensitivity reader debate is that I don’t
know any author who doesn’t circulate
their manuscript to friends and relevant
experts before publication. Barnes’s
contemporary Ian McEwan, for exam-
ple, sends his drafts to the academicTimothy Garton Ash. Being a writer is
rarely the titanic solo struggle it can
seem from the outside. In the 1980s
Barnes sent the manuscript of Flau-
bert’s Parrot to his friend Hermione
Lee, the biographer. Her notes were so
helpful that he has done the same for
every book since. And what would he
say if she told him that something was
offensive? “I’d consider it, obvi-
ously. But... offensive to whom?
This book is probably offensive
to most Christians in the
world. Or a large number of
Christians, perhaps.”
In Elizabeth Finch one of
Finch’s former students
weighs in, anonymously,
to the public shaming —
denouncing her for
assigning Hitler’s Table
Talk on their reading list.
Hitler was a fan of Julian
the Apostate, you see —
the book jacket puff
quote no one wants —
telling Himmler in 1941:
“What wonderful intelli-
gence, what discernment,
all the wisdom of antiquity.”
The philistine who joins the
witch-hunt against Finch is,
perhaps inevitably given the
author’s political sympathies, a
Farage-like figure. Barnes’s anti-
Brexit views led to his own denuncia-
tion by Stephen Glover in 2017:
“‘Hatred, hysteria and lies’ was the
headline,” he says, quietly amused. “I
thought, ‘I don’t need to read this.’”
Is he reconciled to Brexit now? “No.
Why should I?” he says. “I’m not a
Remoaner, I’m a Returner. I think that
we must get back into Europe.” He says
it won’t happen in his lifetime, but he
believes that “we will come to our
senses and see that, if only from an eco-
nomic point of view, it makes sense to
be a member of the largest trading
group in the world, 22 nautical miles
from your coast”. As for Boris Johnson,
he worries his glibness has damaged
perceptions of Britain. “His sort of posh
Etonian charm doesn’t cut a centimetre
of ice in Europe.”
Talking to Barnes is a reminder that
there are two types of successful peo-
ple. Some are still bowled over by their
good fortune, able to shrug off criti-
cism and to laugh at the frequent
absurdity of life as a public figure. The
other sort, whose ambition was often
driven by a sense of lack, pour all their
achievements into the dark void inside
themselves but can never fill it. Barnes
is firmly in the former camp. When I ask
him about the decline of the Great
White Male — literary awards are now
dominated by women, to the extent we
might one day need a Men’s Prize for
Fiction — he is unfazed. “There’s been
a strong readjustment in the last years,
particularly towards writers of colour,”
he says. “And that’s a good thing... I
have no resentment of other writers.”He is also happier these days because
of his new partner, Rachel Cugnoni,
who used to work at his publisher,
Penguin. Barnes was a devoted hus-
band to his late wife, Pat Kavanagh, a
literary agent, and wrote an achingly
sad book, Levels of Life, about her death
from cancer in 2008. Elizabeth Finch
is dedicated to Rachel: did he pause
over that, having been so public in
his grief?
“It took many years,” he says. “I
didn’t think I would meet anyone. I
didn’t think I could meet anyone. And I
knew that my grief would not be short-
lived. I also knew that Pat would want
me to meet someone else. Fortunately
she didn’t tell me, she told other peo-
ple, when she was ill.”
People will be pleased for you, I say.
Barnes smiles, serene and unruffled,
and soon we begin to say our goodbyes.
He insists on paying for the drinks,
because, he says, he has just signed a
new book contract.
Damn, I think, walking away. Happy,
productive and reading three-volume
works of Soviet memoir for pleasure?
Maybe I should give up my mobile
phone too. cHelen Lewis is a staff writer at The
Atlantic magazineReligions that worship
only one god arevery dangerous and
very distortingBarnes on faith
I didn’t think I would
meet anyone, I didn’tthink I could meet
anyoneBarnes on love
Flaubert’s Parrot
A brilliantly clever novel, shortlisted
for the 1984 Booker, in which a
Flaubert expert explores the writer’s
life while searching for the stuffed
parrot that inspired him.A History of the World in 10½
Chapters
Masquerading as a novel, this 1989
book is really a dizzying collection
of tales on decay and decline that
takes us from the Ark to Heaven.The Sense of an Ending
It’s a commonplace to say that
Barnes didn’t win the Booker for the
right novel. But this tale of the past
catching up with an elderly man
deserved to carry off the 2011 award.Through the Window
Barnes is a superb essayist and was
never better than in this gorgeous
2012 collection on fellow writers.THE BEST OF BARNES
ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES COWEN. ORIGINAL IMAGES: DAVID LEVENE/EYEVINE, ALAMY
work in
progress
3 April 2022 5