Julian Barnes: The FULL INTERVIEW - BBC Newsnight
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- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- Booker prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes speaks to Kirsty Wark about his new book based on the life of Shostakovich, The Noise of Time. This is an extended version - just for UA-cam - of the interview which aired on 28 January. It covers art and power, heroism and cowardice, free speech and no-platforming, Russia under Putin, and more.
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Such a pleasure to be able to see and hear this amazing man speaking.
I’ve just read ‘A sense of An Ending.’ Beautifully written and now one of my favourite books x
I read nothing to be frightened of several times. Barnes always mixed together philosophical aspects with enigmatic humor, very British. 🔝
What an authority! I enjoy his books, his sense of humour, and my goodness, his voice is divine :)
Been enjoying his books for many years. Great writer. Just re-read “nothing to be frightened of’ and his fear of death is very deep rooted and disturbing.
He is a legend, such satisfaction to hear him muse on life dilemmas -- in addition to reading him
Do yourself a favour and read the books of Julian Barnes. One of the best writers of his generation
Alive classic! Thank you.
Thanks for posting. Wonderful interview; great book too.
Thanks for watching. Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for posting, just started reading the book. Brilliant interview
greetings from Kathmandu...such a witty novel.Love it greatly
I love him as a writer!!!!
Excellent interview. Buying the 'The Noise of Time' now.
One question I'd like to ask him: who decides what 'hate speech' is, and who invented the term?
Brilliant and amazing man. Thank you!
I enjoyed the book and this very professional interview.
one of the greats. thank you, Julian!
What a beautiful mind he has! Lovely interview!
Great stuff! Thank you.
+Dhruv Sehgal Thanks!
An extraordinary book.
One of the most intelligent fiction writers alive.
Great interview with a great writer, but I must protest at Messieur Barnes' soft-spoken riposte to the issue of the Cecil Rhodes statue which relied on the fact that (at the time of the interview) there are only 2 persons "of colour" at the Oxford college (Oriel) where the statue stands and that energies should thus be more centred on increased "diversity" at the college in question, whilst Mr Barnes advances the cause of free speech, so long as it does not stray into "hate speech". There is an ironic hypocrisy at the heart of Mr Barnes' position: firstly it must be presumed that the reason Oriel college had only two black students was not because Oriel were deliberately employing a racist agenda to keep the student population almost entirely white, but rather there were insufficient numbers of black students able to meet the doubtless exacting academic standards required to gain entrance to the college. It must therefore follow that in order to comply with Mr Barnes' stance that the college should become more "diverse", the college should employ positive discrimination, ie a racist agenda, by refusing access to the college to white students in favour of black ones, even or especially in cases where the white students had superior qualifications to the black ones. By the same token (no pun intended) if Mr Barnes were advocating the same policy to Olympic athletes, whereby those who represent Britain in some categories (like the 100 metres) are almost entirely black, should be replaced by white runners in the great cause of "diversity", not only would Mr Barnes have been universally vilified as being racist and possibly even charged with "hate speech", but Britain would have less chance of winning medals in forthcoming championships. Not only would Barnes' enforced diversity policy be definitively racist against white students, but it seems to be covertly racist against black students into the bargain, as it clearly implies that they would be unable to access elite colleges like Oriel by way of excelling at academically, but by virtue of their skin colour (albeit why any person of colour would wish to attend a college that had a "brute" like Rhodes on its campus is beyond me...it is unlikely that would-be christian theologians would be queuing up to enter a college that had a statue of Pontius Pilate or Judas Escariot heroically postured in its main square). Also I do not quite understand how intellectuals like Mr Barnes can talk so glibly and sweepingly of no-platforming those who indulge in "hate speech" on any basis, as this presumably includes those who incite others to hate those who engage in hate themselves. It is fairly hateful, surely, for Mr Barnes to advocate replacing white students with black ones not on the basis of academic prowess, but in the cause of "diversity", not only because of the glaring injustice and racism that is implicit in such a policy, but because demoting white students on the basis of colour will surely engender resentment and hatred from themselves individually and almost certainly, in the long run, white people collectively, and thus the great cause of diversity becomes the monster one assumes intellectuals like Barnes seeks to fight. This PC version of "free speech" is surely just another version of Orwell's "some are more equal than others" paradox, in that individuals like Barnes (and less dulcet-toned and erudite versions in the form of Frankie Boyle et al) advocate the cause of and profit handsomely from the legal principle of free speech, so long as it does not stray into the quintessentially subjective territory of what they personally class as hate speech, as is if the dividing line between the two is as clear as crystal, when everything about the post-colonial, PC brow-beating, Trump-thumping, socially mediated modern world, in and out of the university campus, makes it crystal clear it is anything but. It was presumably the case with those who protested against Ms Greer that they were doing so on the basis that they regarded her position that men remained men even after having their penises surgically removed as a form of hate speech, and ergo should be no-platformed; again the irony and hypocrisy in Mr Barnes' sanctimonious agreement that hate speech should be no platformed is glaring, given there is self-evidently a glaring chasm between what he and Ms Greer regard as "hate speech" and those who advance the transgender agenda, to the extent that what amounts to "hate speech" is in the eye of the beholder and it is not the preserve of the millionaire intelligentsia to determine on the public's behalf what is or is not "hate speech" and ergo what views should or should not be no-platform. Hate speech is not interchangeable with "incitement to violence", and Mr Barnes should know better than to imply that it is, not least as to do so amounts to a lie not dissimilar to the USSR commissars of old.
Wow you're very eloquent. He's a terrific author, for sure , but he does strike me as a bit of a hypocrite, the same way Picasso revelled in long-distance communism whilst sautering la rue Saint-Honore in good, sexy company to boot.
@@leotrapi417 Cheers (I assume you meant "sauntering"). Nothing more obnoxious and nauseating than a Champagne socialist. I'm not sure that sexy or good is by definition anti-communist. I think people like Che Guevera and Castro revelled in and played on their sexy revolutionary image, but I take your point. Certainly the real current bete noir, in my view, is PC WOKISM, especially as espoused by the white middle class elite. If they're so concerned about white privilege then they should start by removing themselves from it, not demand that opportunities are taken away from other white people on the way up, to make room for potentially less able BAMES. Makes my blood boil.
Kirsty Wark attempted to execute a Nabokov manoeuvre on him in attempting to get him to publicly denounce/embrace Putin, which he deftly side-stepped!
Kirsty to hear.
Julian to remember.
The (possibly transgender) cameraperson to drink.
A fantastic interview and a truly wonderful book.
Love Julian Barnes. He's down to earth, a son of the soil writer. Kidding, he's not that. He's intelligent.
I do not think that the dispatch of statues of oppression and what they mean to oppressed can be so easily conflated with focusing on improving the now, as Mr Barnes suggests.
8:34
Julian Barnes wasn't very helpful when I contacted him via his publisher. I told him about the condition Retroactive Jealousy and asked what had informed his portrayal of this in his novel -'Before She Met Me'. I also suggested he could take a role in helping people with this condition who identified with the character. He really didn't want to know. A great opportunity for helping people was wasted.
Are you sulking because you didn’t get your way?
My God. CAN a western person actually live A DAY without taking Russia and Mr. Putin to pieces? As a Russian, I'm offended and humiliated. Otherwise, would have a been a great interview!
Whilst not a Russian myself, I do have to agree. This was a wonderful interview otherwise, but the interviewer was quite evidently trying to slander Putin and dig out some negative statements directed at Putin's Russia from Mr Barnes.
As a Russian, you should be offended and humiliated by what Putin does to your country.
Lula Mae
Tough balls!
Typically loaded anti-Russian bs from the BBC :(
@@poohoff 2 years later but: don't teach us what to feel and what to do. We are not in the world of ''1984''.
Never cared for Barnes. Too snooty, too cerebral.
Sad state to be in to dislike a person for being "too cerebral"
I'm sorry, but this seems to be an assortment of effete tosh. Perversely, an interviewee pandering to the opinions mooted by the interviewer ("trans" etc.?). Julian Barnes, "as a child of the Cold War", cannot have had the remotest idea of life in Stalin's Soviet Union, much less memories of the repression imposed and suffered there - if only because he didn't live there and was indeed only a child at the time. However, the thing that really gets me, having read his "novel", is how he can dare to invent what are supposed to be the most intimate thoughts and attitudes of a very specifically defined historical person, within the lifetime of his direct descendants, as a spurious insight into the state of a society undergoing the most troubled of social experiments. What, in fact, is the distinction between biography and fiction? Is it even legitimate to choose verifiable events from the life of any person and use them as one sees fit, and to leave others out, because "one" is a "novelist"? I have severe doubts about this, and Barnes does not help to dissipate them in this interview. When the case in point centres on the life of one of the most important composers of the 20th century, and no mention whatsoever is made of the music itself of the effect it had on Shostakovich's contemporaries (both in the USSR and outside it), the ultimate impression I have is that this "novelist" has made dishonest use of his rather poorly researched material. Very disappointing.
Good luck finding enough source material in order to create a biography on Shostakovich. Julian Barnes created a, mostly fictionalised, account of Shostakovich's live BECAUSE so little is known about the major parts of his life. I don't think it's even the slightest bit 'badly researched'... Maybe you haven't actually read the book.
How dare writers write fiction...?
That’s your fucking gripe...?!
It is called "poetic licence"; the issue surely is whether the novel is a good read not whether it is accurate or a heavily edited version of its subject matter. If it had claimed to be a biography then you would have a point; otherwise, fiction is fiction and faction is faction & never the twain shall meet.
I think you mean to say that the novel is “Muddle instead of Music” and that it is an exercise in disgusting formalist indulgence?
Or did I miss something?