Julian Barnes' fear of being eaten by a crocodile

by Sophie Moore

Novelist Julian Barnes has written a book about his fear of death. It is a witty book, partly due to the email exchanges between Barnes and his brother, Jonathan, who is a philosopher. The elder Barnes, with his dry and cool comments, appears the more rational of the two, whereas Julian thinks it is rational to fear death.

I am a bit claustrophobic. I don’t like to be in small spaces, especially not when they are crowded with people. That is why, when they were doing Cousin Kate at the Club, I went out for a walk. The overcrowdedness of the room, together with the heat, took my breath. Besides, I had already seen the play in London. Later, when we visited the Marabar Caves, I had a similar experience. There were so many people inside the cave that I could hardly breath. I nearly fainted. I tried to reach the entrance, but I felt too weak. A phobia is more than fear; it’s fear plus panic.
Julian Barnes is a bit phobic too. I read his long essay Nothing to Be Frightened Of. Somewhere in the first pages he casually calls himself a ‘thanatophobe’, which is Greek for ‘person fearing death’. I think fear of death is the root of all phobia. People with claustrophobia are afraid they will die (from suffocation) when in a small space, while in fact there is nothing to be frightened of.
A phobia is considered to be an irrational fear. But Barnes repeatedly insists that he suffers from rational (“yes RATIONAL”) fear. In other phobias chances are small the thing feared for is going to happen: house spiders usually don’t kill, most airplanes land safely, survival in confined spaces is likely. There is little risk of dying. Whereas the thanatophobe in the end is right.

‘Let’s get this death thing straight’

Barnes says he wouldn’t mind dying so much, as long as he didn’t end up dead at the end of it. He is not looking forward to total extinction. Well, he is of course — we all are — but he does not like the prospect. He says he can think of terrible ways of dying, like drowning inside a cabin of an overturned ferry. Or — the claustrophobic version — in the boot of his car, shoved off a sea cliff by credit card thieves having found out about his balance deficit. Or — the wildlife version — being dragged by a crocodile to his lair for, presumably, later consumption.
The best case scenario is a medical diagnosis which leaves just enough time to write that last book, the one about death. The first line would be: ‘Let’s get this death thing straight’. That book is written now, however with a different first sentence: ‘I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him’.
I am happy to say that at the moment of my writing this, Barnes is 62 and still alive. Not only does he not believe in God, but also not in best case scenarios. It is best, he says, to get the book done before the diagnosis.
Throughout the book there is a sense of a connection between fearing death and missing God. Barnes has never believed in God, so his missing is not a grieving over a loss. But if there is no God, then there is no heaven, and if there is no heaven, then there is no afterlife. And if there is no afterlife, then after life there is nothing.
Although a non-believer, Barnes calls himself an agnostic rather than an atheist. It is a philosophically save position: how can we be sure enough that we know enough to know for sure? But Barnes’ agnosticism is primarily motivated by feelings roused by attack. Missing God is like Being English: when his country is criticized, Barnes starts to feel patriotic, and when God is denied existence, he feels provoked by the absolutism of the atheist attitude.

A bit of extra oomph

Apart from missing out on afterlife, missing God, for Barnes, is also missing a sense of purpose or meaning when confronted with religious art: “What would it be like ‘if it were true’? It would — to put it mildly — add a bit of extra oomph, wouldn’t it?” But why miss it if it is not true? “Because it was a supreme fiction, and it is normal to feel bereft on closing a great novel.”
I think there is more to religion than it just being a supreme fiction. It is a fiction that envelopes its believer. For as long as you believe in this fiction, as long as you thinks it is true, you are part of it, a character in it. You are inside the story. Being a fictional character myself, I can report that when I am inside a story, I experience myself as a coherent being, whereas when I am outside the story, I tend to fall apart.
Religions, says Barnes, were the first great inventions of the fiction writers. Religion used to give human life a sense of context. Without God or religion, life just lollops. And when, at the end of our life, we tell the story of our life and thereby try to stamp a final meaning on it, we are merely confabulating: filling in gaps between anecdotes.
This book, by the way, is not Barnes’ autobiography. Everything autobiographical in it is supportive of the main topics: death, fear, God, art, and other writers. Family (dead and alive) and friends play an important role in the book. Barnes emails with his friends R. and G., his brother Jonathan, and his two nieces, C. and C. (Jonathan’s daughters). They all have strong opinions — on these subjects, but probably on other subjects as well. The elder C.’s first uttered complete sentence was: ‘Bertrand Russell is a silly old man’.

Been there, done that

None of the living family members express any fear of death. Friend R. asks how often he, Barnes, thinks about death, friend G. is afraid of death more and longer (since the age of four, Barnes since the age of thirteen). Discussing his fear with his friends sometimes becomes a little competitive: “MY FEAR OF DEATH IS BIGGER THAN YOURS AND I CAN GET IT UP MORE OFTEN.”
I would like to say something now to Julian Barnes to cheer him up. I could say, of course, ‘Been there, done that’, but that may be a bit unfair. As you probably know, I died before my book was finished. But, still, I have only done the dying thing, not yet the extinction thing. I am afraid that I cannot offer any comfort other than expressing my hope that this sometimes 'soppy' (his brother's judgment), but most of the time intelligent and witty writer will die — when his time has come of course! — in character.

Links

Official website of Julian Barnes
Official website of Dan Kavanagh (pseudonym)
Julian Barnes at Random House
Julian Barnes at The Guardian
Interview with Julian Barnes on BBC HARDtalk