Nothing to Be Frightened Of

Nothing to Be Frightened Of

By: Julian Barnes  

Buy it now at Amazon.com!

Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5

Publisher: Knopf

Release Date: 2008-09-02

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
Not That Interesting - Except for some short stories I was impressed with I haven't read much Barnes, but I plan to read some of his novels.
I gave this "memoir" three stars because Barnes wrote it, not because I liked it, neither did I find it much worth the trouble. He does say some startling things but the work itself is like diving for pearls in a murky sea.
If you knew anything about the writers Barnes refers to throughout that would be better. I don't know enough about them, haven't read them and wasn't generally interested in his expertise in shaping them to his theme, which he doesn't always do. So there's a lot of stuff in here that I could do without.
His wit often falls flat, more like cynicism, and I wish he had found some reason to love his parents more, even if he didn't like them. Another failing, maybe in the author, is that I don't feel any passion. Either for life or for death. I don't know if this is the bland, maybe bitter fruit of his education or just his personality. And like my review, there's a lot of discontinuity and jumping around in the book to make it more like a buffet with a good number of things to eat that you don't like than eating off the menu and having a satisfying full course dinner.
I thought about reading it again, surely its better than this, but I'm not so sure I will because he didn't hold enough cards the first time around to convince me that its worth another try.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A free man thinks of nothing more than Death - Julian Barnes is a bit old - fashioned. He has written a book about the fear of dying without considering the possibility 'Death' too is just another contingency which technological human beings will be able to invent themselves out of. In short in this work the work of people like Aubrey de Grey who believe life will one day be extended indefinitely, or Ray Kurzweil who believes the intelligences which will replace us will not be organic passers from the world.
Instead Barnes takes what is given all the evidence we have a not unreasonable position , that each and every human being dies. This is the 'nothing' to be frightened of, the nothing of our not being. Barnes tells us that since childhood not a day has passed without his thinking about his own mortality. And now that he has hit sixty there is no diminishing of his concern about the subject.
But the book does not focus exclusively on his attitude towards death. In fact what is extremely interesting is what he tells us about others attitude Death, both those of his own family and those writers like Montaigne, Philip Larkin, Jules Renaud, Goethe.
Barnes writes beautifully and surveys brilliantly the opinions of a wide variety of writers and thinkers on the subject of Death. As one who does not believe in God but 'misses Him' the paradoxical quality of much of this thought is apparent.
I found the most interesting parts of the book to be his considerations of the attitudes of famous others to Death. Thus he notes for instance Goethe's seeming disdain for Death as he struggled to pursue his own independent way of life. Barnes considers the work of Dr. Sherwin Nuland whose pioneering research told a general audience just how horrible Death often is.
All in all this is a very fine book although it does not my mind explore religious 'answers' to Death in a sufficient way. Nor does it consider fully enough the way for many belief in God is the only final meaningful answer to Death. For the religious believer there is a kind of defiance, "Death where is thy sting? Death where is thy victory?' which I suppose those who believe only in our complete disappearance with Death cannot have.

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Safety in Numbers? - The success or failure of a memoir really depends upon one thing: its ability to transcend the personal and to speak to the universal. For this alone, "Nothing to Be Frightened Of" would score highest marks. Barnes' book is a poignant and humorous mediation on mortality, and in particular upon his inability to come to terms with it. Barnes has read the poets; he's read the psychoanalysts; he's read theologians and philosophers, and still he remains implacable.

Oddly enough, the book is neither morbid nor cynical nor depressing. That is to say, while the tone necessarily reflects some of the author's own dread, that anxiety is never transferred to the reader. I remember feeling a sense of suffocation when reading Kubler-Ross and Irvin D. Yalom, to say nothing of Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" or Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture," the latter two representing a sure-fire way to exercise the old tear ducts. Barnes' book doesn't do that to you; instead, he manages to be both intimate and critically distant enough that one actually feels safe contemplating the end with him.

The jokes help too.

Not that we are ever laughing at death. Death is no laughing matter. But how we confront death sometimes is. To that end, the reported exchanges between Julian and his brother (the philosopher Jonathan Barnes) are more than just comic relief; they set the mood while providing the framework of the book, which juxtaposes the thoughts and exchanges of other thinkers, to include famous writers, classical composers and various other pundits---and not just the usual suspects. Those cited are the (primarily) French authors--Jules Renard, Alphonse Daudet, Flaubert, Montaigne--so important to the author himself. At times passages are repeated, but always within a unique context, much like free-association.

Ultimately, Barnes never does find consolation, but he inadvertently offers it. Or at least I found consolation. For while we may all die alone and without answers, it helps to know that so many of us ask the same questions, have the same fears. And while I was pleased that the questioning ended when it did, Barnes' memoir is moving, intelligent, eloquent and (dare I say it?) ... fun.

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
Readable but shallow. - The good news is that the urbane Mr. Barnes knows his way around the English langauge. Sentence after sentence falls pleasantly on the mind's ear.

The bad news is that his theme -- that he doesn't really believe in God but misses Him anyhow -- is, as his brother describes it, "soppy." And irritating, coming from the comfort and safety of secular Britain. Let Mr. Barnes spend a month in Iran, or among West Bank settlers, or, better yet, let him come to our American Bible Belt and hang out at a megachurch, and see how much he still pines for Santa God and the Big Rock Candy Heaven. Also, there is something evasive about his talk of fearing death as nonbeing, as extinction, while not examing the sordid horror of dying itself. By comparison, mere nothingness seems a paper tiger. For a more trenchant meditation on the loss of faith I would recommend Stevie Smith's poem "How Do You See the Holy Spirit of God?" That said, the book offers entertaining glimpses into the author's personal life, and he's agreeable company, so if you don't set your expectations too high you may well enjoy it.

Customer Review: 1 out of 5
Could not even finish - I am in a book club. And we choose this book for last month's read. We all agreed, we hated this book. The writing did not flow well, and it was very random. The "story" (if you can even call it that) jumped around a lot and made it difficult to follow. I am not sure how this book managed to get such good reviews. I read a lot, and even if I am not enjoying the book, I rarely do not finish. This book, just got added to that very short list.

--> Find out more about "Nothing to Be Frightened Of" at Amazon.com or Order Now