Second Time Around

Odd coincidence. Yesterday I was talking about being on the lookout for examples of graft being used in the sense of corruption in a British context, vaguely guessing this crept into common usage in the last ten years or so. Then this afternoon, approaching the end of Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, in the 'half' chapter entitled Parenthesis I stumbled upon the phrase, ...the bribe-takers to graft. Now the novel, or, rather, collection of cunningly linked short stories, was published in 1989, which is when I first read it, so the American usage of graft crossed the Atlantic a lot earlier than I thought. 

In case you're wondering why I've been rereading Barnes's book, it's really down to my colleague Saravanan, who offered to lend me his copy the other day when I was talking about running out of fiction to read in my convalescence. This prompted me to remember I had a time-faded copy on my shelves somewhere and I'd forgotten most of the stories except the first in the volume about Noah and the one about Gericault's The Wreck of the Medusa (if that's what the painting is called.) It struck me that I'd not really been all that enthusiastic about the volume, except for the Gericault story which struck me as both highly original and very engaging. One problem had been the hard work of adjusting to the very different worlds, linked tenuously by themes and motifs, in each story. Since then I've read three other novels by Barnes which I've enjoyed immensely: Flaubert's Parrot, Arthur & George and The Sense of Ending and I thought it might be worth giving History of the World another go now I'm older and (highly tentatively!) wiser.

Must say, this time around I didn't have much of a problem moving from one tale to another. I suppose having read them some thirty-three years ago might have helped, though I remembered precious little in the way of detail. I can't say I found them much more engaging this time around though. Clever, yes, but not gripping at the emotional level - except for the account of the voyage of the St Louis with its crew of Jewish refugees in the Three Simple Stories chapter, but this works at the level of simple historical truth. Can't say I really appreciate the weaving together of the various motifs. I mean it's quite entertaining in its way to take note of the woodworm and bitumen and various waterways and whatnot popping up here and there, but any real significance is strictly illusory as far as I can see (or not see, if you see what I mean.)