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Authors: Julian Barnes
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back afterwards and talk smut about them. She’d not be soft on him for long, would she?’
In my limited observation, Aunt Kate and Uncle Freddy had been a devoted couple. His grief at her death, even when exaggerated into melodrama by drink, had seemed quite genuine. The fact that he survived her by six years I attributed to no more than the enforced habit of living. Two months after this final birthday evening, he gave up that habit. The funeral was the usual sparse and awkward business: a Surrealist wreath with an obscene motif might have helped.
Five years later the Recherches sur la sexualité appeared, and my uncle’s story was partly corroborated. My curiosity and frustration were also revived; I was left staring at the same old questions. I resented the fact that my uncle had clammed up, leaving me with nothing but The French lass licked the raindrops from my face .
As I have mentioned, my uncle’s encounter with the Surrealist Group was relegated to a mere appendix. The Recherches are of course extensively annotated: preface, introduction, text, appendices, footnotes to text, footnotes to appendices, footnotes to footnotes. Probably I am the only person to have spotted something which is at most only of family interest. Footnote 23 to Session 5(a) states that the Englishman referred to as ‘T.F.’ was on one occasion the subject of what is described as an ‘attempted vindication of Surrealist theory (cf. note 12 to Appendix 3)’, but that no record of the results obtained has survived. Footnote 12 to Appendix 3 describes these ‘attempted vindications’ and mentions that in a few of them there was an Englishwoman involved. This woman is referred to simply as ‘K’.
I have only two final reflections on the matter. The firstis that when scientists employ volunteers to help with their research projects, they often withhold from these participants the true purpose of the test, for fear such knowledge might, wittingly or unwittingly, affect the purity of the process and the accuracy of the result.
The second thought came to me only quite recently. I may have mentioned that I take a novice interest in wine. I belong to a small group which meets twice a month: we each take along a bottle and the wines are tasted blind. Usually we get them wrong, sometimes we get them right, though what is wrong and what is right in this matter is a complicated business. If a wine tastes to you like a young Australian Chardonnay, then that in a sense is what it is. The label may subsequently declare it to be an expensive burgundy, but if it hasn’t been that in your mouth, then that is what it can never truly become.
This isn’t quite what I meant to say. I meant to say that a couple of weeks ago we had a guest tutor. She was a well-known Master of Wine, and she told us an interesting fact. Apparently if you take a magnum and decant it into two separate bottles and put them into a blind tasting, then it’s extremely rare for even wily drinkers to guess that the wine in those two particular bottles is in fact the same one. People expect all the wines to be different, and their palates therefore insist that they are. She said it was a most revealing experiment, and that it almost always works.
M ELON
My dearest cousin—
A week before Mr Hawkins & I departed, you rallied me with pretty mockery concerning the vanity of my expedition—that the company I should seek out would be that which most resembled my own, & the resultant experiences no more than the mutual licking of bear cubs—& you told me that I should come home refined & polished like a Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing. It is for this reason that I lately ordered changes to our itinerary—& if I should die from the attack of brigands, the negligence of a rural physician, or the venom of a viper, you shall be the cause, Mademoiselle Evelina—since it was your doing that we left our course for Italy and have come to Montpelier. Mr Hawkins proffered some
In my limited observation, Aunt Kate and Uncle Freddy had been a devoted couple. His grief at her death, even when exaggerated into melodrama by drink, had seemed quite genuine. The fact that he survived her by six years I attributed to no more than the enforced habit of living. Two months after this final birthday evening, he gave up that habit. The funeral was the usual sparse and awkward business: a Surrealist wreath with an obscene motif might have helped.
Five years later the Recherches sur la sexualité appeared, and my uncle’s story was partly corroborated. My curiosity and frustration were also revived; I was left staring at the same old questions. I resented the fact that my uncle had clammed up, leaving me with nothing but The French lass licked the raindrops from my face .
As I have mentioned, my uncle’s encounter with the Surrealist Group was relegated to a mere appendix. The Recherches are of course extensively annotated: preface, introduction, text, appendices, footnotes to text, footnotes to appendices, footnotes to footnotes. Probably I am the only person to have spotted something which is at most only of family interest. Footnote 23 to Session 5(a) states that the Englishman referred to as ‘T.F.’ was on one occasion the subject of what is described as an ‘attempted vindication of Surrealist theory (cf. note 12 to Appendix 3)’, but that no record of the results obtained has survived. Footnote 12 to Appendix 3 describes these ‘attempted vindications’ and mentions that in a few of them there was an Englishwoman involved. This woman is referred to simply as ‘K’.
I have only two final reflections on the matter. The firstis that when scientists employ volunteers to help with their research projects, they often withhold from these participants the true purpose of the test, for fear such knowledge might, wittingly or unwittingly, affect the purity of the process and the accuracy of the result.
The second thought came to me only quite recently. I may have mentioned that I take a novice interest in wine. I belong to a small group which meets twice a month: we each take along a bottle and the wines are tasted blind. Usually we get them wrong, sometimes we get them right, though what is wrong and what is right in this matter is a complicated business. If a wine tastes to you like a young Australian Chardonnay, then that in a sense is what it is. The label may subsequently declare it to be an expensive burgundy, but if it hasn’t been that in your mouth, then that is what it can never truly become.
This isn’t quite what I meant to say. I meant to say that a couple of weeks ago we had a guest tutor. She was a well-known Master of Wine, and she told us an interesting fact. Apparently if you take a magnum and decant it into two separate bottles and put them into a blind tasting, then it’s extremely rare for even wily drinkers to guess that the wine in those two particular bottles is in fact the same one. People expect all the wines to be different, and their palates therefore insist that they are. She said it was a most revealing experiment, and that it almost always works.
M ELON
My dearest cousin—
A week before Mr Hawkins & I departed, you rallied me with pretty mockery concerning the vanity of my expedition—that the company I should seek out would be that which most resembled my own, & the resultant experiences no more than the mutual licking of bear cubs—& you told me that I should come home refined & polished like a Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing. It is for this reason that I lately ordered changes to our itinerary—& if I should die from the attack of brigands, the negligence of a rural physician, or the venom of a viper, you shall be the cause, Mademoiselle Evelina—since it was your doing that we left our course for Italy and have come to Montpelier. Mr Hawkins proffered some
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