Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, how it goes wrong, and how we lose it. Novels speak to and from the mind, the heart, the eye, the genitals, the skin; the conscious and the subconscious. What it is to be an individual, what it means to be part of a society. What it means to be alone. Alone, and yet in company: that is the paradoxical position of the reader. Alone in the company of a writer who speaks in the silence of your mind. And –– a further paradox –– it makes no difference whether this writer is alive or dead. Fiction makes characters who have never existed as real as your friends, and makes dead writers as alive as a television newsreader.
Introduction to Through The Window: Seventeen Essays (and One Short Story) (2012)
Use the link below to visit the website of British author JULIAN BARNES:
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