With the ground tamped and the pavers placed, with the thesis project submitted and the previews for Preview in the bag, not to mention the book review I was asked to write for TCR that, at various points over the past three weeks, I was convinced I would not have time for, I allowed myself to drift into the Book Department of the Vernon Sally Anne, where I came upon a Julian Barnes novel whose sadness I had heard about when it was making the rounds six or seven years ago and, with my own unpuzzled piece of sadness in hand, purchased for a dollar and tossed on my bed with an I'll-get-to-you-later smile.
That "later" came the following evening when, after another German dinner, I began to read the unremarkably written first-person account of the equally unremarkable Tony Webster, who we meet in the last year of grade school sometime in the 1960s, where he motors along with three equally though variably arrogant male friends, after which he goes to university, dates Veronica for a year before going through a break up that affects his relationship with said friends, then, in the last seven paragraphs before the end of the first section, bums around the United States for six months before returning to England, where he becomes an arts administrator, marries, sires a daughter, divorces and retires.
Interestingly enough, it is in the second and final section where the writing becomes more remarkable, just as Tony's life takes a remarkable turn towards understanding both himself and the world around him. An example of form following function, but also of English men who, despite coming of age in the 1960s, still suffer from Edwardian adages like You can't hurt me and You love everyone, you love no one. Pity about the ending, with its improbable hook, and Tony still "not getting it," as Veronica would say, when, as Tony's deceased friend (and Veronica's deceased boyfriend) Adrian complained with respect to "the English", Tony, too, could not be serious about being serious.
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