74
PARTISAN REVIEW
into the lyrically suggestive fabric of the novel, but it does seem an error
of literary, if not political, judgment. And beyond this clumsily intrusive
episode, the larger symbolic meaning of
The English Patient
is hard to
grasp. If there are hidden moral and philosophical depths to Almasy's
epic saga, which the author's occasionally portentous tone suggests ("We
are communal histories, communal books"), they are elusive. Perhaps the
novel is in essence what at its surface it appears to be, and no more: a
thrilling tale of adventure, romance, and survival, told with rare
metaphoric radiance. Hardly a negligible achievement.
In a recent profile ofJulian Barnes,
The New York Times
called him
a chameleon, exactly the right word for this clever, mercurial writer. If
we set his new novel,
The Porcupine,
alongside the earlier
Talking It Over
and
A History of the World in 10 112 Chapters,
as well as his best-known
performance in
Flaubert's Parrot,
we can take the full, astonishing measure
of his mimetic versatility. Clearly his unique strength as a writer derives
from his nimble ability to slip into the skin, voice, and temperament of
anyone he chooses to impersonate. While
Talking It Over,
published last
year, was a tediously flippant satire of sorts about a triangular romantic
obsession, Barnes has now ventured into the present-day political arena -
the post-Communist world of Eastern Europe.
The Porcupine
was origi–
nally published last year in Bulgaria (though the novel does not mention
that country), where the translation became an instant bestseller and the
deposed Bulgarian dictator, Todor Zhivkov, sent for a copy of the
book to read in his prison cell. Why was the book published first in
Bulgaria? According to one interviewer, Barnes "became fascinated with
the plight of the upended people he met [in Bulgaria] on a book tour,
and wrote
The Porcupine
with their help."
The short, spare novel opens with a demonstration that housewives
have organized to protest the endemic shortages of food (and much
more) in their newly democratized country. Beating their ladles and
cooking spoons on pots and frying pans, the women march through the
main square in a thunderous kitchen cacophony:
There was no decline into words, for they had heard nothing but
words and words and words - inedible, indigestible words - for
months and months and months. They spoke with metal, though not
with the metal that usually spoke on such occasions, the metal that
left martyrs.... They argued, bellowed, demanded and reasoned
without words, they pleaded and wept without words.
Watching the housewives from a nearby building is the deposed
