I regard Julian Barnes as a literary master. He is a polymath whose novels, short stories, and essays treat subjects ranging from human psychology to science, medicine, authoritarianism, food, music, and art, all with a cross-English Channel sensibility and Cambridge-infused intelligence. I was first drawn to his work with Flaubert’s Parrot, a post-modern novel that to me is about the function of literature. It is, in my maybe eccentric reading, the story of a man named Geoffrey Braithwaite trying to cope with his grief over the suicide of his unfaithful wife. To try to understand, he turns to literature, specifically exhaustive research of the life and writings of Gustave Flaubert, whose tumultuous relationship with his lover Louise Colet may have inspired his masterpiece, Madame Bovary. Braithwaite seems driven by the belief that a man like Flaubert, who writes so movingly from those experiences, has important lessons to impart, and if you learn all you can about him, you can benefit from his wisdom.
That novel turned me into a Barnes devotee. I carried a copy of Flaubert’s Parrot in the back seat of my car for over a year, reading passages at random when I felt the urge and always finding solace and comfort, no matter what page fell open. I have since read all of his books with what might be called religious fervor. My appreciation for his writing is personal, and that is in large part the beauty of literature. I own my pleasure in Flaubert’s Parrot, and while I hope you, too, can find profit in Barnes’s work, if you don’t—or can’t—it won’t affect what the book means to me.
I believe that the chief purpose of literary collecting is to preserve and champion writers of Barnes’s achievement, and I am gratified to have made his full canon and associated materials available in the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina.