Talking It Over by Julian Barnes

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Talking It OverbyJulian Barnes

• Presented by Sherry Lu
• 2004/05/06

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Julian Barnes
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Julian Barnes

• 19 January 1946born in Leicester, England.
• 1968receiving his BA degree in Magdalen College,
  Oxford.
• 1966-67as an English teacher in a school in
  Rennes, France.
• 1969-72the staff of the Oxford English
  Dictionary.
• Reviewing books for the Times Literary
  Supplement, later becoming literary editor of the
  New Statesman.
• 1979-86as a television critic, first for the New
  Statesmen and then for the Observer (London).

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Works

• Metroland (1980)
• Before She Met Me (1982)
• Flaubert's Parrot (1984)Staring at the Sun
  (1986)Metroland (1987)A History of the World in
  10 1/2 Chapters (1989)Talking It Over A Novel
  (1991)The Porcupine (1992)Letters from London
  1990-1995 (1995)Cross Channel (1996)England,
  England (1998)Love, Etc. (2000)Something to
  Declare Essays on France (2002)

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 Talking it Over

• A story of a love triangle
• Stuart and Oliver are best friends
  Stuart marries Gillian Oliver falls in
  love with Gillian Oliver marries Gillian.

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Narration (1)

• Multiple Points of view
• Unreliable narratives
• Repetition
• The characters address the reader directly.
• Stuart, Oliver, and Gillian each tell their own
  story, with a few other voices also making
  themselves heard.

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Narration (2)

• Each offering a different point of view, a
  different spin, and, occasionally, an entirely
  different account of what happened.
• They not only strive to seduce the reader's
  admiration but inquire nervously about what the
  others are saying, provide warnings against their
  deceptions, and so on.

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Characters

• Stuart a young banker, careful, a bit unsure of
  himself, without a university education.
• Stuart rabbit imagery. (33)
• Oliver a pedantic, unfulfilled soul, a wilder,
  artsy type who travelled, studied, and finally
  wound up as teaching at the tacky Shakespeare
  School of English.
• Oliver dog imagery. (47, 79, 203,250)
• Gillian trained in social work for while, but
  then became an art restorer.

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A homosocial relationship (1)

• In a patriarchal society the privileging of male
  homosocial relationships is naturalised.
• Stuart and Oliver are schoolboy friends. Their
  initial exchange is overtly and consciously
  economic "Lend us a quid". (18) A pair
  who are overtly aware of and even discuss the
  economic foundation of their relationship.
• We very occasionally went on double dates but
  they were without exception complete disasters.
  For a start, Oliver would always provide the
  girls and I would always provide the money" (52).
  
• The 'girls' are referred to as somehow
  secondary to the men themselves.

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A homosocial relationship (2)

• A competition between them.
• Stuart and Gillian Stuart has essentially taken
  Oliver's 'job' and found a girl for himself.
  Just like at school. Poor old Oliver. This
  time I simply wrote him a decent-sized cheque and
  told him not to worry about repaying it" (73).
• Oliver's response to triangulate the
  relationship. He thus convinces himself that he
  is in love with Gillian, thereby justifying his
  willful insertion into Stuart and Gillian's
  personal life.

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A homosocial relationship (3)

• Olives and Gillian We live in an era of market
  forces, Stuart, and it would be naïve or, as they
  used to term it, romantic not to realise that
  market forces now apply in whole areas where
  hitherto they were deemed inapplicable (160).
• Stuart He hasnt changed, Oliver. Land us a
  quid, give us your wife. Hes basically a
  parasite, do you see? A work-shy snob and a
  parasite (163).

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Female role (1)

• Women as purely sexual objects and never as
  equals.
• Stuart and Oliver really view Gillian
  as the object of negotiation.
• Gillian initially rejects her opportunity to
  speak. She tells the reader "I'm an ordinary,
  private person. I haven't got anything to say"
  (9-10).
• Later feels a need to defend her
  opinions and actions.
• Gillian and Oliver Oliver "needed someone like
  Stuart around. It's the same as colour theory.
  When you put two colours side by side, that
  affects the way you see each of them" (258).

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Female role (2)

• Gillian has been reduced to viewing and placing
  herself as subordinate to the needs and interests
  of both Stuart and Oliver (242).
• Gillian Love, respect, fancy. I thought Id got
  all three with Stuart. I thought I got all three
  with Oliver. But maybe threes not possible.
  Maybe the best you can get is two, and the HOLD
  button is always on the blink (255).

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Truth? Lies?

• The conflicting stories
• seem to suggest that there is no real truth,
  only conflicting stories, but it is possible to
  discover the facts, though how they should be
  judged is another matter.

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Reference

• http//www.julianbarnes.com/bib/tio.html
• http//www.complete-review.com/reviews/barnesj/tio
  .htm
• http//mural.uv.es/jahesa/notestalking.htm
• http//www.julianbarnes.com/
• http//www.english1.org.uk/barnes.htm
• http//www.nybooks.com/authors/128
• http//www.salon.com/weekly/interview960513.html