The Noise of Time: A Novel

By Julian Barnes

2016

224 pages / 5 hours and 41 minutes

Fiction

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Julian Barnes, who resides in London, is one of the more esteemed writers of our day. He won the Booker Prize in 2011 for The Sense of an Ending, which was also made into a movie that I never got around to watching. He became famous in the literary world in 1989 for a collection of short stories called A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. In it, there’s an interesting story about Noah’s ark written by a stowaway creature, plus the single most disconcerting take on eternal life you are apt to read. It’s a stunning book. He also based his Arthur and George (2005) around a true story of Arthur Canon Doyle’s attempt to solve a true crime.

But some ministers know Julian Barnes not because they have read his books but because they have read How Not to Be Secular by James K.A. Smith. If you’re not familiar with that book, it is Smith’s attempt to make Charles Taylor’s massive tome, A Secular Age, more accessible. But this is getting a little complicated. What I find interesting is that Barnes is one of the examples Smith gives of a secularist who is “haunted by transcendence.” That is, he is not a believer but keeps bumping up against transcendence. That in itself might make him interesting. On top of that he is a sterling writer.

The book I will champion here is The Noise of Time, his short novel about Dimitri Shostakovich. Now this could get complicated again. If you don’t know, Shostakovich is a 20th-century Russian composer who was trying to write great classical music and stay out of trouble with the Stalinist authorities at the same time. He was not always successful at either, although his fifth symphony is considered a masterpiece. All sorts of interesting questions arise here.

Shostakovich may have sold out some of his fellow composers to protect himself. Some of his work is formulaic and seems more intended to pacify the government than to make great music. But there is also a subversive slyness in some of the music where you get the impression that Shostakovich is putting one over on his bureaucratic masters. Shostakovich’s own writings are largely considered unreliable and self-serving as he talks about those difficult times.

The book is very thought-provoking. It makes you wonder how you would do in those moments when life itself might be at stake. How far would you be willing to compromise on your convictions to protect yourself and your family? What might you be willing to say to keep the secret police from knocking on your door? Read this superb book and do some soul-searching.

While I am at it, the great M.T. Anderson wrote a young adult novel, Symphony for the City of the Dead, about the composition of Shostakovich’s seventh symphony during the siege of Leningrad. It’s absolutely gripping for readers of any age.

So read these two books and then go and listen to the fifth and seventh symphonies. You might become a fan of Shostakovich. I am certain you’ll become a fan of Julian Barnes – “haunted by transcendence.”