Elizabeth Finch: A novel

by Julian Barnes

There are smokers who patently enjoy every burst of nicotine; others who inhale with a sense of self-loathing; some display it as a style habit; others again, annoyingly, claim to have “only one or two a day,” as if they were in charge of their addiction. And—since all smokers lie—“one or two” always turns out to mean three or four, even half a pack.

She was high-minded, self-sufficient, European. And as I write those words, I stop, because I hear in my head something she once taught us in class: “And remember, whenever you see a character in a novel, let alone a biography or history book, reduced and neatened into three adjectives, always distrust that description.” It is a rule of thumb I have tried to obey.

“Be approximately satisfied with approximate happiness. The only thing in life which is clear and beyond doubt is unhappiness.”

Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions—in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our doing. The things that are up to us are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; the things that are not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own.

We are too apt, I would propose, to see history as a kind of Darwinism. The survival of the fittest, by which, of course, Darwin didn’t mean the strongest or even the cleverest, merely those best equipped to adapt to changing circumstances. But it is not like this in actual human history. Those who survive, or excel, or overmaster are merely those who are better organised and wave bigger guns; those who are better at killing. Peaceable nations are rarely victorious—in ideas, to be sure, but ideas rarely prevail unless backed by the muzzle of a gun. It is lamentable, we would all agree, but it would be indolent not to recognise it. Because otherwise we merely have to sit on our hands—sit on our brains as well, and admit, To the victor the spoils, which also means, To the victor the truth.

“Then the railways arrived, all over Europe. And what was their main function? It was, as both Ruskin and Flaubert pointed out, to allow people to get from A to B so that they could be equally stupid with one another in a different location.