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Mere Human Love
“We spend our lives only partially seeing ourselves and others, and being partially seen by them in return. When we fall in love, we hope — both egotistically and altrusitically — that we shall be...
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Because the Universe Is Happening to You
“I know many people who don’t think about death as much. And not thinking about it is the surest way of not fearing it – until it comes along. ‘The evil is knowing it’s going to happen.’ My friend H.,...
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Identity Is Memory
“Memory is identity, I have believed this since — oh, since I can remember. You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your...
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Julian Barnes on Belief and Doubt in Religious Art
I went to a concert in London with my friend J. The sacred choral work we heard has gone from my memory, but not his question afterwards: “How many times in the course of that did you think of our...
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After She Was Gone
“My grandfather said that remorse was the worst emotion life could contain. My mother did not understand the remark, and I do not know what events to attach it to… Ever since I first read it, I have...
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It All Adds Up to Happiness… Doesn’t It?
“Bumper stickers and fridge magnets remind us that Life Is Not a Rehearsal. We encourage one another toward the secular modern heaven of self-fulfillment: the development of the personality, the...
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The Great Tragedy Is Not that Men Perish
“In my early twenties, I kept a box of green index cards, onto which I copied epigrams, witticisms, scraps of dialogue, and pieces of wisdom worth preserving. Some of them strike me now as the...
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Is a Human Life a Narrative?
“Perhaps because my professional days are spent considering what is narrative and what isn’t, I resist this line of thought. Lessing described history as putting accidents in order, and a human life...
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John Updike on Falling Airplanes and His Faith in a Fallen World
“Early in my adolescence, trapped within the airtight case for atheism, I made this logical formulation: 1. If God does not exist, the world is a horror-show. 2. The world is not a horror-show. 3....
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Does the Beauty of the Gospel Story Attest to Its Truth? (Einstein, C.S....
Does the aesthetic splendor of the four Gospels, when considered like works of literature, emit the ineffable whiff of something genuine? Is there a patina of truth — truth endorsed by beauty —...
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Shostakovich and Music as a Protest against Death
“Shostakovich knew that death — unless it came in the form of heroic martyrdom — was not an appropriate subject for Soviet art, that it was ‘tantamount to wiping your nose on your sleeve in company.’...
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