“I think if I’d shown genuine interest at this point, I might have scared him off, but I was slumped in the oppressive reflection that my uncle was not just an old bore, but a parody of an old bore. Why didn’t he strap on a peg-leg and start capering round some inglenooked pub waving a clay pipe? ‘Thereby hangs a tale, and it’s one I’ve never told a living soul’. People don’t say that any more. Except my uncle just had” (54). *I hate putting the period outside the quotation mark, but Julian is English, so I’ll be true to his punctuation.“And besides, there would be eleven of them, all stout fellows armed with pieces of English willow. What possible harm could befall them?” (74).“…Mr Yalden gave them good hospitality and regretted that his cricketing days were now in the past. Others regretted this less than Mr Yaldne, since their host had not always shown himself scrupulous when the laws of the game impeded him from winning” (75).“…he was a publican in Chelsea, and his retirement had helped increase his circumference” (77).“Normally I’m intolerant of fuck-ups…” (119).“In any case, you don’t really want answers to every question. About your own country, perhaps. But about others? Leave some space for reverie, for amical invention” (122). *I love this.“I lay on the bed and hovered halfway to sleep, untempted by dreams, unperturbed by reality” (124).“Dewy spiders’ webs caught the early-morning sun like Christmas decorations” (126).“…and the lantern, to burn itself out at some untenanted hour” (187).“He didn’t think he was vain, but given his tendency to mildly disagree with most photographs of himself, admitted that he must be so” (192).“Embankment walls of bistre brick noisy with graffiti slowly yielded to mute suburbia” (193).“Brash, fuck-me innocence was something different. Beauty was a function of self-knowledge, plus knowledge of the world…” (195).“…with the aid of nostalgia as runny as old Camembert…” (197).“That was another sign of Old Fartery: thinking up wanly humorous thesis titles” (197).“Someone handed him a hot towel; his face drained it to a cold damp rag” (205).
I picked this book up because (a) I had heard a lot of good things about the author, and (b) I was taking a cross channel historical research trip myself, traveling alone, and needing a trusty literary tour guide.In both, I wasn’t disappointed. Barnes is a great stylist, his prose nothing but elegant. He is also able to narrate in different voices: a pompous British aristocrat who thinks only of Cricket while France burns in the Revolution and la Terreur, two old maids who give up their farm in Essex to become vintners in France, a dying English composer who can subdue an entire French village when he wants to listen to the radio, and the old-world fairy tale teller who narrates the tale of Catholic soldiers trying to convert a Protestant village in France, to name a few.The span of time is vast: from the late seventeenth century to the near future. And the research on the terrain is authoritative. I took the same Chunnel trip and couldn’t help but slump into deep reverie like Barnes’s aging writer in the story "Tunnel" the deeper we burrowed under the British Channel.And yet, other than for the woman who mourns her dead brother from World War I and travels annually to commemorate his death on Remembrance Day, I felt that the rest of the characters were mainly pegs in a larger drawing of the Cross Channel cultural divide between Britain and France. They did not grab me as vividly as the prose and the subject matter did.However, now that I have read "the primer," I shall read more Barnes.
What do You think about Cross Channel (1997)?
This is Barnes' first collection of short stories, all about various Brits in France, down through the ages.In GNOSSIENNE, a Spanish poet, an Algerian film-maker, an Italian semiotician, a Swiss crime-writer, A German dramatist, a Belgian art critic and yours truly (him, not me) are invited to a dinner. Ees no joke.In EVERMORE, an old woman goes to WWI graveyards in France. Her brother is there. Unknown soldiers are there. She wondered if there were such a thing as collective memory….In INTERFERENCE, a dying composer’s last work crosses the channel, back and forth.HERMITAGE was my favorite piece, and well worth the price of admission. Two older women buy a vineyard. Oh, they have special plans. But the French who make the wine have been there for generations. Forever, really. And old ways die hard, sometimes not at all. Barnes didn’t separate the women as much as I’d have liked. But I learned much, through the French characters, about winemaking. Women, by the way, were paid less, on the grounds that they talked more. Everyone seemed okay with that. I'll be re-reading this one.EXPERIMENT involves a man who makes love to a British woman and a French woman. But he's blindfolded each time. Wine makes an appearance again, as analogy.TUNNEL has more wine, and more erudition. But it doesn't have a story. I didn't read every story in the collection, just the ones I reported on. The others - well, I never gained traction. I'd had enough.
—Tony
A good collection, but not as strong as I'd hoped. There were some definite high points - 'Junction', 'Melon' and 'Dragons' were all well executed and memorable - but the collection as a whole was too inconsistent. Perhaps the adherence to its French theme was too great a constraint, forcing Barnes to fabricate themed stories rather than follow his muse. Whatever the cause, Cross Channel is a very mixed bag - some genuine classics, alongside far too much filler. Still, his storytelling ability can't fail to impress.
—Dan Coxon
Beautiful and understated, this collection shows Barnes is as skilled at the short story as he is at the novel. The first and final stories in the book are my favorite--rich, dense, and moving. They deal with the uneasy relationship between vision and memory, between moving forward and hanging back.I wonder, though, if the British find these stories more personal. I am intellectually aware of the historical relationship between England and France, but I haven't spent my life staring (metaphorically or literally) across the Channel.
—Ben
