Nothing to be Frightened of

I am frustrated by a life that leaves me far too little time to read. Frustrated. Determined, though, I have carried Julian Barnes' Nothing to be Frightened of with me from client to client. I've sat with it in the dentist chair. I've read it while on hold for conference calls. I've stood there stirring a pot, the book in hand. You'd have thought I'd have finished it by now.

And why am I fighting so hard to find the time to read a book that is, indeed, a meditation on death and dying—on how people die (which is of course bound up with how people live) and on what people think along the way? Fear or acceptance? Defeat or glory? Ungainly irony or something worse? Well, to begin with, this is Julian Barnes, and he's riotously talented—stewing memoir and wit and philosophy and literary biography and fine vocabulary into a chapterless not-outright diatribe, not-clinical exploration, perhaps controlled rant is the term, that is nothing if not (and you know this matters to me) brilliantly choreographed. He's assaulting you. He's appeasing you. He's on your side and then he's all caught up with himself, as if he may be the only one facing ultimate extinction. No such luck, Barnes.

If I were reading that paragraph above I'd think, about myself, Someone should tell Kephart that it's Christmas, the season of birth and winter wonder. That right about now is when a poor fool like her should be curling up with some light holiday fare. But the thing is this: It's a privilege to watch a mind like Barnes' work over, around, and through the inexplicableness of death. It's exhilarating, as a matter of fact. Intelligence is never overrated.