Changes

|title=Levels of Life

|author=Julian Barnes

|publisher=Vintage

|date=April 2014

|summary=Powerful writing on grief – albeit of a powerfully affirmative kind – slightly belittled by what comes before it in these three unusually-combined essays.

}}

I'm sitting here wondering what a graphologist would make of [[:Category:Julian Barnes|Julian Barnes']] signature. Not only is there the slant upwards across the page, there is the fact that the curling forms of his letters take up only a small portion of it, along with what seem errors due to the small size of my autograph book – the wonky horizontal of the J, the apparent hiccup when he put the date of signature down as a very formal part of the exercise. Meeting him (very briefly) and reading several of his novels over the years I formed the impression at least that he was a gentleman in all aspects, intelligent, and handsome on the inside as well as the outside. This melange of writing, both fictional and factual, cannot dissuade me on that – but I think there is a case of the handwriting expert getting a slightly better grasp on the creator, and the reasons for this book being as it is, than I.