Lifestyle
Julian Barnes says he’s enjoying himself, but that ‘Departure(s)’ is his last book
Booker Prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes turns 80 on Monday and has been very busy. “I can’t remember a period of months when there’s been so much going on,” he says. He’s pictured above in London in 2017.
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Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images Europe
Six years ago, British author Julian Barnes was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. But rather than feel angry or fearful, Barnes experienced a strange calm; he approached the disease with what he calls his “novelist’s interest.”
“I love talking to doctors and consultants and nurses. They stick their needles into your arm and take off pints of blood,” he says. “It’s very interesting. Though like many things, it does get a bit tedious on the 34th time of taking a pound of blood out of you.”
Cancer means that Barnes, who turns 80 on Jan. 19, will spend the rest of his life on chemotherapy drugs. Still, he says, he doesn’t grieve for his aging and ailing body.
“We are these creatures who come into this earth unbidden, not consulted, and we live a certain amount of time — much longer than our ancestors,” he says. “But because we live longer, our body begins to break down and the medical costs increase.”
Barnes’ new book, Departure(s), will publish the day after his birthday. Part memoir, part fiction, the book chronicles Barnes’ cancer diagnosis and his reflections on death. In a way, Departure(s) is a companion to his 2013 book, Levels of Life, which detailed the death of his wife Pat Kavanagh, who was also his literary agent. (Kavanagh died in 2008, just weeks after being diagnosed with a rare, hyper-aggressive brain tumor.)
Despite his frequent meditations on death, Barnes says he is “alive and enjoying myself.” He remarried in August, and is looking forward to his birthday and the publication of his book, which he says will be his last.
“It’s been a very strange five months up to now,” he says. “I can’t remember a period of months when there’s been so much going on.”
Interview highlights
On his “hybrid” books
I often write hybrid books, and Departure(s) is a hybrid. It’s not a term that publishers like. They like to have something that says “fiction” or “nonfiction.” … Quite a few of [my books] are actually hybrid, which mix autobiography, fiction, nonfiction, art criticism, whatever is relevant to my thinking about the book.
I’ve always been quite relaxed about this, but I know that it does annoy some people, and indeed, the character Julian Barnes is attacked at one point by one of the participants in this love affair, who he hasn’t met for 40 years or so. And she says, “I don’t like this hybrid stuff you do. I think you should stick to one thing or another.” And it was rather enjoyable to have a character rebuking me for the book that I was writing. I sort of enjoyed that. And I get cross with her and I say, “Well, you may like or not like one of my books, but I want you to know that I know exactly what I’m doing when I’m writing.”
On thinking about death on a daily basis
I was talking to a friend of mine who said, “Oh, I don’t think about death. I’m only 60, I’ll think about when it’s nearer the time.” And you think, well, death doesn’t quite necessarily operate in that fashion. Death could be an out-of-control motorbike coming around a corner and taking you out. You won’t have had much time to think in those three seconds before it hits you. One of my French gurus is the 17th-century philosopher Montaigne, and he said we should think about death on a daily basis. We should make it our familiar. That’s the best way of treating it. Not as some awful sort of ghastly skeleton with a scythe in its hand coming to chop us off. He says we should … almost domesticate it, tame it in this way, and then we should hope to die while planting out our cabbages. That’s a wonderfully sort of wise approach to it all. I haven’t got a vegetable garden anymore. I used to have one, and when I planted cabbages they didn’t do very well. That’s the only fault I can find with Montaigne’s view of death.
On how he expects his wife’s death will inform his own
She had a catastrophic diagnosis and was dead in 37 days. It was like being taken downhill in an avalanche and every day something got worse. It was, by a long way, the most appalling thing that’s just happened to me in my life, and the most blackest. The thing that most deprived you of sort of hope and balance really. It took me years to get over it, but I don’t think I shall mourn my own departure in quite the same way. …
You could say that she showed me how to die with grace and also with a consideration for other people who were coming to see her. She never got cross. She never became tragic or upset. So in some ways we were well-suited because I have that sort of temperament as well.
On experiencing suicidal thoughts
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
I remember very clearly when I thought that I might kill myself. It was a few weeks after my wife had died and I was walking home and I looked across at the curb on the other side of the road … and I thought, of course you can kill yourself, that’s permissible, it’s not unforgivable in my morality. I’m extremely unhappy. I’m bereft. I’m lost, though I have many friends. I think I said, or a friend said to me — I can’t remember which way around it was — “Give it two years.” I said, “OK, I’ll give it to two years.”
But before that two-year period had elapsed, I discovered the reason why I couldn’t kill myself: I wasn’t allowed to kill myself, and that’s because I was the best rememberer of my wife. I knew her and I had celebrated her, in all her forms and in all of her nature. And I had loved her deeply. And I realized that if I killed myself, then I would in a way be killing her, too. I’d be killing the best memories of her. They would disappear from the world. And I just wouldn’t allow myself to do that. And at that point it just turned on its head and I knew I would have to live.
On his support of assisted dying
I think if I’m in extreme pain, with no chance of a cure for whatever illness I have, and I think if I’m getting no pleasure out of life, and as I see it, people are not getting any pleasure out me and my existence, then I have the perfect human right to end my own life. I don’t want to go to some industrial estate in Switzerland to do it, that sounds pretty grim. That’s why I’m a great believer and supporter of assisted dying in the U.K.
On the fallibility of memory
I used to believe — as I think most people do when they’re young — that memory was somehow something rather stable, that it was like you had something happen to you and you wanted to remember it, and so you took it along to one of those storage units which are along the sides of lots of main roads and outside city centers, and you deposited it there. And then when you needed that memory, you went there, you opened the box, you took it out, and there it was, as pure and as truthful as when you put it in. I went along with this sort of view of memory for quite a long time until I realized that actually memory deteriorates like everything else. And that, in fact, the more times you tell a story, the more times you subtly alter it, the more time you make yourself come out of it a little better, or you add a joke, and so on and so forth. So you could say that your best memories, the ones you’re fondest of, are your least reliable memories.
Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
The first time Pop’s Social, a catering company in South Orange, N.J., that specializes in dirty soda, served an alcoholic drink at an event, something strange happened.
At the event in December, its nonalcoholic offering, a spiced pear-cider seltzer with vanilla and peach syrups, cream, lemon and cold foam, was a hit. The Prosecco-spiked version? Not so much.
“People were more interested in the mocktail than the cocktail,” Ali Greenberg, an owner of the business, said in an interview.
Dirty soda — a customizable blend of soda, flavored syrup, creamer and sometimes fruit, served over pebble ice — has been crossing into the mainstream for years, especially after the cast of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the hit reality show that premiered in 2024, frequented Swig, the Utah chain that started it all.
But its reach has gone far beyond the Mormon corridor, and its rise in popularity has dovetailed with an overall decline in U.S. alcohol consumption. “There’s not a lot of Mormon people in our neighborhood,” said Greenberg. “But there are a lot of people who are sober-curious or not drinking.”
The reality show, which follows a group of Mormon influencers in Utah, helped popularize dirty soda beyond the Mountain States and inspired a wave of TikTok videos on the subject. Swig rapidly expanded — growing from 33 locations in Utah and Arizona in 2021 to now more than 150 locations in 16 states — along with other Utah chains, and spawned copycats nationwide.
Dirty soda has joined other Mormon cultural exports, like tradwife influencers, a “Real Housewives” franchise in Salt Lake City and Taylor Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette who wasn’t, that have captivated America.
With the recent rollouts of dirty soda at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ — behold the Dunkin’ Dirty Soda: Pepsi, coffee milk and cold foam — and the appearance on grocery shelves of Dirty Mountain Dew and a coconut-lime Coffee Mate creamer for homemade dirty sodas, we may have reached peak dirty.
The idea for dirty soda came out of a desire for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has millions of followers in Utah and surrounding states, to have more options for social drinking, as the church prohibits the consumption of alcohol, hot coffee and hot caffeinated tea.
When Swig introduced dirty soda in 2010, it filled a need, providing a pick-me-up for car-pooling moms and an after-school treat for their kids. It was quickly adopted by many in the community.
“In other cultures, parents go, they pick up their coffee in the morning, and for me and for a lot of my other friends’ parents, it was, ‘Let’s go pick up our dirty soda,’” Whitney Leavitt, a breakout star of “Mormon Wives,” said in an interview.
Leavitt was surprised when her dirty soda order became a recurring question from reporters in recent years. “They were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks to make whatever your go-to dirty soda is,” Leavitt said. (Hers is sparkling water with sugar-free pineapple, sugar-free peach and sugar-free vanilla syrups, raspberry purée, a squeeze of lime, and fresh mint if she’s “feeling really fancy.”)
In April, Leavitt became the chief creative and brand officer at Cool Sips, a beverage chain based in New York that sells dirty sodas.
“Mormon Wives” inspired Kaitlyn Sturm, a 26-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., to post recipes for dirty sodas on her TikTok. The one she makes the most contains Coke or Dr Pepper, homemade cherry syrup, a glug of coconut creamer and a packet of True Lime crystallized lime powder, which she combines in a pasta-sauce jar filled with pebble ice. “It kind of has become like a ritual, where I make one for my husband as well, and we have it most evenings,” Sturm said in an interview.
The trend has also hit fast-food menus. The new “crafted soda” menu at McDonald’s is riddled with dirty soda DNA. The Dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla flavoring and a cold-foam topper, is the chain’s version of what has shaped up to be the universal dirty soda flavor. Since 2024, Sonic, beloved for its porous, soda-absorbing pebble ice, has offered “dirty” drinks — your choice of soda plus coconut syrup, sweet cream and lime.
These drinks might feel new, but there are antecedents in the Italian sodas of the ’90s (fizzy water and a pump of Torani syrup); the Shirley Temple (ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and maraschino cherries); and the egg cream, a tonic of seltzer, chocolate syrup and milk. And what is a dirty Dr Pepper with cold foam if not a descendant of the root beer float? “It’s just a soda fountain from 125 years ago,” Kara Nielsen, a food and beverage trend forecaster, said in an interview.
Though Leavitt moved to New York City with her family in December, her dirty soda ritual has remained consistent, with one key difference. “In Utah, we don’t get to walk to dirty soda shops,” Leavitt said. “We have to drive there.”
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
Admission: I suffer from eyestrain. Even right this very second. As a reporter working on a computer more than eight hours most days, my eyes often feel fatigued and itchy by evening.
I’m not alone: More than half of the U.S. population lives with computer vision syndrome, also known as digital eyestrain, and nearly 16.4 million Americans suffer from dry eye syndrome. So I was especially excited to stumble on New Vogue Spa, in the City of Industry, which offers a relaxing, if intriguing, treatment called “Eyeball Care” — something I’d never heard of before at a day spa.
New Vogue Spa is an Asian-style spa with Korean and Chinese influences. The spa’s offerings include massages and body scrubs — I was curious about the “Red Wine Body Scrub” — but I couldn’t help exploring eyeball care, which was much needed after my 50-minute drive from Silver Lake. (The City of Industry is about 30 minutes from downtown L.A. without heavy traffic.)
So it came to be that I found myself lying on a massage table, wearing what looked like protruding diving goggles, with clouds of cool, aromatic steam oozing from both sides of it and engulfing my face. A spindly plastic tube extended from my forehead to the “Eye Spa” machine. Serene spa music, a blend of classical piano and loudly chirping birds, trilled in the background as the machine sloshed and gurgled. It felt like lying, creekside, in a spa robe wrapped in a blanket of chamomile and rosemary-scented fog.
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As my esthetician, Jenny Chen, adjusted the eye mask and added essential oils to the mist, New Vogue manager Lesley Xie explained that the 60-minute, $125 Eyeball Care treatment aims to hydrate and stimulate blood circulation in the eye area, decrease puffiness and dark circles and aid eye fatigue and dry eye syndrome.
“It’s really helpful for overall eye health for people who are on computers for a long time or sleep really late or who are reading a lot,” she said.
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1. The Eyeball Care treatment included a mask filled with cool, aromatic steam to help relieve fatigued eyes. 2. Slippers in the Himalayan Salt Room.
Xie said that eyeball care treatments are common in China. When she was growing up in Guangdong in Southern China, elementary school students were given a break every afternoon to perform “eye exercises,” which involved gently massaging pressure points around their eye areas, for 5-10 minutes.
“It released eye stress because we studied from eight o’clock in the morning until almost noon time,” she said. “It was a break for our eyes to prevent nearsightedness and tired eyes.”
New Vogue Spa’s treatment was supremely relaxing from the onset — part Head Spa, part facial, part eye care. Chen began by massaging my scalp for about 10 minutes, as I tried not to fall asleep.
Next she cleaned my face, applied massage cream and gently massaged my face and eye area, manipulating the outer corners of my eye sockets as well as under my brow bones and on my temples. She was precise and firm but careful — as she pressed on the outside corner of my eye, I felt tension draining down the side of my cheek and neck.
Esthetician Jenny Chen conducts “Golden Eye therapy” on reporter Deborah Vankin.
Xie said the massage is based on traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on stimulating acupressure points around the eyes.
“Gentle massage of these areas is believed to help promote blood circulation, relax the muscles responsible for focusing and relieve visual fatigue,” she said. “While it’s not a medical treatment for vision conditions, it’s widely used as a preventative and restorative method.”
The massage was followed by “Golden Eye therapy,” during which Chen used an electronic device on my face with a metal roller ball on it. It uses “ultrasonic vibration technology,” Xie said, to help the skin absorb the applied moisturizing cream and combat eye puffiness.
The main event was the “cooling steam therapy,” which Xie said was meant to be calming and refreshing and help relieve tired eyes. Chen fitted me with what looked like an enormous diving mask that quickly filled with cool, hydrating mist — I felt droplets of water dripping from my eyes and down my cheeks. The Eye Spa machine uses a “cold mist atomization process,” Xie said, “that disperses micro-particles of moisture combined with soothing essential oils.”
At the end of my treatment, Chen gave me under-eye gel pad masks, for added hydration, while conducting one last head massage. She applied moisturizing eye cream, face cream and sunscreen before sending me off.
Dr. Kristina Voss, an ophthalmologist with Keck Medicine of USC, was enthusiastic about the Eyeball Care treatment.
“It sounds wonderful. Anything that makes you feel good, I generally support,” she said. “It sounds safe because they’re not putting pressure on the eye. Direct pressure on the eyeball [is dangerous]. And I’d be nervous if they were putting something in the eye, but they’re not. Steam, or even cool condensation from a humidifier, is effective for dry eye. Massaging pressure points probably doesn’t treat dry eye, but could potentially treat eyestrain or tension headaches that can be interpreted as eyestrain.”
Los Angeles Times features writer Deborah Vankin inspects her eyeballs after her treatment.
Temporary relief aside, however, Voss warned that the treatment is not a replacement for seeing a doctor if a condition is ongoing.
“It’s relaxing and complementary to a doctor’s dry eye treatments — like medicated drops or in-office treatments — but it’s not a simple fix or cure all,” she said. “Ongoing doctor’s care would be important.”
After my treatment, I was invited to linger in the co-ed Himalayan Salt Room and Red Clay Room or woman-only spa area, complete with a warm soaking tub, lounge area and treatment rooms for body scrubs. (I skipped the adjacent New Vogue MedSpa, where you can get botox, dermal filler or microneedling treatments.)
Guests are also treated to a cup of homemade snow fungus tea (made from tremella mushrooms) with a single jujube, or red, date, floating inside. New Vogue makes a fresh batch every morning for guests, simmering the collagen-rich drink so long it becomes somewhat gelatinous.
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1. The Himalayan Salt Room. 2. The co-ed lounge area. 3. The Red Clay Room.
“Snow fungus focuses on deep hydration and skin plumping, while red dates support circulation and a healthy glow,” Xie said, calling the concoction “a warm bowl of snow fungus and red date soup.”
I can’t speak to the medicinal benefits of snow fungus tea. But after a glass of the warm, woody-tasting drink — together with the hour-long tension-taming eye treatment — I saw the world in a whole new way while walking out the door: clearly, from a relaxed perspective and with the bigger picture in focus.
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