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Julian Barnes
© Nancy Crampton
JULIAN BARNES

The Art of Fiction No. 165
Interviewed by Shusha Guppy
Issue 157, Winter 2000
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From the Interview
INTERVIEWER
You are very good at women characters—they seem true. How does a man get into the skin of a woman?

BARNES
I have a Handelsman cartoon on my wall of a mother reading a bedtime story to her little daughter, who’s clutching a teddy bear. The book in the mother’s hand is Madame Bovary, and she’s saying, “The surprising thing is that Flaubert, who was a man, actually got it.” Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex—that’s one basic test of competence, after all.
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