Another unconventional approach is the chapter order. Although the book starts with Noah’s flood and the traditional beginning of the ‘second chance of life’ for Man, and ends with a chapter set in Heaven; (another oddity, how many history books have chapters set in the future?), in between there is a seemingly random arrangement of events. The flood, then a hijacking of a cruise ship by modern Arab Terrorists with guns, then a transcription of a French renaissance period trial of, of all things, woodworm, then comes the journey of a woman as she escapes from men and a West of nuclear warfare which is another chapter seemingly set in the future. The next chapter is in two parts, the first reliving the sinking of a French military vessel in 1816 and the second analyzing a painting of the scene. Chapter 6 is about a (?) fictional (?) pilgrimage of an Irish woman to Mount Ararat in the 1840’s. Next comes a chapter containing three tales, the first about a survivor from The Titanic, the second about sailors swallowed by whales, the two examples being biblical Jonah and a soldier in 1891, and the third about a shipful of Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany.
Chapter 8 is about actors filming in the South American jungle. Then comes chapter 8 ½, Parenthesis, an essay on love. Chapter 9 is about an astronaut’s pilgrimage, again to Mount Ararat, in the 1970’s, in search for the Ark, and then we get the last chapter.
Obviously this differs greatly from the chronological order almost all history books take. Instead the reader is asked to compare, look and search for connections throughout the chapters, some blatant (woodworm, the Ark/Ararat), some subtle (clean/unclean) and even look for contrast (pain, suffering/paradise).
The final chapter, The Dream, about heaven, is a veritable goldmine of connections so far as what the narrator does is. He goes on several cruises (The Visitors, Three Simple Stories), does canoeing (Upstream!) and mountaineering (The Mountain, Project Ararat), gets into all sorts of danger and escapes (The Survivor, Shipwreck, Three Simple Stories), explores the jungle (Upstream!), watches a court case (The Wars of Religion), tries being a painter (Shipwreck), falls in love (Parenthesis), pretends he is the last person on earth (The Dream) and the first (The Stowaway), eats more creatures than had ever sailed on Noah’s ark (The Stowaway), becomes a wine connoisseur (The Mountain), meets Noah (The Stowaway, The Mountain, Project Ararat), meets Hitler (Three Simple Stories) and takes up reading(the book as a whole)
Another peculiarity is Barnes’ selection of topics. He includes significant events such as the flood and the Moon landing, but omits the first world war, the Romans and Greeks don’t even get a mention and the time of Jesus is also ignored, though Christianity, God or Religion plays a huge part in at least 6 or 7 chapters, and is significant in all.
In Parenthesis, the only piece narrated by Barnes himself in the first person; he directly addresses his handling of history with first “History isn’t what happened. History is what Historians tell us.” And then “ You keep a few true facts and spin a story around them”; in essence saying that history is constructed by those who tell it. Barnes also says “Dates don’t tell the truth.” This seems to be a view shared by Kath in The Survivor. (“ I hate dates. Dates are bullies. Dates are know-alls.”) Barnes indicates his hate for dates further by putting virtually none of them in his book, another abnormality in a history book. No dates except, conversely, when the narrator in chapter 10 is talking about the important years of his beloved Leicester City Football Club. It is slightly ironic that some of the only dates mentioned in the book are mentioned at just about the most insignificant time, about the most insignificant topic throughout a book whose only running animate character is a woodworm.
The book also illustrates history repeating itself. Barnes makes the comment, or perhaps, given the many examples he writes about, makes the observation in Three Simple Stories with ‘History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.’, citing the example of the Titanic survivor who sneaked onto a film set depicting the sinking in costume. Ordered off, for a second, this time farcical rather than tragic time, he avoids being on the boat when it sinks. This is a view echoed with the scenes in The Mountain and Project Ararat, the first where Amanda Fergusson dies on the mountain, and the second where Spike Tiggler finds her bones and believes he has found the skeleton of Noah, another connection with chapter 1. The Stowaway, The Mountain and Project Ararat are all primarily about Noah, and they are, this time in chronological order.
Throughout the novel Barnes mocks, often using irony, history and history books. This is most clearly illustrated by the tourists on the cruise in The Visitors, interested in Franklin’s lectures on Knossos and Minoan civilisation, becoming part of History themselves as the terrorists strike. Barnes challenges the reader’s idea of a history book and illustrates that history is not objective as historians would like us to believe but is as subjective as the mark this essay gets, and never anything more. He says that history IS what he makes it to be, a fabulation based on fact, and it’s all about how loosely based on fact the story is.
