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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
The author of "Saturday" discusses writing after 9/11, the burden of being interesting, and why he's still ambivalent about the Iraq war.
Apr 9, 2005 | With his 12th novel, "Saturday," Ian McEwan has reached a position that most writers dream of and few ever attain: His books are both automatic bestsellers and critically revered. There's no formula at work here. "Saturday" is about as different from his 2001 bestseller, "Atonement," as you can imagine. Instead of a twisty, self-devouring meditation on lies, guilt and literature, "Saturday" is a smooth, seamless creation depicting one day in the life of Henry Perowne, neurosurgeon, Londoner and happy man. And where "Atonement's" narrator Briony Tallis is a published author, Perowne not only doesn't write books, he can barely bring himself to read them, though he tries for the sake of his daughter Daisy, a poet about to publish her first volume of verse.
On his way to a squash game, and anticipating a family dinner party that will bring Daisy back home after a few months abroad, Perowne gets into a fender bender with a petty hoodlum in whom he recognizes the early signs of a degenerative nerve disease. He uses his expertise to escape a confrontation, but the incident hangs over the rest of his day -- playing squash, visiting his elderly mother, listening to his son play in a blues band, whipping up a seafood stew -- and results in a terrifying intrusion into his contented life. Literature winds up playing a surprisingly important role in that crisis, but so does the work that brings Perowne, a confirmed atheist and lover of the material world, so much satisfaction. All this takes place against the backdrop of the buildup to the Iraq war in 2003. In fact, it's the international protest march against the coming war that leads to Perowne's accident, and at one point he argues bitterly with Daisy about whether or not the invasion is a good idea.
Despite Perowne's indifference to literature, he's one of McEwan's most autobiographical characters yet. One of the many things they share is a complicated attitude toward the invasion of Iraq. During his recent book tour through an America in the throes of the Terri Schiavo debate, McEwan met with Salon to talk over our confusion of public and private life, his ambivalence about the war, whether the contemporary novel and magic realism are worth reading, and why he hates the slogan "Not in Our Name."
What was the genesis of this novel?
No single nugget, really. A vague desire, an old wish, having written a historical novel, to write a novel not only about the present but very much in the present. That was even before 9/11 had happened. I knew I wanted to be back at the beginning of this century, rather than in 1935. I moved to central London after living in Oxford for 17 years. I thought I'd very much like to write a London novel.
I'd also formed an ambition to write about work. I thought whoever my next central character will be, he's going to damn well have a job. Too many characters in literary fiction mope around and don't have any job. For very good reasons. Or, they're college professors, especially in America. This part of London I arrived in is very much a medical area. There are big hospitals here. So already I was beginning to think he'd be a neurosurgeon.
Concurrent with that, 9/11 happened and that was about the time I was publishing "Atonement." I did think that inevitably if I decided to write about the present, whatever changes the world was going through would percolate into this novel. But I did nothing for a year. I didn't start until 18 months afterwards.
A lot of people have said they found it impossible to write after the attacks.
I wrote some journalism about it. I wrote two pieces for the Guardian, one while it was still happening.
You mean on Sept. 11?
The Guardian wanted a piece maybe two hours into it. I'd already decided that the phone was bound to ring and I was going to say no, but my mouth said yes. Sometimes it seems that Descartes was right, the mind and the body are separate. It's horrible to say this because there was this horrible, vile event, but there's this other reptilian brain that goes into a mode that thinks, I can turn in 1,200 words in an hour. It's a rush to get it in. Then of course I hadn't fully taken in what had happened. You can read it on my Web site.
