1 May, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Someone please explain the appeal of Ian McEwan to me. Please. I beg you.
I just finished reading Enduring Love. I have never read a McEwan novel before, but I did see the film adaptation of Atonement (which I found to be problematic on many levels). I attended a conference recently during which someone gave a paper on McEwan and his name kept coming up in the ‘q and a’ discussion of other panels. Mainly, people where amused that McEwan’s name seems to be synonymous with “contemporary literary fiction” these days. Everyone was wondering how this happened, not so much as a comment on the quality of his work, but just marveling at his ascendancy to such a supreme place in the public’s literary consciousness.
After the conference, I was in a bookshop and decided to browse through a few of his novels. Enduring Love caught my eye because it has a first-person narrator. My novel is told in the first-person and I’m always on the lookout for good first-person novels. I hesitated, since I had seen the film version of Enduring Love and didn’t like it, but I decided I needed to read something by McEwan so I gave it a go.
Well, I should have followed my instincts because I found Enduring Love to be a not-so-good book. To be perfectly honest, I found it to be ridiculous and pointless. I felt exasperated by it for many of the same reasons I found the film Atonement to be exasperating, which makes me think the film must have been a faithful adaptation of the book. After just finishing Enduring Love, here are my thoughts on McEwan:
1) He thinks he has something very profound to say. His stories are told from this perspective, practically screaming out to the reader/viewer: “Look at me! I’m so deep!” I’ve yet to discover an ounce of profundity in either of the works I’ve been exposed to;
2) His stories are contrived. Enduring Love and Atonement hinge on rather elaborate — and totally artificial — set ups. On a purely technical level, all novels are contrived, obviously, but the job of the writer is to make sure the reader is able to suspend her disbelief. I have yet to be sucked into any of Ian McEwan’s fictional worlds;
3) Following closely what I wrote in #2, as I read Enduring Love, I kept thinking: I AM READING A NOVEL. The gears of the narrative churned in a very obvious way as the author strained to drag the characters through the twists and turns of the story (a story which, in my view, was completely ludicrous). Atonement suffered from this same artificiality and to top it off, we had that little gimmick at the end that just underlined that the whole thing was literally a “story”;
4) His characters are dull and uninteresting. There are certainly millions of boring middle-class white people out there roaming the streets — I guess McEwan wants to give them their due. I wouldn’t want to have coffee with any of these people if they existed in real life for fear that I may fall asleep. The character of Jed Parry in Enduring Love was a total psycho, yet even he was boring and not even believable in his psycho-ness. I just finished Bridget Jones’s Diary and while I found that book to be a piece of rubbish overall, the character of Bridget Jones was more believable than any of McEwan’s characters that I’ve encountered thus far. That really hurts to write that, let me tell you;
5) Based on Enduring Love, he does not seem to be an effective prose stylist.
Given my perceptions, I have to wonder why McEwan is so popular. A few thoughts spring to mind:
1) He is a literary writer but his prose is very straightforward and easy to read, which might account for his cross-over appeal to more mainstream readers;
2) Many people find his stories to be profound (for my thoughts on this, see the title of this post);
3) He is the critics’ and the media’s darling (see #2). I also think part of this stems from the fact that he is British. I’m not saying it is patriotism that garners him such strong support over here, but he writes a lot about Britain and I think he’s seen as a cultural export to be proud of.
There are probably many other reasons, but that’s enough for now. McEwan has won the Booker and sold a gazillion copies of his books, so clearly I am in the minority with my views. Perhaps I should give him another try to see if my theories hold true…nah, I can’t be bothered.
Tags: Ian McEwan
Anglofille said @ 3:17 pm | literary |
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(Sigh!)
I think you wrote this posting just to piss me off! LOL!
If you want to give McEwan another shot, check out The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers.
Interestingly though, McEwan’s latest work have not appealed to me at all and I suspect I will agree with many of your points about Enduring Love
Also, I find that as a writer it’s a valuable experience to read books that you do not like.
This way when examining why, as you do in this posting, it is clearer what you do NOT want your book to be comparable to in regard to ideas, themes, narrative style and structure, etc…
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Yes, I agree about learning from books you don’t like. I especially need to think about contrivance. I have many twists and turns in my book and I need to make sure the reader will believe that these things happened organically and cannot see the authorial hand. So far the feedback I’ve gotten is good, but I need to re-examine this.
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I actually read “Atonement” in one day while traveling back to Canada from Costa Rica at the end of my March break. I was attracted to the basic storyline, but I have to agree with your comment about the novel’s ending. It did feel gimmicky to me. I was let down. Briony wants to redeem herself by “retelling” the story of what she did, by setting the record straight, but instead she rewrote it. It’s all made up!! How can she expect atonement via a made up story of what she wished would have happened??? I hate her AND McEwan!!! Haha! Her character was completely unbelievable, and just crazy.
I’m more of an Austen/Dickens girl, but I also enjoy reading fluff like “Bridget Jones” and “The Devil Wears Prada” because I can relate to the characters, they are funny, and they are more believable as you say. It’s all mindless fluff, yes, but it’s ok once in a while, I think. I personally cannot be reading deep and profound texts ALL the time. Life is way too deep and profound already. Books are my escape!
With regards to your book, I am not an expert novel writer, but I am an avid reader, so here are my two cents. I guess I understand that you are trying to lay down plausible, believable fiction, and I can see why you don’t want your author voice to be too evident. You want the reader to be immersed in the story and follow its natural course. However, people are going to know that it’s fiction and that somebody put it together by making a series of literary decisions.
I don’t know how other people read, but I am always aware of the text and the subtext of any piece of writing. What is the message the characters are passing down to me, the reader? What is the author saying? Why did he or she do this or that in the text? Why was something included or left out?
I’m just saying don’t fret too much over it, and just focus on the actual storyline. I’m sure it will be literary greatness!!BTW, I am great fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian writer, who, in my opinion, is one of THE best storytellers of our time. I have read his works in Spanish and it is amazing how he uses language to convey so much meaning. His works are available in English too, but I have no idea how they translate. I think the nuances of Spanish are not easily translatable.
Ok, that is all for now. Have a great weekend!
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Silvana: I’ve read ‘100 Years of Solitude.’ Though I’m not sure how the English translation compares to the original Spanish, I agree that it’s an *amazing* book.
Interesting that you had a similar reaction to Atonement. I’m wondering if McEwan is just one of those writers you either love or hate.
Thanks for the belief in my literary greatness! You are too kind!!!
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Bob Says:
May 4th, 2008 at 4:34 amHave you read any C.S.Lewis? I just finished a Bio of him. ( A shiver of wonder, by Derick Bingham) He was a great writer, I think.
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Gregory Says:
May 4th, 2008 at 4:41 am“0Also, I find that as a writer it’s a valuable experience to read books that you do not like.”
I’ll go out and get the abridged version of Jay-Z’s lyrics. I’ll tell you something, I wouldn’t do it for five millions dollars and a limo to the airport,
I’ll tell you why, I didn’t learn anything in my entire life reading crap I didn’t like, which was crap because I said it was crap. That’s how I became an artist.
G.
