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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

Ian McEwan, Past and Present

March 30, 2010 by Scott Timberg

THE new Ian McEwan novel, Solar, has just been reviewed in the New York Times, where Michiko Kakutani calls it both his funniest novel yet — similar to the satire of David Lodge — and a failure at the level of plot.

It makes me recall (chin-stroking music, please) the time I spent by with the shy and gracious British author in front of a fire at New York’s Gramercy Hotel one drizzly spring day. We spoke about his then-new novella, Chesil Beach (slaughtered by the same NYT reviewer, by the way), England’s grand tradition of literature about repression, the glories of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and his excitement at discovering American writers like Pynchon and Roth during a particularly dreary period for British and European fiction.

That interview is here. Looking forward to checking out Solar (which also happens to be the name of one of my favorite Miles Davis songs.)  I also spoke to McEwan about the film made from his novel Atonement and will post that one of these days.

Filed Under: books, brit culture, Ian McEwan

Comments

  1. 玉鳳 says

    March 31, 2010 at 11:26 pm

    人必須心懷希望,才會活的快樂,日子才過得充實,有意義,有朝氣,有信心。........................................

  2. Scott Timberg says

    April 1, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    Could not have said it better myself.

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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