{"id":988,"date":"2010-03-30T10:41:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T17:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/03\/ian-mcewan-past-and-present.html"},"modified":"2010-03-30T10:41:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T17:41:00","slug":"ian-mcewan-past-and-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/03\/ian-mcewan-past-and-present.html","title":{"rendered":"Ian McEwan, Past and Present"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>THE new Ian McEwan novel, <i>Solar<\/i>,\u00a0has just been reviewed in the New York Times, where Michiko Kakutani <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/03\/30\/books\/30book.html?ref=arts\">calls it<\/a> both his funniest novel yet &#8212; similar to the satire of David Lodge &#8212; and a failure at the level of plot.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/S7JG_qqVG8I\/AAAAAAAAAtI\/bAgmFN426Hw\/s1600\/Ianmcewan.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/S7JG_qqVG8I\/AAAAAAAAAtI\/bAgmFN426Hw\/s320\/Ianmcewan.jpg\" width=\"259\"><\/a>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&#8217;s Gramercy Hotel one drizzly spring day. We spoke about his then-new novella, <i>Chesil Beac<\/i><i>h<\/i> (slaughtered by the same NYT reviewer, by the way), England&#8217;s grand tradition of literature about repression, the glories of John Mayall&#8217;s Bluesbreakers, and his excitement at discovering American writers like Pynchon and Roth during a particularly dreary period for British and European fiction.<\/p>\n<p>That interview is <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2007\/jun\/17\/entertainment\/ca-mcewan17\/3\">here<\/a>. Looking forward to checking out <i>Solar<\/i>\u00a0(which also happens to be the name of one of my favorite Miles Davis songs.)\u00a0\u00a0I also spoke to McEwan about the film made from his novel <i>Atonement<\/i> and will post that one of these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE new Ian McEwan novel, Solar,\u00a0has just been reviewed in the New York Times, where Michiko Kakutani calls it both his funniest novel yet &#8212; similar to the satire of David Lodge &#8212; and a failure at the level of plot. It makes me recall (chin-stroking music, please) the time I spent by with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,88,292],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-brit-culture","8":"category-ian-mcewan","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}