The Cambridge Companion to Ian Mcewan Edited by Dominic Head Frontmatter More Information

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Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-48033-8 — The Cambridge Companion to Ian McEwan Edited by Dominic Head Frontmatter More Information

     

This Companion showcases the best scholarship on Ian McEwan’s work and offers a comprehensive demonstration of his importance in the canon of international contemporary ﬁction. His whole career is covered, and the connections as well as the developments across the oeuvre are considered. The essays offer both an assessment of McEwan’s technical accomplishments and a sense of the contextual factors that have provided him with inspiration. This volume has been structured to highlight the points of intersection between literary questions and evaluations, and the treatment of contemporary sociocultural issues and topics. For the more complex novels – such as Atonement – this book offers complementary perspectives. In this respect, The Cambridge Companion to Ian McEwan serves as a prism of interpretation, revealing the various interpretive emphases each of McEwan’s more complex works invite, and shows how his various recurring preoccupations run through his career.

  is Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham, where he served as Head of School, 2007–10. His previous books are The Modernist Short Story (Cambridge, 1992), Nadine Gordimer (Cambridge, 1994), J. M. Coetzee (Cambridge, 1997), The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 (Cambridge, 2002), Ian McEwan (2007), The State of the Novel (2008), The Cambridge Introduction to J. M. Coetzee (Cambridge, 2009) and Modernity and the English Rural Novel (Cambridge, 2017). Also, as editor: The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, third edition (Cambridge, 2006), and The Cambridge History of the English Short Story (Cambridge, 2016).

A complete list of books in the series is at the back of this book.

© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-108-48033-8 — The Cambridge Companion to Ian McEwan Edited by Dominic Head Frontmatter More Information

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO IAN MCEWAN

EDITED BY DOMINIC HEAD University of Nottingham

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www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108480338 : 10.1017/9781108648516 © Cambridge University Press 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : Head, Dominic, editor. : The Cambridge companion to Ian McEwan / edited by Dominic Head, University of Nottingham. : Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019.| Includes bibliographical references and index. :  2018057999 |  9781108480338 (hardback : alk. paper) |  9781108727297 (pbk. : alk. paper) : : McEwan, Ian–Criticism and interpretation. :  6063.4 625 2019 |  823/.914–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057999  978-1-108-48033-8 Hardback  978-1-108-72729-7 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

List of Contributors page vii Chronology ix List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1  

1 ‘Shock Lit’: The Early Fiction 14  -

2 Moral Dilemmas 29  

3 Science and Climate Crisis 45  

4 The Novel of Ideas 60  

5 Cold War Fictions 75  

6 The Construction of Childhood 91  

7 The Public and the Private 106  

8 Masculinities 120   v



9 The Novellas 135  

10 Realist Legacies 150  

11 Limited Modernism 165  

12 Narrative Artiﬁce 181  

Further Reading 197 Index 207

CONTRIBUTORS

  writes on twenty-first-century British fiction and nonfiction, ecocri- ticism and narratology, climate crisis and floods. Her monograph, Climate Crisis and the Twenty-First-Century British Novel, was published in 2018. She is Lec- turer of British Literature at HAN University of Applied Sciences, Nijmegen (the Netherlands).

  is Reader in Modern Literature at the University of Leeds, where he is Programme Leader for the English Literature BA and the Modern and Contemporary MA Pathway. He has published widely on the work of James Joyce as well as on many other modern and contemporary writers from Shakespeare to J. G. Ballard and Bob Dylan. Previous work on Ian McEwan includes essays on The Innocent and Saturday.

  is Professor of Modern and Contemporary English Literature at Newman University, Birmingham, UK. He has published widely on post-1900 literature and on such writers as E. M. Forster, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, and Paul Scott in particular. His books include Contemporary Novelists: British Fiction Since 1970 (2005) and Aesthetics and Ethics in Twenty-First Century British Novels (2013).

  has written on Ian McEwan’s Saturday in the journal Novel. His work on contemporary ﬁction more generally has appeared in the minnesota review and Contemporary Literature. He is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto.

  is Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham, where he served as Head of School, 2007–2010. His books include The Modernist Short Story (1992), The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 (2002), Ian McEwan (2007) and Modernity and the English Rural Novel (2017). Also, as editor: The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, third edition (2006), and The Cambridge History of the English Short Story (2016).

vii

  

  is a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Among his books are Modernist Futures (2012)andDiscrepant Solace (2019), andeditedvolumessuchasThe Legacies of Modernism (2012)andThe Cam- bridge Companion to British Fiction since 1945 (2015). He co-edits the series Literature Now.

  is Emeritus Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Teesside University, UK. A former director of the UK English Subject Centre, his research interests include the history and pedagogies of English, and masculinities in narrative. His most recent book is Pedagogic Criticism: Reconﬁguring University Eng- lish Studies (2017).

  is Associate Professor of English at Clemson University and co-editor of the journal Contemporary Literature. He is the author of Fictions of Fact and Value: The Erasure of Logical Positivism in American Fiction, 1945–1975 (2013) and co-editor of Wittgenstein and Modernism (2017). He is the recipient of a 2018–2019 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship.

  teaches at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. He has written on the work of Jean Rhys, Graham Swift, John McGahern, and John Berger. His books include Understanding Ian McEwan (2002). He has also published on short ﬁction and modern poetry.

  teaches nineteenth-century and contemporary ﬁction at the University of Queensland. She has published three essays on Ian McEwan’s work: one on realism, one on The Comfort of Strangers as a reading of the underlying power of sadomasochism in patriarchal society, and the third on Black Dogs as Virgilian pastoral. Her present literary research looks at why classical pastoral is being reworked in contemporary literature.

 - is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The author of Insomnia: A Cultural History (2008), Ian McEwan: Sex, Death and History (2014), and A History of Wandering (forthcoming), she is currently working on a history of the sea and human emo- tions, and on the literature of the Second World War.

  is the author of Allegories of Telling: Self-Referential Narrative in Contemporary British Fiction (2003) and Ian McEwan (2010), as well as a number of other publications on contemporary British ﬁction. Dr Wells’ scholarship focuses on literary ethics and urban ﬁction. She has held a number of leadership positions in Canadian universities, and is currently Associate Vice-President Stu- dents at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada.

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CHRONOLOGY

1945 Second World War ends; atomic bombs are dropped on Hiro- shima and Nagasaki. Clement Attlee wins election and forms a Labour government. George Orwell, Animal Farm. 1947 Truman Doctrine and the beginning of the Cold War. Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano. 1948 Ian Russell McEwan born on June 21 in Aldershot. 1949 North American Treaty Organization founded. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1950 William Cooper, Scenes from Provincial Life; Rose Macaulay, The World My Wilderness; Angus Wilson, Such Darling Dodos. 1951 Winston Churchill elected as Conservative Prime Minister. 1954 Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim; Iris Murdoch, Under the Net. 1956 Suez crisis. Eight-year-old McEwan living at an army camp in Libya. Angus Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. 1959 Sent to school at Woolverstone Hall, a state boarding school in Suffolk. 1961 Construction of the Berlin Wall begins. 1962 Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook. 1963 John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. 1964 Labour Party wins general election, Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister. Angus Wilson, Late Call. 1965 Malcolm Bradbury, Stepping Westward. 1967 McEwan attends the University of Sussex to read English and French, graduating in 1970. UK Sexual Offences Act decriminal- izes homosexuality. Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop. 1969 John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman. 1970 Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch. Read by McEwan in 1971. Conservative Party wins general election, Edward Heath Prime Minister. ix



1970–1 MA in creative writing (with modern ﬁction) University of East Anglia. Taught by Angus Wilson and Malcolm Bradbury. 1972 Trip to Afghanistan. Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. 1973 Britain joins the European Economic Community. Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers; Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince. 1974 Moves from Norwich to take a room in Stockwell. Makes contact with Ian Hamilton’s New Review. Labour Party wins second general election of the year, after a hung parliament, Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister. Martin Amis, Dead Babies. 1975 First book published, the collection of stories First Love, Last Rites. Malcolm Bradbury, The History Man. 1976 Somerset Maugham Award for First Love, Last Rites. 1977 Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve. 1978 In Between the Sheets and The Cement Garden. Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea. 1979 Conservative Party wins general election, Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister. Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. 1980 The Imitation Game transmitted as a BBC ‘Play for Today’. Screenplay published 1981. 1981 The Comfort of Strangers. Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children. 1982 Marries Penny Allen. The Falklands War, April to June. 1983 Named by Granta magazine as one of top twenty young British novelists. First performance of Or Shall We Die? wins The Evening Standard award for best screenplay for The Ploughman’s Lunch. Conservative Party wins general election, Margaret Thatcher begins second term as Prime Minister. Graham Swift, Waterland. 1984 Miners’ strike. Martin Amis, Money; Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus. 1985 Rose Blanche. 1987 Publication of The Child in Time, which wins the Whitbread Novel Award. Conservative Party wins general election, Margaret Thatcher begins third term as Prime Minister. The Great Storm in England kills eighteen people and destroys 15 million trees in southern England. 1988 Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses; David Lodge, Nice Work. 1989 Publication of A Move Abroad, containing the oratorio for Or Shall We Die? and the screenplay for ‘The Ploughman’s Lunch’.



The Berlin Wall is taken down, signalling the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Martin Amis, London Fields; Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day; Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry; Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. 1990 The Innocent. Unification of East and West Germany. Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia. 1991 Gulf War begins. Dissolution of the Soviet Union and definitive end of the Cold War. 1992 Black Dogs. Conservative Party wins general election, John Major becomes Prime Minister. Adam Thorpe, Ulverton. 1993 Awarded the French Prix Fémina Étranger. Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting. 1994 The Daydreamer. Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up! 1995 Divorced from Penny Allen. Martin Amis, The Information. 1997 Enduring Love. Marries literary journalist Annalena McAfee. Labour Party wins general election, Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister. 1998 Publication of Amsterdam, which wins the Booker Prize. Good Friday Agreement reached in Northern Ireland. Julian Barnes, England, England. 1999 Awarded the Shakespeare Prize. 2000 Awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Zadie Smith, White Teeth. 2001 Atonement. Labour Party wins general election, second term for Tony Blair as Prime Minister. Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and other targets. 2002 Wins the W. H. Smith Literary Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, all for Atonement. 2003 The Iraq War, or Second Gulf War begins. 2005 Publication of Saturday, which wins the James Tait Black prize for fiction. Labour Party wins a third term under Tony Blair. 7/7 London suicide bombings. Zadie Smith, On Beauty. 2007 On Chesil Beach. Discovers he has a long-lost brother, Dave Sharp. 2008 Book of the Year award for On Chesil Beach at the British Book Awards. For You published, libretto for Michael Berkeley’s opera. 2010 Publication of Solar, which is awarded the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Hung parliament after the general election.



Coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, with David Cameron as Prime Minister. 2012 Sweet Tooth. 2014 The Children Act. ‘No’ vote in national referendum on Scottish independence. 2015 Conservative Party wins general election with a majority, David Cameron Prime Minister. 2016 Nutshell. ‘Leave’ vote in United Kingdom European Union mem- bership referendum. 2017 Conservative Party forms minority government after snap election, with Theresa May as Prime Minister.

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ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations and editions are used for references to McEwan’s work: Am Amsterdam (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998) At Atonement (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001) BD Black Dogs (1992; London: Picador, 1993) CA The Children Act (London: Jonathan Cape, 2014) CG The Cement Garden (1978; London: Picador, 1980) CS The Comfort of Strangers (1981; London: Vintage, 1997) CT The Child in Time (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987) D The Daydreamer (1994; London: Red Fox, 1995) EL Enduring Love (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997) FL First Love, Last Rites (1975; London: Picador, 1976) FY For You (London: Vintage, 2008) I The Innocent (1990; London: Picador, 1990) IBS In Between the Sheets (1978; London: Vintage, 1997) IG The Imitation Game (1981; London: Picador, 1982) MA A Move Abroad: ‘Or Shall We Die?’ and ‘The Ploughman’s Lunch’ (London: Picador, 1989) MP My Purple Scented Novel (London: Vintage, 2018) N Nutshell (London: Jonathan Cape, 2016) OCB On Chesil Beach (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) RB Rose Blanche (1985; London: Red Fox, 2004) S Saturday (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005) So Solar (London: Jonathan Cape, 2010) ST Sweet Tooth (London: Jonathan Cape, 2014)

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