'What ifs' have abundant scope of creativity to them!

Inauguration of Tata Literature Live! 2020

Monday, 16th Nov 2020

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm IST

The Enduring Power of Words

Ian McEwan LIVE in conversation with Anil Dharker

Anil Dharker asks,

Anyone reading your 2005 novel Saturday, set in London, will be surprised with your descriptive details on the protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, where you’ve given some intimate, graphic details.

You seem to have spent quite a lot of time on that.

How long did you spend on that?

Ian McEwan replies,

I do some deep research for a novel.

Well, I spent almost two years on that.

More time especially on the operation theatre.

I became very good friends with the neurosurgeon.

At sometimes I really worked hard.

Sometimes, I have to be there in the morning, because he will be in his rounds, attending his meetings – his wife is a cancer nurse, and so he lived such a crowded life! He was almost on his feet every moment.

I had a great admiration for his team of surgeons, nurses, etc.

Anil Dharker asks,

What’s your writing schedule –

Ian McEwan replies,

Some days will be good mornings some bad! Some days a few sentences will be driving you crazy.

Anil Dharker asks -  

When you have a bad day of writing – how do you soldier on?

Ian McEwan replies,

I keep going.

I have pretty strict rules about it.

You must stay there at least for four five hours even if it’s not coming.

Only then I walk away.

When my children were young, that was also a great resource.

Saturday takes place in just one day in the surgeon’s life, but said from the protagonist’s perspective.

Saturday is written in the third person.

Anil Dharker asks,

What makes you choose whether to write in the first person or third person?

Was it something spontaneous or you think about it?

Ian McEwan replies, 

My default position is the third.

I am a little suspicious about the first person.

My standing position is – one must be very suspicious about the first person.

When you write in the third person, you really lay yourself on the line.

In the first person, you could excuse all your prose – allow mediocrity to flourish – by saying that’s my character.

You also have a freedom when you write in the third person.

You have a free direct style, to enter the mind of the character.

I’ve written in the first and in the third, but my heart and my brain remains in the third!

Anil asks, 

But why did you choose the first person for Machines like Me?

Ian McEwan replies,

Cos I wanted one person to be gauging himself.

I was entering the mind of the machine.

I wanted to live it myself, put myself in the hands and minds of my narrator, when he brings and unwraps this humanoid!

I’ve some writers say that characters take over, and they ride you!

Someone also said, they wanted to kill a character, but the character resisted.

Yes! D. H. Lawrence does that! I too take the ‘godly view’, that you create the characters out of a need, and you are responsible for them, you charge them, you direct them and you lead them, and you generate a kind of free will in the character.

Anil Dharker asks,

In Machines like Me the humanoids do the dishes and the bed, but they also think.

They learn quickly.

Interestingly, you have not set it in the future, but in the past.

Why did you do all this? Were you just amusing yourself?

Ian replies,

I wanted to analyse the existential problem of what the machine would be! By altering the past, I wanted to enter into a kind of long meditation – to see our alternative selves!

What if Alan Turing had not killed himself in 1954?

I wanted to raise a lot of What ifs

So it was integral to having a 70-year-old Alan Turing in this novel.

What if your mother had not stayed back to meet your mother!

You wouldn’t exist.

Maybe your father would have other children.

Among my acquaintances, who all met their spouses at their university, contingent factors, then what if they hadn’t met?

What if Trump retains the White House? Nancy becomes President elect?

What if Gore had triumphed over Bush. We might not have had the Iraq War.

So these What ifs have abundant scope of creativity to them!

Now Q & A starts… 💛

Question from Participant

What makes you use psychoanalysis as a tool of your writing?

Ian McEwan replies, 

I’m very skeptical of psychoanalysis as a cure for anyone! But it is a lovely indulgence for anyone! 

Question from Participant

Have you found yourself relating to any of your characters?

Ian McEwan replies, 

All of my characters are some side of myself, my fantasizing of myself, or characters from whom I’m trying to run away from! 

In fact, every cell of my body is in these characters!

Question from the Participant

What is the essence of a good suspense of a good thriller?

Ian McEwan replies, 

A good suspense novel should arouse curiosity at every stage. 

The first duty of the novelist is to be interesting, said Henry James. 

For the novelist who writes suspense novels, it is to thrill at every step!