Atonement

My coworker gave me an old issue of “The Believer” to read featuring an article by Ian McEwan. She had known that I was reading Atonement by Ian McEwan and I had complained to her that his writing style grated on me. For as long as I have been interested in writing, I have been told over and over again, to the point of saying it in my sleep, that a writer should show, not tell.

Instead of saying, “Jamie was sad,” you should write “Jamie’s watery eyes had trouble focusing on anything but the middle distance,” or something like that (but much less crappy). However, as I read through McEwan’s book I was struck by just how often he tells the reader exactly what is going on. Here is an example: “Briony felt suddenly ashamed at what she had selfishly begun…” He doesn’t show what this looks like. Did she study her fingernails? Did she toe the ground?

Regardless, I found the book enthralling, and I was as caught up in it as in any other book I have read – I just don’t quite understand why. How can he break the rules and have it all work so well?

Anyway, I complained of this all to my coworker and she brought in this issue of “The Believer,” and I read it and saw clearly that McEwan is an intelligent old chap.

I think that the part of his interview that stuck with me the most was that throughout his writing, he seems to be deliberate in everything he produces (whether that is a product of being able to look back on his work and imbue meaning on things post-writing is debatable). He knows exactly why he is doing the things he does. Telling rather than showing has a direct meaning for him. It has a specific goal. He is a man who has done his thinking on the subject. It is something very evident when he argues for literature being a “very elastic, mutable form that can allow us real moments of human investigation.”

He says that, “There’s something very intertwined about imagination and morals. That one of the great values of fiction was exactly this process of being able to enter other people’s minds.”

It is an interesting point to ponder. Are the ills of the world a result of lack of creativity?

And I ramble on and on…