So, as I am (hopefully) landing in Fort Lauderdale for a few days in the (hopefully) sunny warmth, the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be meeting at noon in Lori Walsh's beautiful home for light refreshments and to hear Diana present on the theme of her birth year, “1949–1950 English Literature” and Ian McEwan. I will miss you all.
Happy 2024—with hopes for peace, good health, nuance in thought, good sense winning out in November, and lots of time together in good company or with a really good book...or both! Enjoy! x Jacquie
Spoiler Alert: The video interview shows McEwan in the beautiful home in the Cotswold which his writing supports. You may wish to wait until after Diana's presentation to view it to avoid biographical spoilers. Here's the link:
Christine's Minutes: fourteen members of the Literature Club met for our first meeting of this new year, in the lovely living room of Lori Walsh.
Because of our current is-COVID-over-or-is-it-not meeting conundrum, Lori did not serve lunch, because neither rosemary shortbread, nor lemon cake, nor candied ginger, and certainly not cheese or crackers, could ever be considered lunch.
Naturally, there was much pre-meeting discussion of the heavy rains and extreme flooding—several members had basements full of water even as we met.
Our president, Constance, rang the bell and thanked Lori for our lovely not-lunch.
Carla read the minutes for the December 6 program, having kindly taken over for your absent secretary.
Lori informed us that we still have $170 in the treasury because we haven’t yet paid for the 2 books in memory of Helen Barolini, The Manuscript Club by Christopher de Hamel, and Earthly Delights, by Jonathan Jones. Frances will arrange for the book plates.
In order to maintain our very delightful tradition of Carla presenting for our last program in June, a few schedule changes were announced.
Certain film recommendations were: All of Us Strangers (with hot priest); Poor Things; American Fiction; Anatomy of a Fall; The Making of West Side Story (on You Tube). We were also enjoined to not see Dream Scenario. Members also recommended two novels: Lapvona, by Ottessa Moshfegh; The Other Name, by Jon Fosse.
Onward to our presentation by Diana. She began by explaining that the themes spanning her birth year, 1949, that is 1948–49 and 1949–50, were the same: British Literature. Thus making her decision rather simple. However, back then the individual programs skewed to the staples of an English Lit survey course, while Diana brought us right into the present, with a living author, Ian McEwan.
McEwan, currently 75 years old and looking quite good—yes, Diana admitted to a bit of a crush—has written seventeen novels, several collections, received too many awards to mention, and lives in a $12M chateau in the Cotswold. He is a Commander of the British Empire, which is almost as good as being a Sir.
McEwan was born in 1948 in England, but spent his childhood living abroad on military bases, in East Asia, Germany and North Africa. He described his home life as boring, though, as we will learn, behind that boredom lurked some very dark secrets. His mother, Rose, was a housewife, and his father, David, was a career army man. There were no books in his childhood homes. At boarding school, Ian taught himself to speak carefully, as he wanted to expunge his working-class accent; this attention gave rise to the precise writing style for which he is known. Having failed to get a scholarship for Cambridge—because he had not read Macbeth (let this be a lesson) Mc Ewan enrolled at the University of Sussex, and then got his master's from the University of East Anglia in 1972, where he fell in love with Penny Allen, a hippie and a prominent feminist. That was followed by his hippie period, when he and friends drove from Munich to the Khyber Pass in a VW van. During this period, he either did or did not wear a caftan.
Back to the family secret: Rose had a first marriage, before David McEwan. With her first husband, Ernest Wort (a surname I am certain McEwan is glad not to have labored with), she had two children. Ernst died in WW2, in 1944. Rose married David McEwan in 1947, who wasn’t interested in raising Rose’s children by Wort, who were sent off to relatives and boarding school. The deep secret, that would haunt her all her life, was that Rose had a third child, a boy, by David McEwan, with whom she was having an affair while Wort was in North Africa fighting. The child was born in December 1942, and she placed an ad in the local paper saying: “Wanted, home for a baby boy, age 1 month. Complete surrender.” Two weeks later, with only her sister to steady her, on a train platform, Rose handed over her infant to the first couple to respond to her ad. That child, named David Sharp, was raised by loving parents, and became a brick layer. He was fifty years old when, in 2002, he learned through a free DNA test that he had a brother, Ian McEwan, a writer he had never heard of. They met for the first time at a hotel bar, and discovered that they were “chalk and cheese.”
Literary success came quite quickly, in 1975, with a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites. It was described as “shocking and twisted” and won the Somerset Maugham Prize. In lieu of reading lurid and grotesque stories, members read from an essay of McEwan’s called “When I Was a Monster,” in which he described his early romantic sense of self, as well as the voices of his twisted characters.
With his next collection of short stories, and the novel The Cement Garden, McEwan’s achieved a notorious and somewhat unsavory public persona, as well as a solid writerly reputation.
In 1982, he married his girlfriend, Penny Allen, and together they had two sons, William and Greg. Two years later they moved from London to Oxford. But as Penny became more mystical, Ian was growing more rational and intellectual. They divorced in 1995, and there ensued an unpleasant custody battle, when Penny decamped to Brittany with 13-year-old Greg. McEwan ultimately got custody of both boys.
McEwan married Annalena McAfee in 1997. She was a journalist, who wrote for The Financial Times; they met initially when she interviewed him about his children’s book, The Daydreamer. They both came from working-class backgrounds and went on to become major intellectuals. They share their love of music, cooking and hiking—a trait they also share with Diana, our presenter; the couple have homes in London and Buckinghamshire.
Back in the seventies, McEwan regularly lunched with Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens, and numerous other writers. When he was in hiding, Salman Rushdie stayed for a while with McEwan. Among McEwan’s friends are countless writers, and also scientists in a wide range of disciplines.
He keeps a journal, cares deeply about details, and carefully structures his novels.
Yet with all his writing, McEwan is unusually social. For his sixtieth birthday party at the London Zoo, he invited 200 friends. That’s right, he had 200 friends.
Members read aloud selections from the novels Nutshell, Saturday, and Lesson, and a brief passage from his wonderful children’s book, The Daydreamer. We also read My Purple Scented Novel, a short story that appeared in the New Yorker in 2016. Choosing what to read from such a prolific and fascinating writer was surely challenging.
The meeting adjourned at 3 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner
Recording Secretary
No comments:
Post a Comment