Ian McEwan: 'I had the time of my life'

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Ian McEwan: 'I had the time of my life'

by Rachel Cooke, The Observer, August 19, 2012

Hitchens died of cancer last year. What is the post-Hitch world like? Oh no. He looks so terrible, as pale as ash, I wish I had not asked. “It’s very… desolate. It really does feel empty. He was the one of us who seemed to embrace all of literature; as time goes by, I don’t think people will associate him with his taking an unusual line on Iraq. They will connect him with his brilliant essays on writers: Chesterton, Kipling, Wodehouse. The appetite. The conversations. I really do miss them. Martin and I regularly check in with each other in the post-Hitch desert.”

How, though, did he manage to stay friends with them all? The literary world can be bitchy and envious. Fall-outs are standard. “Well, we knew each other before we were known; it’s not as if we are movie stars all hanging out together.” Besides, he says, novel-writing isn’t like sprinting. No one needs to come second; there is infinite space for good writing. “And perhaps we’re too old, now, to be jealous. The status anxiety wears off. I like their company. Supper at Julian’s is one of the great pleasures.”

But what if one of them had had to slope off and join a less celebrated profession? “It probably would have changed things, yes. Maybe it was a self-selecting group, though. Who would want to hang out around the Pillars of Hercules? Only those bent by this passion for writing books. We were absolutely determined to become writers. We didn’t use words like ‘passion’, but we acted them out. Writing was the only important thing.”