I hope I can demonstrate that prudishness can be literary rather than sexual squeamishness. It also has the advantage of making any negative criticism seem the carping of a prude. That way you can write prurient, voyeuristic pornography which will not be confined to the top shelf of your local corner-shop but piled high in W.H. Now, how to make it original? Turn it on its head and make it entirely about no sex at all.
If you were listing the ingredients of your next best seller to fit the current market what would it contain? Sex, certainly: very few characters (attention spans of publishers are no longer Tolstoyan, even though their readers may hunger for meat): Social Class distinctions (they always score as easily as own goals-England is thumb-nailed by them) Attention to Period detail (gives an air of erudite perspective and the archives of Fleet Street provide all that a man needs in an afternoon, both incidental trivia and date-stamping news) and the introduction of a new, and unfamiliar closed shop (Classical Music has the advantage of suggesting culture in an ostensibly knowledgeable writer, and may provide a source of fascination to a reader without the experience to question it).
Since the book relies heavily on flash backs (ushered in at insensitive moments) I shall give myself the same latitude in terms of imagining this book’s planning. A successful Chef knows exactly what the Trade will buy, and one as consistently successful as Ian McEwan has obviously distilled his art to minimum stir-fry effort for maximum gain. I want to understand my own failures by shining a torch into the structure and writing of a literary blockbuster.īooks are served up by the Publishing Trade who set the menus, and allow the chefs (the authors) small liberties in the matter of dressings, parsley covers and a dash of lemon. Hence my interest in this hugely hyped prize-winning success. I chose myself and my relevant experiences are those of a lifelong publishing failure. So this reviewer will need to come clean. Reviews customarily carry a post-script in which the qualifications of the reviewer, books published, relevant experiences, are sketched presumably to endorse the appropriate choice of reviewer. An Alternative Review of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
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