It is not evil that undoes the world, but small errors prompting tiny weaknesses - let's not call them dishonesty - gathering in rivulets, then cascades of consequences . . . We will not rescue the Earth from our own depredations until we understand ourselves a little more, even if we accept that we can never really change our natures.Ian McEwan talks to James Button in the Age about becoming a more public figure and about his next novel which addresses global warming and grew out of a journey he made in 2005 with a group of scientists and artists to the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic to observe a melting glacier. (I actually caught a programme about this trip on the BBC last year and it was so nice to see Ian on the ice.)
Noticing the tendency of expedition members to nick items of kit from others in the boot-room of the ship and the rows and chaos that ensued, McEwan began to muse about human nature and the fate of the Earth. And that provided the starting point for the fiction.
3 comments:
Thanks for this. The interview is absolutely brilliant -- I had to read almost the entire thing out loud to my husband. It's hard to pick a favourite bit but this sentence I could almost carve into my forehead (if it wouldn't hurt so much):
"Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality."
-- Preeta
Dear Sharon, have u heard about the free online books at HarperCollins? check it out :)
Wow. Cant wait!
Global warming and the author are my favs right now.
On the free HC books, I like this one:
http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/
I remember you wrote something about publishing ebook in PDF. Actually it's not easy to read it that way. You know, the distractions and all.
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