ian mcewan interview: warming to the topic of climate change - solar street light cost

An hour after I interviewed Ian McEwan, the doorbell rang.
In an elegant life, McEwan stood up from the sofa --
We are talking to the room and answer.
I can hear the conversation from the corridor. McEwan is 61.
His long, ascetic face, with frameless glasses and narrow eyes, gave him an expression that was always serious, obscuring his potential for ironic humor.
His untidy white hair, sweater and loose black trousers made him look like a professor of sociology
University of brick
He and his second wife, reporter Analeena McAfee, live in a large and beautiful townhouse in London Square, just a stone's throw from the telecom tower.
Readers of the best-selling novel Saturday, published in 2005, will be familiar with the scene.
McEwan bought the house shortly before writing the book, a model of the home of its main character, Henry Pelosi, who kindly described the house: "The victory of the pegging ratio;
The perfect square set by Robert Adam surrounded a perfect garden circle-18 th
The Dream of the century is bathed and embraced by modern times, bathed and embraced by street lamps from above and below
Optical Cable and cool fresh water flow in the pipeline, the sewage disappeared in the moment of forgetting.
McEwan's house has sparkling stone floors, spacious rooms and high ceilings; in the sitting-
In the room, two elegant leather sofas are separated by a big coffee table and face to face;
Bridget Riley, next to the marble fireplace;
The opposite wall is Westway, London.
McEwan returned to the room with a pleasant expression on his face.
It was a strange puer eternis, he said, who were riding their bikes to ship parcels around London.
He said, are you an author, Ian McClaren?
A puzzled smile suggests that this error is not uncommon-although it may not be uncommon when his name happens to be printed on the envelope.
Then he said he was a writer himself. Would you mind looking at his work?
He sighed deeply.
Ian McEwan's cold comfort to the world of science in his 1980 s has surpassed that group.
He is not only the highest stylist of British novels, but also the rarest writer-a literary writer who sells more than most "popular" writers.
In a last December survey by best-selling authors in the UK, McEwan ranked 37 with sales of more than 4 million, generating revenue of £ 27. 7 million.
Admittedly, this has a certain but more than any of his literary contemporaries with JK Rowling and Mr. gate authors Roger Hargreaves and popular blockbusters such as John Grisham, Danielle Steele and James Patterson -- martin Armys, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie or Shihei are all much more.
McEwan is about to publish a new novel called solar energy on global warming.
It tells the story of a Nobel Prize. Prize-
Award-winning physicist Michael Beard is stumbling on an energy production approach that is expected to solve the world's energy crisis.
It contains the habit mix page for McEwan
Turn to narrative drive, perception representation and keen observation.
But what's more unusual for him is that it's also interesting.
As he showed in Amsterdam-his satire on the subject of moral responsibility, and the novel that won him the Booker Prize in 1998-McEwan is no stranger to ironic humor.
But his first comedy novel, Solar, is right.
McEwan says he has been thinking about writing about climate change for years, but the facts, numbers, charts, science, and virtues seem so huge and distorted.
I can't see how a novel works without moral intent.
On 2005, when he was invited by the environmental organization Cape Farewell to join a group of artists and scientists on a trip to Svalbard, the keys were finally opened, a group of Norwegian islands in the Arctic Ocean.
Not only was McEwan impressed by the icy and spectacular surroundings around-"one of the most beautiful places I 've ever been to"-but also by the idealistic rhetoric of saving the world and the chaos in the growing boots
Rooms where people store equipment.
It's kind of like a kit-
The rooms of a disorganized boys' boarding school-everywhere.
By the end of the week, I can't remember the number of times I wore two left-footed boots or someone else's helmet.
I think so!
This is the way to get into the subject.
Idealism, and our ability to think rationally and collect data and evidence, on the one hand, on the other hand, these little bugs of the self
Interest, laziness and innate confusion.
Michael Beard of solar energy, a physicist in his fifties, tasted his early victories and won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in Boulder
Einstein fusion (
Einstein's explanation of photovoltaic)
I 've been taxiing for 20 years and endlessly repeating the same lecture, "always looking for an official role with allowances ".
The beard is a happy and terrible creation-short, bald, overweight, cynical, someone with an amazing culinary and sexy desire who is struggling to cope with the breakdown of the fifth marriage, for pert Patrice-the cost of doing 11 things in five years.
And then, in a completely unexpected opportunity flip of what McEwan's novel is good, destiny-in the form of a eager young research student-presents him with an apparently revolutionary idea to solve the world's energy problems through the process of artificial photosynthesis.
The sun is a cool and intelligent comedy about the universal piety of arrogance, sexual rashness and political correctness.
This is also timely, and it is precisely the moment that we have seen a marked rise in temperature in the debate on man-made climate change, with the controversy over the leaked emails from the Climate Research Department of East Anglia University, and IPPC reports of melting Himalayan glaciers.
Ask McEwan, his position in the climate change debate, and he refers to the classification method proposed by environmental activist Stuart brand.
There are radical ideological deniers who believe
Global warming is a myth.
There are skeptics whose thoughts will change as the data arrives.
There are also some Warner people who look at the data and feel that the data is very amazing.
Finally, there are some disastrous people who feel that everything is coming to an end next week and we are sitting in the carts of hell.
McEwan called himself a member of Warner.
"Just because I'm not a scientist, the amount of data is very large in my opinion.
It is very extravagant to think that there is some conspiracy of collusion, or that there is too much work or university funding.
"There will be a screw from time to time --
Things of UEA;
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau will not melt by 2035, but will melt 2350-a big difference.
For journalists, there is a niche that can oppose this grain and open up a small place for themselves in this way.
If there is more evidence that the whole process is going to be much slower than we thought-and I think that is the most unlikely-then I would be happy.
Solar energy has resolutely avoided falling on either side of the argument-in the process, it can be seen that economic interests have driven the development of both sides.
McEwan wrote that the deniers, like people around the world, want everything to be as usual.
They are worried that the value of shareholders will be threatened. they suspect that climate scientists are a self-
The service industry is like serving itself.
"I'm sure, for me, the reason for killing this book is whether or not I took any moral stance," he said . ".
I need a get-out clause. And the get-
The Out clause is, this is a survey of human nature, and comedy brings some freedom.
In Brand's classification, Michael Beard is another type of person-his main interest in global warming is that it provides opportunities for further development in his own interests.
When his business partners fret about the feasibility of their new energy program-"if the place is not hot, we are not hot"-the beard is still optimistic.
This is good news.
According to United Nations estimates, the number of deaths due to climate change has reached millions every year.
Just as we speak, the residents of Carteret Island in the South Pacific are evacuated due to warming, expanding and rising oceans.
Malaria mosquitoes across Europe are pushing north . . . . . . Listen, Toby.
It was a disaster. Relax!
McEwan declined to describe solar energy as a comedy novel he did not like.
"My feeling for them is that when you were a child, you were in the rough and rolling game, someone nailed you to the ground and put your knees on your arm, start every page? No.
But I said there are some great things here.
He looked a little surprised.
He protested that there were many places in the novel that no one would laugh. It sounds like a commitment.
McEwan said that the climax of the novel-in a farce, all the chaotic elements of Beard's life converge in a small town in New Mexico, he will be there to unveil his new invention-the most complex work he has ever dealt.
"I just can't sleep at night.
I feel like the plates are all spinning on the stick, which is a new experience for me.
But, at the end of writing a novel, it was a familiar feeling, and I thought, I had to cross the road very carefully.
I don't mind getting knocked down when I'm done, but haven't . . . . . . Don't be near the person who sneezes . . . . . . I feel like I really can't solve all of these problems if I stop.
Of course, now that I am done, this is a state of mind that I am eager to return.
McEwan habitually likes to base his story on strong facts and take forensic approaches to research.
When Henry Perowne, the main character of Saturday, studied, McEwan followed a neurosurgeon, Neil Kitchen, who was sitting
In the Sun, McEwan swam in the sea of jargon in Nanbu, with considerable authority. 3 Algebra and M-theory, Calabi-
In any case, Yau manifolds and orbitfolds . . . . . . Or it seems-it may take a physicist to judge.
He wrote in The Sun that understanding quantum mechanics is "the spiritual equivalent of lifting a very heavy object-impossible in the first attempt.
"I went once," he said . "
But I still don't lift them.
For most of Christmas, he was working on a layman's guide to relativity, and his son was given to him as a gift by his mathematician girlfriend.
I don't feel like I intuitively understand how time should bend or how space should change. ’ He sighs.
"I can't even lift the first weight. ’ The Nambu-
Algebra 3 and Calabi-
As McEwan said, you had "dropped everything from behind the truck ".
He said with a smile, "Man, there are some lovely concepts here.
Because I liked the names, they took them off the textbook.
I really don't know anything.
He says his foundation is more solid through the process of artificial photosynthesis, which Beard hopes will prove the answer to the energy crisis.
I went to the Colorado lab where they did a lot of work and read a variety of papers on this.
It's still 10 or 20 years away, but I guess that's weird enough, but there's still enough reason to get him excited about it.
So scientists don't raise their hands in terror?
"Well, I think there might be some horror. ’ He shrugs.
"You always go wrong and you get dozens of letters telling you the same amount of things.
He said that after the publication on Saturday, he liked the "wonderful communication" with a car reporter who pointed out that since the car was automatic, it's impossible for Henry peronee to "loosen the clutch" on his Mercedes 500SL"
At his recommendation, I finally bought a small BMW.
McEwan is the most elegant stylist, shaping the sentences that make you see the world again.
In a beautiful article in The Sun, the beard sits on a plane 10000ft above Heathrow, watching his familiar English corner spin under him, provided him with various scenes of childhood, student life and broken marriage, while meditating on the "uneasiness and fascination" presented by the sight of any city caught in the air-"these huge concrete wounds decorated with steel, traffic ducts that keep going to and from the horizon-the remains of the natural world can only shrink in front of them.
His novel has rich psychological insight.
In the English novelist, his skill in explaining the inner life, motivation and self of the character is unparalleled. deceptions.
I believe that fiction is an advanced gossip.
Sitting together talking about the motives and psychology of a common friend-in other words, gossip-is fascinating.
The novel is an imaginative act of empathy that shows the possibility of being someone else.
As McEwan observed, empathy is the cornerstone of morality ".
This is an argument made by McEwan after the 9/11 incident, when he wrote in an article that if the hijackers were able to imagine themselves as the thoughts and feelings of the passengers, they could not have continued.
It's hard to be cruel once you allow yourself into the victim's mind.
Of course, McEwan has his own views on fundamentalism.
On 2008, he was attacked following an interview with corrière della Sera, in which he defended Martin Amis against allegations of racism, before Amis wrote one he added that he was too disdainful of fundamentalism because it wanted to create a society that I hated based on religious beliefs, based on text, about women's lack of freedom, intolerance to homosexuality, and so on-we know this very well. ’ The hate-
Posts posted on the jihadist site may be inevitable-he remembers that "the most terrible thing is the violent thing ".
I was not directly threatened, but it was even more surprising that an article in The Independent said that McEwan's remarks were "an amazing strong attack" and attacked him, amis and other parts of the conflictof-
England of civilized literature.
McEwan does not seem willing to re-examine the topic or provoke it.
'I didn't say anything radical,' he said.
"I'm just talking about my direct experience with certain sites and just want to see what people are talking about-they have a long list of hate and I'm very different about it and I think most of the others, this will be done, including most Muslims.
But I do think there is a problem with how we talk. Chunks of left-of-
The central opinion tries to end this debate by saying that if you criticize Islam as an ideological system, you are actually a racist.
This is a heated debate.
They do so on the basis that they see their specific form of anti-allyAmericanism.
So these radical Muslims are shocked.
The troops in the armchairs left and they did not want to examine the rest of the package too carefully-homophobic, feminine-averse, etc.
In this case, McEwan described himself as "the part on the left is really scared by the other part on the left ".
He said that he has been in a state of "left-middle.
My political views are very boring.
McEwan's father, David, is a working-class Scot and a professional soldier, a sergeant in the Army.
The major at McEwan's birth-"a very terrible man"-eventually rose to the major.
As I grew up, all my father's friends were people like him, all of whom came from this class.
While they get along badly with people from Sandhurst, officials at Sandhurst always look down on them.
My mother was always a bit abusive and had to speak to the colonel's wife and would speak in her elegant voice.
She paid for it.
This made her more uneasy.
McEwan called his parents' marriage "rather troublesome"-a long, passionate, silent coalition with occasional domestic violence.
His mother, Rose, has two children. their marriage is earlier.
One grew up with grandparents and the other grew up in a boarding school --
The school and McEwan felt like an only child.
It wasn't until three years ago that he found out that he actually had a brother, the product of an affair between his mother and father when Rose first got married, and as a baby she gave up who to adopt.
McEwan found his brother Dave sharp through the home tracking service.
Last year, bricklayer sharp published his own memoir, complete surrender, and McEwan published a preface on the cover-almost as big as the author's name.
McEwan's growth was influenced by his father: he was born in Germany and then Libya.
When he was 11, he was sent to a state.
A boarding school in Suffolk.
He found it difficult to isolate.
Due to shyness, he later wrote that he never spoke in class and rarely spoke among a group of boys.
"It was very bleak.
I'm numb. year 45.
After studying English at the University of Sussex, he went to the University of East Anglia, where his mentor was Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, where he received a master's degree in comparative literature
His first two books are collections of short stories-first love, the last ceremony, and between sheets, published in 1975 (1978)
-Dark exploration of violence and offside.
A man recalled the night he lost his virginity.
A pedophile harassed a young girl and threw her into the canal.
In his first novel, Cement Garden1978)
In order to avoid being taken away by the social services department, four children buried their dead mother in the basement and were liberated to carry out sexual metamorphosis experiments.
"When I started writing, there was something like the jar lid being blown off," he said now . ".
"I am immersed in literature and very respectful of it, and then I think I will join this conversation, and I think, in the late 1960 s, in my early 70 s, I was slow to write English. The well-
Very polite.
So I think my own short story is that I am trying to be a wild man trying to bring confusion and discomfort to the reader.
McEwan said that his father died in 1996 and he is very proud of his success, although he has always felt that his parents' reservations about the theme of his early work will ease his pride.
He never mentioned it, but I know it's painful for him.
I don't blame him either, when you look at the toxic characters in my early novels-a bunch of scary characters.
McEwan moved from Norwich to London in 1974 to become part of a literary work centered on the new review and a pillar of the Hercules bar on Soho Greek Street.
A year ago, Martin Armis published his first novel, Rachel's paper.
He and McEwan became firm friends and soon became the flagstaff of the new British novel.
If Amis is a terrible person, then his name rarely appears in the gossip column and McEwan shows a person who is more lacking in confidence and low profile
The key figure-one man, he seems to be a little away from the higher literary style that won him "Ian McBreyer" sobriquet.
Among McEwan's readers, there are people who continue to insist that his early works are his best, complaining about all the resentment of a loved one who has been abandoned, believing that he has "become weak in recent years"
He sighed: "Yes, the slow decline for a long time . . . . . . "
"But what can you do?
There will always be people who say that you have never written a better novel than a cement garden.
No matter what you do, there will always be a lot of people who think you are not good at all.
The truth, he said, is that by the time the book "Comfort of Strangers", published in 1981, he felt that he was in trouble.
It all became quite polite and I felt like there was a lot of stuff in life and literature that I liked that didn't get into my writing.
Between 1981 and 1987, he did not publish a novel, but instead focused on creating a singing play with composer Michael Berkeley and the film script.
He and his children returned to the novel in time, marking a change in his description of the "ideological novel" and an investigation into the nature of human behavior and emotion, it also reflects his growing interest in science and the world.
It can be summed up as the view of rationalism and atheists-what he calls "philosophical materialism ".
It's no coincidence that three of his most recent novels are science workers.
He said, it's really because I want an intellectual from time to time, and only one intellectual with scientific literacy that really interests me.
In the view of a scientist with a culture, the universe seems to be a little bigger.
If you are occasionally influenced by some funny world view . . . . . . On Saturday, Henry peronee observed a pair of nurses from the window through the square, thinking that they were "hot little biological engines with foot-to-foot skills suitable for any terrain, neural networks are given numerous branches that go deep into the knobs of the bone shell.
I told him that it was a description that reminded me of the answer from a good friend of MacEwan, Darwin and atheist Richard Dawkins, once when I asked him how to define love, he gave me an answer-love is a product of a highly complex device, a neural device, or some kind of computing device.
Ah, the stuff of poetry . . . . . . McEwan smiled. 'Or self-parody.
All to show is that if you are going to describe love, you can describe it from many angles.
Richard immediately thought he would not be subjective-probably because he was talking to a journalist;
He offered a third.
Personal account based on mechanical viewpoint.
I was surprised that he didn't even mention the oxygen toxin and the nerve transmitter.
You can describe the love that is built on the nervous system.
But this is the difference between science and art.
The novelist wants to do this in action-you don't want to define love, you want to show it when it unfolds, when it blooms, when it crashes, when it becomes hatred or companionship and lasts forever.
However, the poet only needs to try it on the needle eye of the moment, which is why lyric poetry may be the best tool to describe love.
McEwan's own trip to reason seems to be inseparable from his personal life.
In 1982, he married Penny Allen, the first time he saw a student at UEA.
Alan is divorced and has two daughters.
Their first son, Will, was born a year later, and their second son, Greg, was born in 1986.
Allen has a strong interest in alternative therapy and spirituality.
McEwan said that when he was in his 20 s and 30 s, he almost felt that it was a responsibility to open the door to a certain possibility, "not . . . . . . But other explanations of the world.
I'm married to someone with a deep spiritual belief, and maybe I have a feeling I want to share.
But what do you say? It died on me.
I think the world is wonderful from the point of view of philosophical materialism, for me, it is no longer wonderful, in fact, it becomes less interesting, if all mysteries are bound in the direction of God.
"Black Dog", written in 1992, is one of the most interesting and striking Books in McEwan, essentially a rehearsal of the debate between faith and reason, embodied in a married couple on June, thaksin's belief in the spiritual aspects of his life was lost, while Bernard was a self-proclaimed materialism.
By the time McEwan wrote the book, his own marriage had begun to break down.
He separated from Alan in 1994 and divorced a year later.
He denied that the conflict of faith had anything to do with the breakup.
The end of marriage.
He said politely but firmly, I don't talk about it. 'But it wasn’t.
In 1997, he married art reporter Analeena McAfee, who met her for the first time when she came to interview him for a brief introduction to the Financial Times.
In the same year, he published Enduring Love, which he now seems to have decided which side he is on the rational/supernatural divide.
While the character in the black dog in June was given sympathetic listening, in the enduring love Faith a religious fanatic represented the character, who had a heart for a scientific writer
At that time, Alan and McEwan jointly supervised their two sons.
But in 1998, Ellen-she now publishes a book of her own, the face of the abyss: healing the body and the soul, tracking human development through the Chakra, according to Amazon's profile (
Lotus or Lily)
With their corresponding gods or planets, it is concluded that human beings and the solar system are inseparable . . . . . . "-An application for separate custody was filed, and since their two sons wanted to move to France, she was allowed to take their two sons from the English jurisdiction.
McEwan objected to the order and received interim custody on February 1999.
A few months later-in an example, irrational bursts into a seamless and orderly life, this life could have been freed from one of his novels-Alan continued to flee 13-Franceyear-old Greg.
McEwan has now been granted full custody and has had to follow his son back to England in the media spotlight.
In a subsequent action in the London high court, Allen was criticized by the judge for having a "scathing campaign" against McEwan after divorce and was barred from openly talking about their relationship.
McEwan was hailed as a "model of courtesy and restraint ".
So he stayed.
He has never discussed the case and has now refused.
People feel that this episode must be particularly painful for McEwan, a family-first person.
He obviously adored his two sons and spoke with great pride about them.
Will, now 26, recently started his first job in genetic research;
Greg, 23, has been living at home for the past year, but recently went to Madrid to study.
In our conversation, McEwan left the room and came back with a picture of himself and will take 20-
Oddly enough, a few years ago, another photo taken recently copied the pose, and I laughed when I noticed that the son seemed to be better dressed than the father.
Sometimes I look at pictures of my three-year-old, he says, and I feel like an abandoned lover.
"If I can get it back.
But in fact, I also like their stories as adults.
McEwan and his wife are great ramblers, Hill.
Pacers and travelers-he said that the character part of Michael Beard developed during the free time waiting at the airport baggage conveyor belt --the-
A few years ago, McEwan was booked to attend a world tour curated by the literary festival.
They have a cabin in buckin County where he likes to write.
Life is often quiet at home in London.
He rarely goes to the theater or the cinema. he describes the main pastime as eating and drinking with friends.
'I have always regretted not seeing what others saw, but I found it more interesting to drink red wine with friends,' he said.
On Saturday, he cheered for the happy and happy situation in Henry perune's family environment-"How lucky, the woman he loves is also his wife-sitting in the House of Perowne he made, it is tempting to equate Perowne's condition with McEwan's own.
In fact, Perowne's satisfaction at home seems to have aroused the interest of some critics who accuse McEwan of being smug.
Happiness, he argues, is a forbidden topic in literature.
It is very difficult to write it out.
I tried it on Saturday and some people got irritated by it.
I think, all those murder, incest assholes, I wrote it in my early story, and no one was tempted by them . . . . . . But I think I met
This is the anger of caleban in the mirror.
"I was at a literary festival in barkton, and the lady stood up and said in a very low voice, on Saturday, when I read that someone broke into the house, when one of them pointed a knife to the neck of Henry pelone's wife, I just wanted him to cut her throat.
I said, look, actually everyone in this room is in the top two of the world's wealth-you're fine --
I know, because I just signed you, you pretend that you don't have too much share of the goods in the rest of the world, which is a great harm to the rest of the world.
But it did provoke rare anger from some. McEwan sighed.
He expected the same to happen with solar.
"I know I'm going to use this.
People would say that this is a novel against climate change or a novel by climate change skeptics-because people are passionate about the idea that we are facing disaster and must act quickly, any novel that does not say it is very exciting for them.
His tone showed that he understood their concerns.
But saving the world is not the work of a novelist. 'No.
But I want it to be saved as much as anyone else. ’ 'Solar’ (
Jonathan Cape, 1899)
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