In this interview Ian McEwan did for the London Telegraph back in May 2013, an interview focusing on McEwan’s espionage novel, Sweet Tooth, I was struck by the following, rather refreshing remarks McEwan made about the relationship between genre fiction and literary fiction:

“McEwan says he is not bothered that Sweet Tooth might be categorised as genre fiction. For him, such distinctions are irrelevant. It is, after all, his second venture into espionage. The Innocent, published in 1990, was set in West Berlin at the beginning of the Cold War, and did no harm to his reputation as a literary novelist.

“In the end these things just dissolve,” he says. “The only question is how good a novel is, not whether it has spies or detectives or nurses marrying doctors. Take Conrad–we wouldn’t say of him that he’s merely a writer of seafaring yarns. What matters is whether a novelist can devise a particular and plausible world that holds us, and make a moral universe that has such a resonance that we can go back years later and find it still works. Then genre is transcended. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy holds up because it’s a brilliant novel.”

This is exactly right. When you think of the greatest writers, you find the supposed culture-clash between genre and literary writing “just dissolve.” The Iliad–the defining work of epic poetry or ripping good war story? Macbeth–highbrow tragedy or taut psychological thriller? These kinds of dichotomies are irrelevant. What matters, as McEwan says, is whether a novelist can hold us in a moral universe that has resonance.

Also in the interview McEwan refers to his liking for “narrative pace.” That’s a liking I wish were shared by more of our literary novelists.

 

The image of Ian McEwan above is reproduced courtesy of Thesupermat at Wikimedia Commons.