Ian McEwan Interview: How We Read Each Other

We are all spies trying to read each others secrets. Meet the superb British writer Ian McEwan in this conversation about his novel Sweet Tooth (2012) -- a novel about literature as well as about a love affair between two very different people.
"The novel is a perfect engine for analyzing how we read each other, read situations, and take charge of the narrative." Begins McEwan, and explains how the CIA secretly funded lots of left wing art and culture, pondering what questions could be raised in this context. He also talks about power balances and how "all people are spies."
McEwan talks about his youth in the 1970s, and how his early ideas on writing are different to what he now thinks. All artists are standing on the shoulders of giants, he says, but adds jokingly that in his case he had giants standing on his shoulders, and it was blocking his view.
McEwan also comments on how work has vanished from novels, because novelists no longer have other jobs on the side. An author such as John le Carré wrote brilliantly about his time, about office life and the anxiety of the post war years.
About the two main characters of the book, McEwan explains that there are different kinds of knowing, and that people cannot help what they do or do not understand. Sweet Tooth is a novel which tries to unify the taste for a story, and the taste for literary tricks, he says. This happens through he meeting of these two very different people, and their love story.
Ian McEwan (b. 1948) is an award winning English novelist and screenwriter. McEwan has been nominated for the Man Booker prize six times to date, winning the prize for 'Amsterdam' in 1998. In 2001, he published 'Atonement', which was made into an Oscar-winning film. This was followed by 'Saturday' (2005), 'On Chesil Beach' (2007), 'Solar' (2010), and 'Sweet Tooth' (2012). He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 2011.
Ian McEwan was interviewed by Synne Rifbjerg at Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2013
Filmed by Klaus Elmer & Mathias Nyholm
Editing by Kamilla Bruus
Produced by Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014.
Meet more artists at www.channel.louisiana.dk
Louisiana Channel is a non-profit video channel for the Internet launched by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in November 2012. Each week Louisiana Channel will publish videos about and with artists in visual art, literature, architcture, design etc.
Read more:
channel.louisiana.dk/about
Supported by Nordea-fonden.

I totally enjoyed this conversation with Ian and Synne. Thanks for sharing it here for all to view.

[@eashton42]

Absolutely delightful interview; thanks so much for uploading. Ian is insightful and funny as usual, and Synne is a great interviewer and seemingly a very pleasant person too. I had never heard of the Louisiana Festival until I saw this, but don't worry, I won't tell a soul. :-)

[@kamalpreetsingh1686]

Nic conversation....
.........this woman seems very happy person.......

[@SpelingBeeChampion]

Wanting to have fun with a genre was an interesting reason I wouldn't have expected from him.

[@frankstein9982]

The Edward Thomas poem is four quatrains, not three, featuring the word 'cloudlet', meaning smallish cloud. I love Sweet Tooth.

[@poetryinus1110]

This is great ! :)

[@ivanadzidic4012]

endlessly fascinating interview! I really enjoyed his claim that us (humans) are constantly reading one another (reading body language etc) and not only that but reading other people's reading of ourselves. While that is certainly true, I think that these everyday 'readings' can't be fully compared with reading of a novel. I feel like reading a novel (literature) is more personal, more like 'reading' that goes on in a relationship, in a closer communication between two people who either know each other well or have the great desire to get to know one another.

[@SelfReflective]

Ivana, što si pročitala od njega? Ja sam završio Atonement prije par dana, prije toga Enduring Love, kao i First Love, Last Rites...Atonement je kao bogata trpeza, sedefast i gotovo egzotičan, Enduring love više precizno izveden i lijep u svojoj jednostavnosti. Izvrstan pisaca, i čitati ga na engleskom je privilegija.

[@ivanadzidic4012]

nisam još ništa pročitala, naletjela sam na ovaj intervju kada sam gledala neke s drugim piscima....odmah me oduševio i već po njegovom izražavanju mogu vidjeti da se radi o nekome tko bi mogao biti sjajan pisac. Hvala na preporukama, jedva ga čekam početi čitati. Atonement sam gledala film, baš bi rado i knjigu pročitala.

[@roniquebreauxjordan1302]

Listening

[@lyes-ot6it]

Waw where can i find a woman like that one, smart and beautiful, funny and kind, ironical and classy...life can be better than novels.

[@lyes-ot6it]

The interviewer is danish? i Find that she has a very french accent,, and my God why so serious writers quote Le Carré as a great novelist

[@lyes-ot6it]

@@saguaroflowers for sur she is not anglosaxon, perhaps a bit german, so tell me what she is if you are so clever

[@2msvalkyrie529]

More puzzling why so many on here consider McEwen a great novelist and deep thinker ? ! ?
Seems like the archetypal middle class navel gazer riddled by White
Guilt - so adopts liberal left posture to alleviate his guilty conscience .? Classic case . Also
, though not his fault , completely unattractive physically . No doubt his superior intellect compensates
. Or so he imagines ?

[@2msvalkyrie529]

@lyes0516
Yes . I doubt whether she is Anglo Saxon . Unless she was born in the 9 th century. ?

[@lyes-ot6it]

@@2msvalkyrie529 Lol, that's funny

[@laurenzsia]

Weird people of the cultural elite.

[@johnjosmith42]

As opposed to you, the merely weird :)