10 Questions for Ian McEwan

By Carolyn Sayre

Known for dark portrayals of humankind, the acclaimed British novelist takes on a sexually frustrated marriage in his newest work, On Chesil Beach. Ian McEwan will now take your questions

How do you select a topic for a novel?-- Edward Turner ST. CATHARINES, ONT.

My novels usually start in a very chaotic way. It never feels so clear as selecting a topic. I write my way into them. Though I am keen to make my new novel not anything like my last, so often I am in flight from the last thing I did.

You write about very dark subjects. Why is that?-- Mahtot Teka, ADDIS ABABA

Look at the front page of today's newspaper. We are a troubled lot, and literature is bound to reflect this. Any examination of the human state will take you into some dark places.

I find your more recent work superior to your earlier, perhaps edgier writing. Do you ever reread your writing from years ago and think you would have approached it differently? -- David Parr, PORTLAND, MAINE

I have dipped into it from time to time, and I don't feel any great urge to change anything. I agree that they were certainly darker, but I don't think they were less complex. I looked at The Innocent about six months ago, and I really enjoyed it.

On Chesil Beach had me sympathizing with Edward and Florence equally, but my wife sided with Florence. Did you want the reader to side with one or the other? -- Nathaniel Winn LITTLE ELM, TEXAS

Absolutely not. The narrative really tries to be compassionate toward them both and ascribe no blame to either.

How much research goes into creating a character like the neurosurgeon in Saturday? -- Jarret Bryan, BROOKLYN, N.Y.

That book required a fair bit of research. I met a neurosurgeon who took me under his wing for two years. Eventually I started attending operations and procedures with him. I was even once mistaken for a neurosurgeon during an operation.

The character in Saturday struggles with his feelings about the invasion of Iraq. How would it be different if you wrote it today, two years later? -- Dan Montgomery MCLEAN, VA.

I think [the protagonist] is bound to wish that it had never happened. The occupation has been a disaster from the very first day, and I speak as one who really wanted it once it had started--really wanted it to succeed. So I guess it would be a darker novel, because I don't see much virtue in staying or in running.

When you are writing a book, do you expect it to influence your readers in a certain way? -- Ju Huang, STAMFORD, CONN.

Readers are so different from one another. They are very hard to corral into one place with your writing. I think reading, much like writing, is a sort of journey. I let them take what they will.

How do you feel about your brief detainment by U.S. immigration officers a few years ago and the current immigration crisis? -- Salwa Geraisy, SAN DIEGO

My own thing [a 24-hour-plus detention] was a silly bureaucratic matter; I couldn't compare my case to [that of] migrants coming from the south. Society is more vibrant and creative if its citizens are culled from as many races as possible. But I think we must not tie ourselves down to accusing anyone who raises the matter of numbers as being a racist.

What's your take on there being fewer literary reviews in newspapers and magazines? -- Genevieve Powers, BROOKLINE, MASS.

The problem is really a small part of a larger one, which is the decline of newspapers. Publishers seem to be very keyed up to embrace the Internet, but I don't have much time for the kind of site where readers do all the reviewing. Reviewing takes expertise, wisdom and judgment. I am not much fond of the notion that anyone's view is as good as anyone else's.

You are described as a novelist who has a profound insight into the human condition. What is your prognosis? -- Ardoth Rutherford HUNTINGTON, W.VA.

[Laughs.] I guess the sum of all my novels would be the answer to that question. It is pretty hard to do the human condition in a couple of lines, but I think there is room for optimism.

To submit questions for upcoming 10 Q subjects, go to time.com/10questions

TIME's interview with the British novelist continues on Time.com. Read these extra questions with Ian McEwan.

I was reading a New York Times article that said no one has written a successful novel about 9/11. As a macabre writer, would you consider writing a novel based on the Bush administration and the war in Iraq? --David Shaka Barnwell, Kingston, Jamaica Well I guess Saturday touched on those things. I wouldn't rule it out that is all I can say. I mean it has changed so much of how we think about the world. It is bound to influence something I do in the future, but whether it would be specifically about the Bush Administration, I couldn't say.

On account of the disappearance of the little girl in Portugal, I have been thinking a lot about one of your books lately, [ITALIC {A Child in Time}]. Did you base the book on a real story or was it all just a creation of your very sensitive mind? --Ver[a {o}]nica Meersohn, Puerto Montt, Chile It was something I invented. Although stories like this are occasionally in the newspapers--so I must have read a couple of stories in newspapers about such things. It struck me as peculiarly painful and retched experience for a parent to go through, especially if it is not resolved quickly. One could say bleakly that with the tragedy of a death there is some chance of making some kind of adaptation, but with this the wound is always opened and I really feel for those parents.

The strength of your novels is, over and above the storylines, the psychological examination of the principal characters. But that is perhaps the most difficult aspect of a novel to transfer to film successfully. Was that something that you struggled with in any of the film or TV versions of your works and do you ever write your novels with screen adaptability in mind? --Dan Montgomery, McLean, Virginia No I never do. It doesn't really arise. I generally sat back and let other writers do the screenplays of my novels. The process is often long, repetitive and frustrating. I feel it would be the expense of novel writing for me. It is also a little dull for the novelist to turn his or her own work into screenplays. There is a lot of going back over the same thing and making it slightly worse or simplified. I did it once with John Schlesinger for The Innocent. It took up three years of my time and I could have written anther novel in that period, and the result wasn't all that good. So I decided that in the future I would remain slightly involved as an executive producer, which means I would at least be consulted on casting and the various drafts of the screenplays. And that has been the case with Atonement, that was the case with Enduring Love and that will be the case with Saturday. But all that said, finally it is the director's medium and the director will call the shots and make his own decisions and he will take your notes on board and thank you for them, but he is isn't obliged to follow them. It is a difficult process. There is always a problem that cinema has that it can't represent consciousness, the flow of thought or the interior quality of mind that the novel can do so well.

Can you describe the relationship between your reading and your writing? --What kinds of books do you read? --Eamon Murphy, New Haven, Conn. I real a lot of nonfiction. I have just been reading a book about Arab culture. Another book about a young man who got drawn into Islamist groups in his late teens. I am reading a book about the peculiarly English nature of evolutionary theory. I just read a long story by Edgar Allen Poe. A novel by a friend of mine called John Preston called, The Dig, which I think is very fine. I am fairly omnivorous I guess. Hmm... what is by the bedside? I am re-reading Christopher Hitchen's book on God, because I am going to be on stage talking to him about it. I have been reading some history too. I think all reading eventually it does have an effect, but not a direct effect on what I eventually do. Something I think I am reading haphazardly and then realize what I was doing was researching and sometimes the material does grow out of the reading or the reading is an expression of what is on my mind, but it is certainly not very programmatic.

What are the qualities that a good writer must have? --Ruma Ghosh, Muscat Staying power. Physical fitness. Patience. Luck. Fierce ambition. Self-criticism. Watchfulness. Humility.

Do you enjoy more dealing with your imaginary characters or dealing with people in reality? Do you ever feel imprisoned by your own imagination? --Ju Huang, Stamford, Conn. I prefer the real. The representation of characters in novel is but a thin a slice of what a real person is. It is a kind of trick with smoke and mirrors I can leave my imagination behind when I stand up from my desk.