Ian McEwan on Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose interviewed Ian McEwan recently. Listening to McEwan speak is such a civilized pleasure.
“Humor is such a delicate and changing thing,” McEwan said, in the flow of conversation — a brilliant throwaway — saying why he did not like comic novels. Comic novels try too hard.
McEwan expressed his admiration for the moving ending of Joyce’s “The Dead.”
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Awesome, the way the rhythms and resonant depth of the paragraph and story resolve, in the last line, and then spreads out, into more than itself: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
