The grotesque in contemporary British fiction by Robert Duggan

The grotesque in contemporary British fiction by Robert Duggan

Author:Robert Duggan [Duggan, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, British, Theory
ISBN: 9781526112040
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2016-05-16T04:00:00+00:00


The author in time: early versus late McEwan

Composer Clive Linley’s decision in Amsterdam (McEwan, 1998b) not to help the woman he suspects may be in danger is a strong attack on the artist who removes himself from social responsibility, and whose behaviour is entirely conditioned by his own artistic or vocational needs and not anyone else’s. This questioning of the artist’s role brings us back to Ryan’s comments regarding a distinction between an ‘early’ and a ‘late’ McEwan quoted at the beginning of this chapter. As I have sought to demonstrate through an examination of the grotesque and issues related to it, McEwan’s work exhibits elements that span his entire oeuvre, such as evolution and obsession. However, McEwan’s treatment of time and development in his fiction, particularly in The Child in Time, suggests self-conscious reflection on his own development as a writer. In the novel Stephen asks himself, ‘Wasn’t that Nietzsche’s idea of true maturity, to attain the seriousness of a child at play?’ (1988, 105–6) and later on, while helping his daughter build a sandcastle, he reflects that ‘if he could do everything with the intensity and abandonment with which he had once helped Kate build her castle, he would be a happy man of extraordinary powers’ (106–7).

While the seriousness of a child at play may have been Nietzsche’s definition of maturity, it also fits exactly Freud’s outline of the artist’s work in his essay ‘Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming’ (1985, first published in German 1908). Freud claims that: ‘The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously – that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion – while separating it sharply from reality’ (132). Freud’s essay also provides a background to Stephen’s reflections on his daughter’s sandcastle building:

As an adult he can look back on the intense seriousness with which he once carried on his games in childhood; and, by equating his ostensibly serious occupations of today with his childhood games, he can throw off the burden imposed on him by life and win the high yield of pleasure afforded by humour. (Freud, 1985, 3)

The Child in Time, through the character of Stephen, depicts an attempt to close the gap between the intense seriousness of childhood and the adult’s burdens. Charles Darke, in his infantile condition and in his role as MP, has split these selves apart. Stephen’s book Lemonade is for Charles his own adult self addressing his childhood self (McEwan, 1988, 201), and he sees the book’s genesis in the same terms, as he tells Stephen:

This book is not for children, it’s for a child, and that child is you. Lemonade is a message from you to a previous self which will never cease to exist. And the message is bitter… You’ve spoken directly to children. Whether you wanted to or not, you’ve communicated with them across the abyss that separates the child from the adult and you’ve given them a first, ghostly intimation of their mortality.



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