English By any other Name

The occasion was a rare joint appearance by Martin Amis,Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie,the literary equivalent of a concert by the Three Tenors—or perhaps a friendlier version of the Yalta conference,with three allies jostling to carve up whatever territory might still be controlled by big-dude British literary novelists of a certain age.

Since the 1970s,this triumvirate has been accused of “dominating and distorting British fiction”,Rushdie boasted. “But unfortunately,” he added,“since Martin and I have established our beachheads in New York—so look out,America! Ian has to look after England on his own.”

The event itself,which featured readings from the most recent novels by Amis and McEwan,each introduced by Rushdie,could not be less English,Amis hastened to add when he took the stage. In England,“if your favourite living writer,who also happened to be your long lost brother,was reading in the next house,it would never even occur to you to go and stick your head round the door”,said Amis. Americans,by contrast,“come and listen to things”.

Those things included wry and often unprintable reminiscences about London in the 1970s literary life and the trio’s late and still-lamented friend Christopher Hitchens.

“I feel there should almost be an empty chair here,” Rushdie said,before going on to recall Hitchens’s fondness for word-substitution games. One of the more family-friendly ones: substitute “hysterical sex” for “love” in famous titles,as in ‘Hysterical Sex in the Time of Cholera’.

But it was also a master class in the themes of the English novel,as recast by writers who have been branded “Ian Macabre” or,in Amis’s case,a master of “the new unpleasantness”.

Forget roses,teakettles and Mum,a word Amis pronounced with particular nasal acidity. Instead,his selection from Lionel Asbo: The State of England,published last year,featured exploding fake breasts,a dinner with 48 gin and tonics,and a baby called Toilet,which was probably not on the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s shortlist of names for their newborn son.

McEwan countered with a passage from Sweet Tooth,set in seemingly bucolic Sussex,that took in blasphemy,adultery,stalking,a violent psychiatric episode,and “mutant genitalia (female,of course)”.

The one-upmanship disguised as one-downmanship extended throughout the evening. Rushdie recalled Amis’s once saying that he was disappointed to have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Time’s Arrow,thus “spoiling a perfect record” of having never being nominated.

When Amis took the stage,he halted the applause with a firm “Stop,in the name of hysterical sex!” But he was perhaps bested by McEwan,who declared to his two friends,“Even though the Atlantic Ocean lies between us,the hysterical sex between us is undying.”

Sex was also on the audience’s mind,judging by the questions submitted,starting with a query to McEwan about a 2008 talk in which he recalled once propositioning a woman in the bluntest Anglo-Saxon language possible. “I never tried that again quite so directly,” McEwan said.

Another person asked about the legacy of Hitchens,who died of cancer in 2011. McEwan recalled helping Hitchens finish a 3,000-word essay about G K Chesterton,with facts and quotations pulled largely from memory.

The final question from the audience—is there anything in your books that you wish you could change?—carried special poignancy in being read aloud by Rushdie,given the trouble caused by Satanic Verses. But his two comrades took a pass on the chance for florid,and perhaps un-English,regrets.

Amis said he’d like another week with the complexities of the backward narrative of Time’s Arrow,but would leave “the mess of the first four novels” alone.

McEwan admitted he’d like to kill the commas in his first story collection,First Love,Last Rites. “I fell under Beckett’s spell,” he said. “I thought it was cunning to have commas and not full stops. But now it doesn’t look cunning at all.”