Word: mcewan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...runs the opening quotation of Ian McEwan's new book, Black Dogs, and so, in turn, the book affects the reader. It challenges our beliefs and evokes a longing for an unfathomable, mystic philosophy. McEwan describes a man trying to overcome spiritual confusion by writing a psychological portrait of his parents-in-law. Yet there is no trite summary, no kernel of meaning to be extracted, because the book poses questions, rather than answering them...
...spite to which the world often descends. On a personal scale, the narrator himself is both protected by a benign intuition, which saves him from a scorpion's bite, and seized by loathing so intense that he quietly breaks a stranger's nose. In just such an unassuming manner, McEwan questions the forces that govern our lives. Can we really explain the twisted landscape of human history with the neat, scientific principles we have devised? Dare we do otherwise...
...calls to mind works like Martin Amis' Time's Arrow, which is written backwards. The form of the novel clearly betrays the influence of Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot, in which a literary scholar hides from the failure of his marriage in his obsession with Flaubert. Amis, Barnes and McEwan are close friends. The three friends inspire and rival one another. The form of Black Dogs echoes the smart, complex, but often self-conscious tone of McEwan's literary circle...
...Although McEwan has drawn on his peers for the structure of Black Dogs, he owes much to Conrad in tone. Black Dogs conjures forth the same malign essence as Heart of Darkness. The two novels generate the same suspense, as the readers churn through the pages to reveal the secret of the one incisive encounter. The black dogs of the title fulfill the function of Kurtz, revealing for an instant the black heart of mankind, the seed of savagery we all contain. Most of all, McEwan's work reflects the powerful, emotive, and yet strangely rambling, subdued prose of Heart...
...McEwan does not let the cerebral construction of the book dominate the intuitive emotional content. The dilemma of the characters infects the style of writing: Black Dogs wavers between Bernard's meticulous, scientific analysis and June's visceral, ethereal visions, between McEwan's contemporary influences and overtones of Conrad...