He’s not heavy, he’s McEwan’s brother
In a very strange column today in The Telegraph, A.N. Wilson gives his own take on the recently reported story of Dave Sharp, Ian McEwan’s long-lost brother (previously noted here), and ends up going off on some odd tangents on the subjects of both McEwan and writer-brothers in general.
I could not feel that David had been missing much by failing to catch up on his bro’s literary endeavours, though he tells us that he has “read all his books now.” More than I’ve done. I am prepared to believe that I am blinded by envy.
McEwan is a set text for A-level students who have never read Milton, Chaucer, Dickens, or P. G. Wodehouse. He seems to be one of those figures, such as Seamus Heaney, whose greatness is taken for granted by certain metropolitan pundits, but who has never actually written anything to justify the reputation. But I admit, I am envious. It was a sad day at the Evening Standard, where I then worked, when our beautiful Arts editor went off and married him; she could have done so much better for herself.
Um, OK. But it gets stranger:
If forced to ring up the Salvation Army and find you were related to a famous writer, which one would you choose? Not all writers are pleasant. Many would have echoed A.L. Rowse, who was rightly beaten for shouting, aged five, “You’re all fools, and I’m not” to his working-class brothers.
And many writers are such egomaniacs that they write as if [they were] only children. You would never guess from the solitary fantasy-childhood depicted for himself in David Copperfield and Great Expectations that Dickens grew up in a family of eight.
And so, on the basis of these tenuous literary precedents, as well as the evidence of McEwan’s own books – of which he admits to not having finished a single one – Wilson concludes that he would “rather have a drink with Dave Sharp than attend a Booker dinner with Ian McEwan.”
Something tells me that Wilson is not going to have to make that choice anytime soon.
