I finished the Arkham story this evening – six hours of work today, intense but intensely rewarding. And this one actually comes close to fitting the brief.
Rereading some of early Ian McEwan. The story ‘In Between the Sheets’ from the book of the same title is harsh and haunting and in The Innocent I was struck by a description early on of two men pitching ball, a strange, almost numinous moment:
After fifteen minutes one of them looked at his watch. They strolled back to the side door, unlocked it and stepped inside. For a minute or so after they had gone their absence dominated the strip of last year’s weeds between the fence and the low building. Then that faded.
It’s upsetting to read this, precisely because it is so good. Everything McEwan has written from Atonement onwards is lacking in anything save the sense of its own importance.
When a writer loses his courage it’s a cause for sorrow, especially when the quality of his work at the sentence level remains as strong as ever.
More about all this when I am less tired.
Listening to Patricia Barber’s sublime Mythologies, and hoping her next album will contain some more of this very fine lyric writing.