Comments on: Worth A Read – Ian McEwan’s “Solar”

By: Video: Ian McEwan talks about Solar « The Third Ray

Video: Ian McEwan talks about Solar « The Third Ray — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 11:41:16 +0000

[...] previous posts I have reviewed Ian McEwan’s newest book [...]

By: Joe Zammit-Lucia

Joe Zammit-Lucia — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:46:53 +0000

Ransom, thank you for this comment. I agree that Stephen Hawking’s and others’ books have tremendous popularity – and that’s what I buy when I want to learn some physics in an accessible way. I would not buy a McEwan novel. To my mind, the inclusion of technical information of this sort in a novel reaches a point beyond which it ceases to add to the flow and starts to come across as the author earnestly showing us that he’s done his homework. Both in “Solar” and in “Saturday” McEwan, in my opinion, goes well beyond this point. To me, McEwan’s skills come across best in his simple but striking novels such as “On Chesil Beach”, “In The Company of Strangers”, “Atonement” and others. His ability to get to the heart of human motivation in these works is truly remarkable. This is a much rarer talent and, to me, a more valuable part of his writing than him learning and then regurgitating a bunch of scientific technicalities.

By: Ransom Stephens

Ransom Stephens — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:35:40 +0000

It should comfort you then, that he, or the publisher, bungled the Dirac Equation on Page 42. A more pertinent comment on your review, though: if people don’t like the intricacies of particle physics, then why do Steven Hawking and Brian Greene do so well? And isn’t it a value-add when you actually learn something from a novel? (to be sure, throwing out jargon like the sentence you quote isn’t going to teach anyone anything – no value there, but what would you say if he had provided some level of instruction?)
A related point is that lit-fiction books like Solar assume a reasonably well educated readership. (He used the word “repointed” on page one. I truly thought it was a typo. After looking it up in the OED… I think it was typo, albeit a fortunate one.) Anyway, the point is that a well educated readership clearly assumes a freshmen level comfort with history, philosophy, etc so shouldn’t it also assume a hand waving knowledge of freshman-level mathematics and science?