On a Darkling Planet: Ian McEwan's "Saturday" and the Condition of England Author(s): Michael L.

Ross Source: Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 75-96 Published by: Hofstra University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479838 . Accessed: 27/08/2013 01:35
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On aDarkling Planet: McEwan's Saturday Ian and theCondition of England

MichaelL. Ross

,A thoughIan maintainsthrough Saturday best seller McEwan's recent Al thatimpres internationalism, out a conspicuousairof up-to-the-minute misleading.In fact,in itsbroad outlines out to be somewhat sion turns insular paradigm:theCondition of thebook adheres to a long-familiar thissubgenre novel genre itself, England novel.Like the encompassing like exemplars, strict However, thepreeminentVictorian definition. resists Hard and Dickens's North and (1855), South Gaskell's Disraeli'sSybil(1845), on landmark focus features: they Times(1854),share certain distinguishing industrialization such as rampant of theirtime, movements in thesociety weightypublic events. action often involves and their and urbanization, of friction strikes or other types thesehinge on classconflicts: Typically, po theauthors'explicit workforce.Whatever betweenownersand their vision, project a liberal novels,broadlyspeaking, liticalallegiances,their most not onlyof the concern with the lives a compassionate manifesting members of British society. privilegedbut also of themost oppressed itself may now seemdated,the template exemplars While suchVictorian bywritersof theensuingcentury hasbeen repeatedly pressedintoservice Martin Edwardians likeE. M. Forstertomoderns like and a half,from McEwan. Ian Amis,WilliamBoyd, Zadie Smith,and,not least, as a McEwan tohavebeen identified isnot thefirst work by Saturday fits most strikingly Condition ofEngland novel,1thoughit is theone that coincided inhis imaginative that gestalt thecategory. Concerning theshift McEwan has said: Time (1987), with the writingof The Child in

Literature 54.1 Twentieth-Century

2008 Spring

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Michael L.Ross in anything been interested other From thenon, I've never really thantrying to findconnectionsbetween thepublic and thepri how theysome how the two are in conflict, vate,and exploring how thepolitical invadestheprivate timesreflect each other, world. (qtd. inLouvel 10) where theprotagonist Such an explorationemergesvividlyin Saturday, tested Henry Perowne's customary privatecomposure is repeatedly by tremors fromthepublic realm. While thebook's action unfolds in an Revolution, it displaysa England thathas long outlived the Industrial with itsVictorian numberof elementslinkingit forebears. It focuses on an urban settingepitomizingcontemporary and it refers English life, to a public eventof signalimportance-themassive rally op repeatedly not a captainof industry, isan emi posingwar in Iraq.Perowne,though nentneurosurgeon who heads a firm ofmedical associates. And as in its Victorian counterparts, thepivotalconflictin thenovel pits members of of the Baxter. theelite againsta representative marginalized,thederelict is not the McEwan's of Dickens England Obviously,however, England orGaskell; the intervening thenation's yearshave drastically reconfigured socioeconomicmap.My aims inwhat followsare to provide a perspec McEwan's Condition ofEnglandmode has become in tiveon what the what remains of the liberal vision that once masterly hands and to assess illustrious inspired Saturday's predecessors. whose earlier work has sometimesinvolved French, Ger As awriter Ian McEwan an has to honest claim the label man, and Italiansettings, more confined, too displays cosmopolitan. Saturday Althoughgeographically drawn a global reach. This is intimated earlyon by thebook's epigraph, from awell-known text by anAmericanwriter:Saul Bellow's Herzog. It runs,inpart:
Well, for instance, what itmeans to be a man. In a city. In a

In transition. In amass.Transformed century. by science. Under In a condition controls. organizedpower.Subject to tremendous caused bymechanization. After the late failure of radicalhopes. The reader infersthat McEwan's narrative will respond to the global sweepof Bellow's survey; though itsvenuewill be London ratherthan notHerzog's twentieth but thedawn Herzog'sNewYork, and its century it toopromisesto dealwith universal above all questions, ing twenty-first,
"what itmeans to be a man."

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On

a Darkling Planet: IanMcEwan's

Saturdayand theCondition of England

lives in central Henry Perowne, the keywitness for that inquiry, London with hiswife Rosalind, a legalexpertattachedto a newspaper, blues guitarist. His and his teenage sonTheo, an aspiringand talented thevenerable poet; his father-in-law, Daisy is a prize-winning daughter hashimself had a longand distinguished John Grammaticus, but splenetic panoplyof professional comically formidable In their almost poetic career. the Perowne entourage and affluence, and artistic distinction, literary skill, American reviews most prominent family, yet the hardlyseemsa typical Accord even normative. mode of lifeas exemplary, have extolled their "Mr. McEwan has not Times, Michiko Kakutani in theNew York ing to yet most powerful pieces of post-9/11 fiction onlyproduced one of the missionof thenovel: to show that veryprimal but also fulfilled published, Kakutani'sdashes how we-a privilegedfewof us, anyway-live today." "we" actuallyde what her all-inclusive contradiction: bracketa telltale and audience for "superior"fiction filtered transatlantic notes is thefinely Post, thePerownesare ForMichael Dirda, in the Washington journalism. overdetermined fashion: "Clearly, normativein an evenmore culturally thevery flower ofWesterncivilization-decent, thePerownes represent good."And Zoe fundamentally cultivated, deeply, thoughtful, productive, seesHenry Perowne in similarterms as Heller, in anotherTimesreview, thecore valuesof "our" civilization: preserving sanc from one privileged, embattled His day is spentshuttling here in tuaryto another.... ButMcEwan isnot interested socialcohe satirizing yuppie solipsism.... In lieuof any larger suchprivatejoys,carvedout fromthe McEwan suggests, sion, what most sustain us.They areour fleeting clamorous world, are of caritas and community of utopia; theancient ideals glimpses livedinmicrocosm. screened out tobe a fastidiously "us" turns Once again,theuniversalized not itsrank, of civilization, theflowers festering weeds,whose sampling: social cohesion." Boycotting the"clam defeats "any larger proliferation orousworld,"we findour collective salvationby takingrefugein the hermetic Elysiumof thecultured. with thePe American literati might so readilyidentify Why such has much to do British echt McEwan's clan, haut-bourgeois, rownes, ispoised ("In with thehistoricaltimeand locale inwhich thenarrative In a city"). Kakutani'splacementof thebook in thecategory a century.

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Michael L.Ross of post-9/11 fictionrings true;the ambit here is nothing ifnot topi to be Henry Perowne's cal.The Saturdayin question, indeed,threatens personal9/11, bringing with it a convulsivedisruption of his domestic space.Such a development has precedentsin McEwan's earlierfiction; as themesis the Nick Rennison haswritten, "One ofMcEwan's persistent intocomfortable intrusion of brutal,inescapable reality lives"(110).Here, however,the intrusion patentlyechoes thebrutality of still-smoldering on NewYork andWashington terrorist are public catastrophe.The attacks earlyinSaturday by theflaming airplane Perowne sights upon his recalled premature awakening; of an imminent strike andwhile Perowne's fears London prove groundless, betoken thecontemporary drift against they an undertowthatisglobal in itsrepercussions.The toward paranoia, initial crew are penetration ofEnglish airspaceby putative hostiles(theaircraft's mysteriousforeigners) is prolepticof the later, deadly seriouspenetra tionof Perowne'sprivatespace by a home-grownhostile,an event that of Perowne'sdaughter theviolent sexualpenetration threatens Daisy.2 itsrelevance If thenarrative unfolds within English confines, persis what Benedict Anderson has tently overflowsthose limits, confirming called"nationalism's undivorcible marriage to internationalism" (207).The In this between nation and globe permeatesSaturday. discursivetension awork of nonfiction respectthenovel strongly recalls published theyear Free before, World, by theEnglish political analyst TimothyGartonAsh. (The twoauthorsenjoy a bond ofmutualmentorship;there aregracious of thehelp of "Tim GartonAsh" appended to several acknowledgments andGartonAsh forhis part lists ofMcEwan's novels,Saturday included, McEwan among the"potentarray of criticalintelligences" who readFree Worldindraft[272].)GartonAsh qualifiesas a premierexponentof early an ethos (as the title liberalism, of hisbook suggests) twenty-first-century benton looking national boundaries. Like the Roman beyondentrenched he argues, Britainhasmore than one face-four god Janus, contemporary in fact, as opposed to thegod'smere two:"The back and front faces faces, can be labeled Islandand says Europe and that World; thefaceon the left on the right America" (15). In formulating a wise courseof action fora GartonAsh isprincipally postimperial Britain, concerned with the left and rightfaces.What he advocates is a nuanced double regard, gazing at once across theChannel towardcontinental At Europe and across the lantictowardthe United States, without accordingprimacyto eithertie. of PrimeMinisterTony Blair,3 Garton LikeMcEwan a guardedadmirer

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On

a Darkling Planet: IanMcEwan's

Saturdayand theCondition of England

sucha charting what he callsthe"Blairbridgeproject"for Ash commends on theverynature "instinctively, but also rationally, itself course,founding "tryingto pullAmerica and Britain" (44) and thuscontinually of Janus undertakes a compa Saturday sphere, (45). In itsfictive Europe together" linking thePerownes multiple filaments establishing rable bridgeproject, On the daywhen Perowne plays squash and later to both continents. theanesthesi with his American colleague and friend, surgery performs Grammaticus and his father-in-law his daughter Daisy Jay Strauss, ologist trajectories of And thefuture where both arebased. arrivefrom France, while maintain theJanusequilibrium: neatly the twoPerowne children as amusician, United States to showcasehis gifts Tobywill go offto the with her Italianboyfriend Giulio,whose child (a Daisy will be reunited avatar of the European Community) she iscarrying. prospective But while his familycould be called globalized,Perowne solidly enisledsociety. The book may raisethe with hisnative, himself identifies means tobe aman,"but that questionstillis formulated question"what it mean, at thedawnof the what does it in familiar nationalterms: implicitly An illuminating for correlative tobe anEnglishman? century, twenty-first Condition ofEngland novelwritten thatinquiryisprovidedby another E. M. Forster's Howards End (1910).4Like just under a centuryearlier, on a smallcircleof characters, generating Forster'stextfocuses Saturday, The pair of English society. into thecurrentformand pressure insights of asmatching de siecle Condition narratives of de'but might be thought Each pro century. English twentieth bookends bracketingthe eventful of English civilizationin a time poses as a centralconcern the survival End) or civilizationiseithershadowed (as inHowards when that of crisis, to it. on in Both focus by forcesinimical direly perturbed (as Saturday) theSchlegel of thatcivilization: the flower a family group representing brother End; the Toby inHowards sisters, Margaret andHelen, and their In bothworks thepresiding by group ischallenged Perownes in Saturday. social stratum: other froma subaltern with a trespassing sudden contact clerkLeonard Bast in Forster,themarauding hooligan the struggling a house as a key thematiclocus: McEwan. And both feature Baxter in comes to servetheSchlegelsas a thebucolic sitethat HowardsEnd itself, and theFitzroviaresidence and affection, of cultured sanctum enjoyment that playsan equivalentroleforthePerownes. a companion piece for Worldconstitutes Justas Garton Ash's Free work of social so too thereis an influential, contemporaneous Saturday,

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Michael L. Ross analysisthatbears an intimate relationto Forster's novel: a 1909 book The Condition called,aptly, ofEngland,by theLiberal politicianC. F G. to a 1960 reprint of that Masterman. In his introduction volume,James Arnold" (xiv),and Boulton speaksofMasterman's "debt to [Matthew] ofMasterman's indeed anArnoldian logic informs both the argument which by and largefollowsthe tripartite book and itsstructure, analysis and "populace") that based on social class ("barbarians," "philistines," Masterman invokes Arnold deploys in Cultureand Anarchy. Repeatedly, one concerningthe points made byArnold, includingthe fundamental observ dissonance betweenprivate opulence and publicpenury painfully Masterman and Forsteris between able inLondon (23).Here theaffinity visiondramatically since theliberal enacted inHowards unmistakable, End In TwoCheers has equally firm Arnoldian underpinnings. forDemocracy most tomy taste: a he "is of all the Forstersays ofArnold that Victorians who hasmanaged toproject greatpoet, a civilizedcitizen, and a prophet when we read him now he himselfinto our present troubles, so that seems tobe in theroom" (197). InHowards EndArnold isveryvisiblyin theroom.The Arnoldian aspiration "to see lifesteadily and see it whole," in itsfull what 'Culture', which accordingtoPeterWiddowson"expresses forthe Arnoldian sense, means for [Forster]" (66), acts as an imperative
novel's paramount consciousness, Margaret Schlegel. "It is impossible," the

and see it narrator cautions, "to seemodern lifesteadily whole," but he adds that whole" (165).Her comprehen Margaret "had chosen to see it as "a continualand sincereresponseto siveness of visionmanifestsitself all thatshe encounteredinher path through life"(25). Matthew has alsomanaged toproj Arnold Somewhatunexpectedly, ect himselfinto the troubles ofMcEwan's twenty-first century London. But seeing life whole, letalone steadily, becomes awell-nigh insuperable taskfor his responsiveness to life McEwan's latter-day protagonist, though recalls Margaret's. The narrative on Perowne's dwells fondlythroughout individual angleof vision-indeed, literal keennessof sightis a sine qua non for his professional success-yet his vision,forall itsimpressive am fallsshortof the Arnoldian gold standard. (Defective plitude,inevitably vision entersas amotif in theopeningpagesof thenovel, where Perowne as a meteor, then aircraft first misdiagnoses the distressed ludicrously as a comet.) For all that, the ideal itself stillexertsan insistent pressure. too is engaged in a daily quest foranArnoldian McEwan's protagonist McEwan as inForsterthat and in "sweetness and light"; quest isdefined

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On

a Darkling Planet: IanMcEwan's

Saturdayand theCondition of England

to achievebalance and clarityin private life.It is a revered by an effort values thecentral crystallizes Arnold's"DoverBeach," that Victorian text, Edwardiannovel andMcEwan's post-9/11 one,where both of Forster's The poem appeals fora it is quoted in fullat the crux of the action.5 modern scene. massified strife-ridden, withdrawal from the deceptive, As a refugefromthe collectiveangst,it advancescherishedhumanistic what between individuallovers, fidelity domestic intimacy, alternatives: of private life" small print "the has called McEwan himselfin interviews of Howards End, "thatholds "It isprivatelife," saysthenarrator (Miller). and thatalone, thatever mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, out the beyond our dailyvision" (91).The conclusionof hintsat a personality group clustered Schlegelfarnily an extended Howards End,which presents of personalbonds as a redoubt thesanctity establishes at itsruralretreat, of public forceslooming,likeLondon, in thenear againsttheonslaught McEwan's more Edwardian rhetoricis a farcry from Forster's distance. a affirms but theconclusionof Saturday idiom, measured,contemporary privaterealm vindicatingtheembattled homologous setof preferences, of public turmoil. againstthe importunities theoverallimpressions Arnoldianheritage, common despitetheir Still, different. During thenear-century the two books leave are profoundly and altered, themtheconditionofEngland hasbeen radically separating At theend of Saturday has the Condition ofEnglandnovel. so,inescapably, more securetimes that has,since the Perownemuses on thevulnerability which he and his theplightin in which Forster wrote,come to aggravate fellowtownspeoplefindthemselves: to defend, wide open, impossible partof it,lies London, his small bomb, likea hundredothercities.... A hundred waiting forits at this window in his yearsago, amiddle-aged doctor standing silkdressing gown, less thantwohoursbeforeawinter'sdawn, future. February1903. might havepondered thenew century's Edwardiangent all he didn'tyetknow. You might envy this (276) wide open might in lessominous timesdenote a relaxed, While lying that could counter insularity, opennesshere has even eroticreceptiveness Perowne the senseof be like urbanites more sinister overtones, giving The note of global trepidation is,in a different at risk.6 ing sickeningly World. Globalization,according also sounded inGartonAsh's Free register,

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Michael L.Ross toGartonAsh, isnot only "a hard economic and technical process"but also "what thepoet W H. Auden called a 'mind-event."' (132), so that can infringe on Londoners' complacentsenseof developments anywhere "A in can Kashmir hitPutney, their world: shotfired the Ahmadi through main Road. Global warming affects communityinGressenhall Putney's streettoo:when did that Victorian pubYe Olde SpottedHorse lastsee has awhite Christmas?"(170). Such an epochalmind eventnecessarily As mental constructs like works of fiction. consequences for far-reaching iftaking itscue from GartonAsh, Saturday reflects thesusceptibility of the nation to assaults forcessitedbothwithin and farremoved by predatory The novel becomes, so to speak,a fromits increasingly porous borders. studyinhomeland insecurity. awarenesson McEwan's narrative are The effects of thistroubling on one level, thenovel'sgeopoliticalreach is, oddly contradictory.Where more ambitious than thatof HowardsEnd, on other levels itspurview Most obviously, narrative has contracted. has been Saturday's chronology intoan exiguous24 hours,as opposed toHowards End'smore compressed thevariety of locale inHowards leisurely spanof several years.7 Similarly, not only the Dorset coast, the End, embracing metropolisbut Shropshire, inSaturday issacrificed in the interest andHowards End itself, of unityof place:most of theactionoccurs inor not farfromthePerownedomicile. Instead of theroving omniscience of Forster's narrator, granting privileged of interior access to a gallery worlds-Margaret Schlegel'sof course, but also thoseof thebusiness magnateHenry Wilcox, theplebeianLeonard Bast, and others-Saturday is limitedto the consciousness of Perowne, a the London channeling multifariousness of through penetrating but of the monoptic gaze.Where theoverallimpression English scenecreated a panorama,thatleft is more like End resembles byHowards by Saturday a rapid flurry of snapshots. The manifold senseof compressionimbues McEwan's scenario curtailing with a hecticurgencyevenwhile severely itsscope. These formal differences coincide with a crucialshift of socialvision, a shift reflected between Masterman'swork andGarton by thecontrast As a convenient one could call Ash's. shorthand forthis contrast, Master At thedate of The man's book preimperial andGartonAsh's postimperial. near itsglobal Condition ofEngland,1909,British rulewas of course still ButMasterman, ofwhichMastermanwas only too cognizant. apex,a fact a confirmedimpero-skeptic, looksbackwith nostalgia to a timebefore

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On

a Darkling Planet: IanMcEwan's

Saturdayand theCondition of England

catalogues Britainwas trammeled by such involvements. He trenchantly the moral liabilities entailedby colonialism: much power of introspection, No Conquering Race can possess No Conquering Race can possess irony: of self-examination.... will uncomfortably suspectthatitsconqueredpeoples are else it at it, and thissuspicion will excite it to resent secretly laughing No Conquering Race can possesshumour: ment and reprisal. will finditself at itself; and that day forthenone day it laughing its (50) power of conquest isgone. ofBritain as an imperial ofGartonAsh's Free World,the issue By the time metropole has been compelled, power has long sincebecomemoot; the Global preeminencehas passed to even if morosely,to laugh at itself. "the uniqueresponsibil the United States,towhich GartonAsh assigns in for ity"(163, emphasis original) assumingleadershipin thecommon and climatechange.For him, environmental struggle against degradation for itspotential Britain isunique principally mediating role"inside the not because of anyen of the West" (166),and certainly extendedfamily within thatclan. as paterfamilias duringclaim to status This contrastconditions the two commentators' attitudestoward monster clot of human London itself. ForMasterman,London is"this where squalor, hurryare ity"(79), the locus wealth,power,and frenetic It is"a metropolisand capitalof theEmpire grotesquely conglomerated. existenceon tribute leviedupon theboundariesof the livinga parasitic effect of city life-"the world" (80). Masterman deplores thestultifying much in thespirit bustleand violence of itall" (102)-on thepopulace, which lamentsthe "sick hurry"and ofArnold's "The Scholar-Gipsy'" veinofLiberalurbano "dividedaims"ofmodern society(213).A similar End. "I hate this continualflux ofLondon," Howards phobia runsthrough years Margaret Schlegel sighs(184).The Schlegelshave livedequably for in their leased London quarters,Wickham being obliged Place, and resent scheme tomove out; but thenovel leavesno doubt by a redeveloper's down and buildingup, is with itsrelentless thatthe modern city, tearing milieu for thecultivatedlifetowhich theyare becoming a prohibitive pledged,embodyingforces grimlyhostile tomoral balance andworth while personal relations. mul London epitomizes thevibrant For GartonAsh, by contrast, thatcharacterizestwenty-first-century ticulturalism England, despite

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Michael L. Ross thenew vulnerabilities attendant upon that development. He notes that asEmpire folded into that "In thesecond halfof the twentieth century, ever vaguerCommonwealth, thepeoples of the former Empire came, on He ingrowingnumbers,to live the island"(17). makes theclaim for London that "OnlyNewYork can seriously compete forthe title ofmost world"8 (18); andwhile he registers the con cosmopolitancity in the on the social fabric, his tone is by and largecelebratory. sequent strains Masterman's reiterated lamentsforthe fading of theonce populous and vitalizedby a thriving are absent robust yeomanry, English countryside, GartonAsh's survey and from McEwan's kindred novel.Shortly both from Perowneenjoysa quasi-epiphanic moment of admiration after awakening, forhis city: gaz Standinghere,as immuneto thecold as amarble statue, a foreshortened ing towards CharlotteStreet,towards jumble of and pitched roofs, thecity is a Henry thinks facades, scaffolding a brilliantinvention, a biological success, masterpiece-millions of around theaccumulatedand layered achievements teeming as thougharound a coral reef, thecenturies, sleeping, working, most part, harmoniousforthe entertaining nearly themselves, everyone wanting it towork. (5) It is a visionof urban space remotefrom Masterman's and Forster's, one McEwan himself that be temptedto entertain. may at least provisionally But Perowne,a "habitualobserverof his own moods," immediately "wondersabout thissustained, distorting euphoria" (5), and theensuing narrative provides ample cause to interrogate such a utopianview ofLon don.The latter-day, postimperial metropole,unlike Masterman's, seems One such irony and irony. introspection abundantly capableof stimulating with Baxter'scar, an accidentthat causesonly pertainstoPerowne'sscrape trivial a terrifying immediate eventual damagebut precipitates showdown. Cars, in Forsteras in Masterman, embodywhat Bellow was to call "a condition caused bymechanization,"one that militatesagainst personal Late inHowards fulfillment. End thecarused in thescheme to entrapthe Helen Schlegelbecomes thevery incarnation deranged of the supposedly predatory: "The car ran silently like a beastof prey" (282).The narrator Timedrylyremarks were our citizens of McEwan's The Child in that "cars now" (44),but on the whole McEwan refrains from handwringing over thenegativerepercussions ofmechanization. Mercedes Henry Perowne's

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On

a Darkling Planet: IanMcEwan's

Saturdayand theCondition of England

ispresentedas atworst an allowable indulgence, a benign piece of high technologythatenableshim to execute a long listof errandsover the weekend.The yearningfor thepreindustrial past thatcolored Forster's has no place onMcEwan's agenda andMasterman's brandof liberalism of his scientifically The life or on that ofDarwin sent aufaitprotagonist. "At times...made him comfortably toPerowneby hisdaughter nostalgic affectionate fora verdant, England" (6),but suchnostalgia horse-drawn, brisk momentum or prompt him to does not impedehisown customary, searchfora Howards End to serveas a bucolic refuge. Mercedes and What thegrazingcollisionbetween Perowne's sleek insteadis an anti-idyllic disso the loucheBaxter'sagingBMW suggests in thefabric of contemporary London life.Thestranger's nance ingrained icon of "continental"luxuryand German car-a tarnished bedraggled its to theelevatedstatus owner'sfutile that efficiency betraying aspiration The minor Perowne takesforgranted-loses a side mirror in the scrape. of chronic mishap amounts to an insult compounding thegraverinjury the sortof brushbetweenwinners and losersin the twenty inequality, violence.There first-century apt to trigger eventual capitalist sweepstakes is a broadlycomparableclash inHowards End: the sudden irruption of Leonard Bast into the livesof theSchlegels. Here too a "have" charac Helen Schegel, inadvertently ter, deprives the "have-not"of a valued Bast's batteredumbrella, a patheticbadge of possession,in thisinstance respectability. This encounter too ultimately leads to a violent denoue ment: Leonard'sdeath at thehandsof theself-righteous Charles Wilcox. in treatment. 'Whatisstriking, however,is thedifference Leonard, though Forsteridentifies the does not become physically aggrieved, aggressive: as a problem forthe members of theelite, but not as a threat. underclass serve While suchparallels thedivergent outlooks mainly tohighlight both narratives confirman important of the two novels, pointmade by Benedict Anderson: in the developmentof themodern nation-state, of a kinddifferent createdlanguages-of-power fromthe "print-capitalism "the conver observesthat older administrative vernacular" (45).Anderson of human and print technology on the fatal diversity gence of capitalism of imaginedcommunity, of a new form languagecreatedthepossibility modern nation" (46). which in its basicmorphology set thestageforthe I To extend printcompetencehas also been Anderson, would argue that have a controlling stakein the which subgroups crucial in determining of and McEwan alikedramatizethecapacity Forster nationsthusformed.

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Michael L.Ross an imaginedcommunity languageinprintedformto instantiate among who belong properlyto thenation and to exclude thoselettered adepts stunted who cannotproperly thoseverbally subjects belong. Once again, this commonunderstanding ofprintilluminates however, the ideologicalsplit dividingthetwonovels.ToLeonardBast, engaged in to"improve" a dogged effort theaffluent and bookish Schlegels himself, represent enviable initiates realmof security of theprint-oriented and eminence from which he has been barred:"If only he could talk like he would have caught theworld. Oh, to acquire culture! this, Oh, to names correctly! pronounce foreign discours Oh, to be well-informed, ing at ease on everysubject thata ladystarted!"(52).The two "ladies," German humanist, can assume as second of a distinguished daughters naturean easy masteryof thehighprint medium that Leonard,by grap with certified "classics"like Ruskin's Stones toils pling ofVenice, vainly to Bast barrages attain. with thepair ofwealthybluestockings, Confronted of his reading, them with an inventory hoping tomake the catalogue serve as his passport into theirselect society:"But [Helen] could not after stop him.Borrow was imminent Thoreau and Jefferies-Borrow, in a swamp the and the outburst ended sorrow. R.L.S. broughtup rear, of books" (127). Predictably, Leonard's parade of talismanic names only His "brain is filled with thehusksof books, dampens theSchlegels'spirits. we want him towash out his brainand go to the real culture-horrible; The "real thing"for thebook-saturated Margaret explains. thing"(150), Miss Schlegel can onlymean first-hand thannuggets experience rather drawn fromindiscriminate yet a woman broughtup to takea reading; as a given finds it tempting tobrainwash commandof literature someone inBast's abjectedposition.In thatsense, her heartfelt appeal to "real life" smacks of unwitting condescension. In theparallelscene from Baxter invades where thederelict Saturday, theopulent residence of thehyperliterate Perownes,thesocial imbalance enforced different emotionalvalence. Here the byprintcarriesa tellingly as a readerinorder to gain intruder does not paradehis own attainments onHenry Perowneand his fam hisvindictive acceptance;instead, designs as personified ilyare stymied by literature, standard-bearer by that ofVic torian Matthew Arnold.Baxter himself printcapitalism, the exemplifies nightmare of fierceirrationality thatrepeatedly abrades the tautsurface ofMcEwan's fiction-a figure akin to theblack dogs in theeponymous Love.Latently novel or to thedelusionary violent JedParry inEnduring

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On

a Darkling Planet: IanMcEwan's

Saturdayand theCondition of England

and foredoomed by hisdefective DNA, Baxter,like Bast, springs fromthe "have-not"underclass; but his animusagainstthecharmed,impregnable circleof the literateis far more uncontrolledand seditiousthan Leon ard's. According toAnderson, "there is a specialkind of contemporane ous community which languagealone suggests-above all in the form of poetryand songs" (145). In Saturday, what emergesstarkly fromthe recitation of poetry isBaxter'snoninclusion in the"special" community. During his forcibleinvasion of thePerowne enclave, themarauder is enthralled byDaisy Perowne'srecitation of "DoverBeach,"which he has been hoodwinked into fora composition woman mistaking by the young herself. Despite his panic,Perowne is compelled to recognize thatthe topoetry that loutish Baxter has a capacityforresponsiveness he, forall his schoolingand professional cannot match.But thisinsight, expertise, while itmight have opened a transformative vista intoBaxter's inner out tobe beside therealpoint.What the incident world, turns primarily establishes is the intruder's ineluctable alienationfrom Perowne family values-from thecommunity of print wizardry that empowersthefam ily, ratifying their social supremacy. His apperception of thepoem thatso moves him ispointedlyaural; thatis why he can take it fortheproduc tionof theyoung and pregnant naked in front of him rather girlstanding thanthat of aVictorian worthydead forover a century. (The unliterary Perowne is equally at sea as to the lyric's but his command authorship, of other, on thisscore vitalprint resources renders his ignorance merely thandisabling.) amusingrather The main effect ofBaxter'senthrallment by "DoverBeach" isnot to him intoamute inglorious transfigure Milton but todivert him from his fell purpose of raping Daisy and demolishingthePerownes' well-being. Print thus becomes amodus operandiensuringthattheuncouth listener will not forlongpenetrate thehallowedboundaries of thehaut-bourgeois The same is trueof Perowne's subsequentruseof reading community. amedical offprint aloud from doubt on thesurgicallesioning of "casting theglobuspallidusin thetreatment of Parkinson's Disease" (226), making on thebaffled itpass fora hopefulcommentary Baxter'sown, unrelated of the interloper from geneticdisorder.Theresultis theflinging upstairs to downstairs, a tumblethatinflicts further damage on his alreadyim uses hismagisterialsurgical which Perowne subsequently paired brain, finesse tomend.The perfect circleof thehyperlettered and hyperskilled remainstriumphantly intact.

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Michael L. Ross At first blush,Leonard Bast's abrupt dismissalfrom the scene of a swordstroke on thepartofCharles Howards End (hisdeath results from weak heart) looks likean equivalent Wilcox, compoundedby his already banishment of theuntutoredupstartfromthe charmed enclaveof the elite. In fact, Forster'streatment of thecharacter however, points in an Forster's tone toward otherdirection.While Bastmay, mostlypatronizing as Widdowson argues,expose "The unconscious elitism of theLiberal position" (92, emphasisin original),Forsterdoes at leastpinpoint some causes forthecharacter's sociohistorical He portrays Bast shortcomings. of thegreatnineteenth-century as a haplessinheritor exodus from coun to cityand of the collective failureto equip urban newcomers tryside with thecultural and economicwherewithalneeded forfulfillment. The narrator asserts flatly that Leonard "was inferior to most richpeople, there isnot the least doubt of it" (58),but accountsforthe imputedinferiority in terms of a systemic social imbalance: "beneath thesesuperstructures of wealth and art there wanders an ill-fed method boy" (57). Forster's of narration, his adopting thepersona of an omniscient raisonneur, has, a counterelitist within obvious-enough limits, effect, calling intoques tion the"superstructures ofwealth and art." Some amongForster's gallery of reflectors, above all Margaret Schlegel's self-interrogating psyche,are
privileged by being visited more often and more tenderly than others. So

those who best personify liberal habitsofmind receive the most lavish All helpingof narrative the Leonard's scrutiny. con same, floundering, like the self-exculpating, fused mentality, hectoringone of thebusiness magnateHenry attention. Wilcox, isallottedsomemeasureof considerate of proletarian Meager as Forster's imagining subjectivity may now seem, theattemptin itself betokensa bravedetermination to reachbeyond the hermeticboundariesof class-to establish an imaginedcommunity of sharedconsciousness. Margaret Schlegel insists thatthe lives of the impoverished could be transformed infusion ofwealth:"Give thema chance. by a straightforward Give them McEwan's Baxter, such reasoning money" (133).Applied to would be otiose.Unlike the struggling Bast,Baxter is constructed as at bottom thevictimof his own calamitous but unalterable geneticpayload; his inferiority has been preprogrammed. Perowne reflects that no change in the makeup of societycan remedythedeficiencies of the"losers" loi within it:"No amountof social justicewill cure or disperse this tering enfeebledarmyhauntingthepublic places of everytown" (272).By this

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a Darkling Planet: IanMcEwan's

Saturdayand theCondition of England

logic,such derelictsform partof thedetritusleft by the"late failure of radical hopes" cited by Saul Bellow; now, in thepostradicaltwenty-first thebesthope for century, promotingthehealthof thecommunity isnot social activism but clinicalexpertise. McEwan enables Baxter'sobjectification as a "case"by channeling the events of thenarrative through theconsciousness of Perowne,theurbane and cultivated diagnostician. The choice of point of view has here, as often, powerfulideologicalimplications.Where Forster's nar omniscient ration allowed forameasureof egalitarianism, McEwan's use of a unitary centerof perception-a more "modern"novelistic convention-situates thereader within a discursive universethatis relentlessly judicious, prob ing,and "superior." Perowne'senvelopingego system providesa conge nialmedium forthose"flowers of civilization" who read seriousliterary fiction, in effect a cushion againstthegratingroarof other sorts of lives being led. The major occasion on which Perowne is prompted to an act of with such an outsider, empathy Baxter's forcedentry, clinchesthepoint: BeforeBaxter speaks, Perowne triesto see theroom through his as ifthat eyes, might help predictthedegreeof trouble ahead: the twobottlesof champagne,thegin and thebowls of lemon and ice,thebelittlingly high ceilingand its mouldings, the BridgetRiley printsflanking the Hodgkin, the muted lamps,the wood floor cherry beneath thePersian rugs, thecareless piles of seriousbooks, thedecades of polish in the thakattable. The scale of retribution could be large. (207) Although some of his observations, like the one about thebelittlingly high ceiling,show sensivity to the intruder's point of view,Perowne's musingsbetoken no genuine fellowfeeling. Instead,theyare at bottom a frantic diagnostic, classdefensiveness, betraying the troubled awareness of one whose elevatedstatusrests on chic possessionsand thenoncha lant masteryof print ("the careless piles of seriousbooks"). Later, when thedangerhas passed, theold poet John Grammaticus's gallant impulse to extend sympathy toBaxter-"there came a point after Daisy recited Arnold forthe second time when I actually to feel began sorryforthe fellow"(229)-is inwardly rebuked what by Perowne:"Whatweakness, topermityourself delusional folly, aman, sickor not, towards sympathy who invades yourhouse like this"(230).

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Michael L.Ross Daisy's Italianboyfriend provide an in Perowne's feelingstoward quantity, a stranger foil. Like Baxter, Giulio is an imponderable structive Perowne's who has,from perspective, bargeduninvitedinto thesacrosanct Amusingly, Perownemust contend"with nascent enclaveof the family. assault on the family's unknown Italian's peace and cohe outrageat this his seed without first making himself depositing sion,at his impertinently Giulio has infinitely availablefor inspection"(240).Yet the impertinent thantheunpresentable LondonerBaxter,and lessto fearfrominspection more likelihood of being absorbedintothePerowne clan."Foreign" vastly and hemay be,he belongs to theglobalguildof thehighlyliterate though an that the community by twenty-first academicallycertified, imagined more cohesiveeven thanthenation.Slavoj has become arguably century ofGartonAsh's Free World,observes: Zizek, in his appraisal to theothernewly are thecounter-class The slum-dwellers class" journal the so-called (managers, emergingclass, "symbolic ists etc.)which is also uprooted andPR people, academics,artists as universal(aNewYork academic hasmore and perceivesitself Har in commonwith a Slovene academic than with blacks in lemhalfamile from his campus). Perownesconfirm The globetrotting Zizek's observation. Henry Per American colleagueJay Strauss owne canmore easilyrelatetohis or even to theunknown Italian Giulio than to outcast compatriotslikeBaxter. no kinshipis the withwhom he feels And anothergroupof compatriots the looming For multitude protesting Anglo-American Iraq incursion. Perowne, thatthrong correspondsto the"ignorantarmies" that"clash as resisting, under the by night"in "DoverBeach."He sees theprotesters of a correct"dogma, the forcibleremoval aegis of a cranky, "politically and barbaric tyrant. "It's a conditionof the times," he thinks, thuggish with the world, and be joined to "thiscompulsion tohear how it stands to a community of anxiety"(176). Such pervasivedread thegenerality, is thehallmark of an alternateimaginedglobal community, one which in fact, Perownewishes at all costs to keep at arm's length. The protest, to his safety. It is into the more immediate, feedsdirectly personal threat his nor the rallythatleads to his scrape with Baxter'sBMW, impeding so as to him to swerve down a by-street mal momentum and prompting Strauss. Baxter with and the be on timeforhis appointment marchers, are linkedby a submergedaffinity-their thoughovertlyantagonistic,

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Saturday and theCondition of England

forthe as Perowne sees it,to takeresponsibility common unwillingness, consequences of theiractions. In his view, theprotestin thename of nonviolence signals an acquiescence in thepathologicalviolence of the parallels, violence in effect Iraqi dictator, and Baxter'sprivateantisocial thisidealistic butwrongheadedpublic action. forall itscrudity, indicate some McEwan's own statements It isworth noting that with Perowne'sposition: sympathy than with them," [McEwan] says, marchersrather "Walkingpast I "I was troubled on thestreet. by thesheer levelof happiness ofAmerica forgoing in,histo did think whatever the reasoning us this chance toget ridof Saddam. Ifyou decide ryhas offered view,but it it isprobablya very reasonable you don'twant that, more genocide. It is a somber, grave is a vote for more torture, choice." (Gerard) identification between au I do not,of course, mean to implya searnless move, In a characteristic McEwan has distributed thorand protagonist. convictions some of his own oftendiscordant among various agents in thebook. CatherineDeveney reports: war with his daughter, Daisy,about the [prospective] Henry rows he hadwithin McEwan, theconversation [in Iraq]. Itwas, says "I was very tornby it,so she represents one bit ofme himself. some otherbit. Itwas like twovoices in andHenry represents my head." McEwan's primary as a novel one of Such dialogismconstitutes strengths it isnotDaisy's voice of protestthat prevailsin Saturday. ist. Nevertheless, Zizek argues: In his review of Free World, does not allow him to see how the things GartonAsh's analysis thehypo fortheenvironment, he condemns (ruthless disregard critical double standards etc) are imposedby thesuperpowers which sustaintheroleof the of thesocialdynamics products of universal human rights. of democracyand guardians exporters Perowne by defaultjoins himselffromthe Iraq protesters, In distancing The novel overallper and "guardians." the ranks of Zizek's "exporters" to thePerownes'eminently evasion:theglobal threats a comparable forms enacted as theyare on an essentially civilized personal stage, way of life,

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Michael L.Ross underlyingissuesof social equity and become pretextsforsidestepping abjection. whichArnold Culture and Anarchy in Quoting a famous passagefrom comments: of perfection,"Widdowson definescultureas "the study on, and do theyin These are finevaluesbutwhat do theyrest of course,on exploita volve "all partsof our society"? They rest, on having tionand hence on ascendance;and thatrests wealth, of leadinga lifein way,on thepossibility or,puttingitanother of suchvalues isviable. which thecultivation (40; emphasisin original) Admirer ofArnold thoughhe was, Forsterbuilt an awarenessof this "finevalues" intohis earlytwentieth-century underpinning exploitation His prime mediatorof suchvalues, Margaret Condition ofEnglandnovel. ofmoney (72) that isunderno illusions about the"islands" sup Schliegel, His representative of theexploitedunderclass, way of life. porther family's Leonard Bast, disappearsfrom the scene,but Bast's yeoman stock has cosmopolitanSchlegel lineage to produce a mingledwith thecerebral, will inherit, class boundaries yet hybrid-Helen's child-who transgresses Not even this tradition of liberal England. with Howards End, thefinest Where of social expansiveness, however,isdetectablein Saturday. inkling ofEnglishprivilege, theapparatus End in its hesitant way troubles Howards as given. takesthatstructure tacitly Saturday objections In his recent Timothy Brennan raises book WarsofPosition, have to the belief"thatboundariesof all sorts widespread contemporary isat itsend,post-Fordism has triumphed" brokendown, thenation-state "None of thesepoints requires anyproof; (37).Brennanwryly observes, to find, since legally and politicallyit is indeed, would be difficult proof more the case that boundarieshave intensified" (37).Brennan'spoint is nationalistsentiment, oftenof a borne out even by casual observation: of geo chauvinistictype, stilldrivespolitics in a wide array virulently based separatist movements,the promoting ethnically graphicalcontexts, and other relatedphenom barringor marginalizationof immigrants, ena. Yet nationalboundaries are farfrom being the onlywalls to have social classestoo have defied the logic of hardened; barrierssegregating As Saturday while theeliteof today may feela so suggests, globalization. vaultsover divisions of nationality, the ramparts kinship that phisticated claimsof theunderclass of privilege shieldingthem fromthe resentful

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Saturdayand theCondition of England

now need to be all the more vigilantly patrolled. Ultimately, McEwan's novel has less to do with theconditionof England in general than with thevulnerableconditionof theEnglish intelligentsia. The American socialcommentator BarbaraEhrenreich has noted the of thenonaffluent disappearance as a category from contemporary social
consciousness:

When IwatchTV over my dinneratnight,I see aworld in which almosteveryone makes $15 an hour ormore, and I'm not just thinking of theanchor folks. The sitcoms and dramas are about fashion or designers schoolteachers or lawyers, so it's easy fora fast-food worker or nurse'saide to conclude thatshe isan anomaly-the only one, or almostonly one,who hasn't been invitedto theparty. And in a senseshe would be right: the poor have disappearedfromthecultureat large, fromits political rhetoric and intellectual endeavorsaswell as fromitsdailyenter tainments. (117-18) In Saturday theparty isbeing held at thesumptuous home of theprivi legedand print-savvy Perownes.The fish stewbeing concoctedbyHenry serves as thesymbolic of thefeast, centerpiece to which gatecrashers from theunderclass are emphatically not invited. McEwan's London may be, asPerownewishes tobelieve, a brilliant "a success, a biological invention, masterpiece";even ifno longerthehub of empire, stillthe siteof flour
ishing global interchange. It is,however, at risk from the Baxters stalking

within it, benton crashing thepartyand spoilingtheelegantfun. Howards End, in itstime, may have adumbrated its own siege but Forster mentality, showed at leastsomewillingness to peer outside the walls and even on occasion togingerly to exclusiveness open a gate.Tendencies still incipient in theearliernovel have come to fullfruition in McEwan's recentone. The "confusedalarmsof trouble and flight" heardbyArnold in "Dover Beach" permeate theLondon of Saturday. What they portend is a nar of the liberal rowingand hardening vision that had once energized the Condition ofEngland novel.

Notes
1. See, for example, David Malcolm, who calls The Child in Time "a late twenti 'condition of novel" (9). eth-century England'

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Michael
2. The

L. Ross
idea of penetration, smost recent in sexual Chesil terms, provokes the pivotal crisis

primarily book, On

inMcEwan

Beach.

McEwan 3. In an interviewwith Der Spiegel

as "the least bad prime minister we've had."

praises Blair, albeit backhandedly,

with Forster's famous studyof Eng 4.Although McEwan was surelyfamiliar lish society, I do not wish to suggest thatSaturday amounts to a premeditated imitation of it, in the fashion of Zadie Smith's novel of the same year,On Beauty. (The opening line of On Beauty, "One may aswell begin with Jerome's
e-mails to his father," parodies

well begin with Helen's

sustains the parody.) While

andmuch of the subsequent text letters to her sister,"

there are stray correspondences male figure Bast likely and Baxter, inadvertant. resembling talismanic status have of detail in each a between Henry, reso dominant characters, are most is named chiming

the opening

line of Howards

End:

"One

may

as

and Howards Saturday the names of the underclass nance, and so forth?these lyric seems

End?the

5. Arnold's

to have

assumed

McEwan. for
poem, 6. The

On Chesil Beach is riddledwith more or less overt echoes of the

the book's eerily title itself. prophetic in foreshadowing See McEwan what neither Pe

something

starting with novel

is, of course,

rowne nor (at the time ofwriting) his creator could have known about: the Der Spiegel shortlyafter the attacks:
SPIEGEL: Your new book, deadly terrorist attacks on London of 7/7/05. s comments for

act of terrorism. Now

when book. you heard itwas it's not Imean,

ithas happened.What was your first thought

a terrorist attack? McEWAN: satisfaction from It confirmed it, nor did my I share that I take any been some

"Saturday,"

iswritten

in expectation

of an

any great 7.This formal

insight,

everybody's

waiting. commentators to compare are Satur

feature

Woolf daywith classicmodernist texts likeJoyce'sUlysses and

Some gestive; of the parallels apart from between Saturday time and the latter work s novel the single-day frame,Woolf

has prompted

's Mrs. Dalloway.

especially sug an too features

outsider figure,Septimus Smith,who potentially poses amoral challenge to the Mrs. Dalloway, implications of such correspondences might be worth tracing, unlike both Saturday andHowards End, makes no overt attempt to fit into the most ofWoolf 'sfic Condition of England mode. This is not to deny that, like tion, the book yields insights into the social Ufe of theEngland of itsday.
socially superior protagonist, in this case Clarissa Dalloway. However, while the

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On

a Darkling Planet: IanMcEwan's

readers will be

Saturday and theCondition of England

their eyebrows at Garton Ash's omis

8. Canadian

likely

to raise

sion of Toronto.

Works
Anderson,

cited
Benedict. Imagined Communities. 1983. Rev. ed. London:Verso, 2006.

Arnold, Matthew. Culture andAnarchy. 1869. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. -."The Scholar-Gipsy."Matthew Arnold. Ed. Miriam Allott andRobert H. Super. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. Saul. Bellow, Herzog. 1964. New York: Viking, 1976. NewYork: Columbia UP, 2006. Brennan, Timothy. Wars ofPosition. Writes." The Scotsman 30 Jan. 2005. Deveney, Catherine. "First Love, Last
<http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=108202005>.

Dirda, Michael.
Post

"Shattered."Review
2005.

of Saturdayby IanMcEwan. Washington

20 Mar.

A45066-2005Marl7>.
Forster, E. M. Howards End.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel andDimed. NewYork: Metropolitan, 2001.

1910. London: NewYork: Penguin, Harcourt, 1973. 1951. -. Two Cheers for Democracy.

Garton Ash,Timothy. Free World. Toronto:Viking Canada, 2004. "Times Interview: JasperGerard Meets IanMcE Online Gerard, Jasper.
wen." 23 Jan. 2005.

ticle505214.ece>. Heller, Zoe."One

York Times

<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/ar

Day

in theLife."Review
2005.

of Saturdayby IanMcEwan. New 1 &pagewanted=print of Saturday

20 Mar.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/

books/review/020COVERHELLER.html?_r= Kakutani, Michiko."A

by &position=&oref=slogin>. Ian McEwan.

Hero with 9/11 PeripheralVision." Review

NewYork Times 18 Mar. 2005.

times.com/2005/03/18/books/18BOOK.html>.
Gilles Ian McEwan."

<http://www.ny

Louvel,

Liliane,

Universitaires deMontpellier,
html>.

Fortin. "An interview with and Anne-Laure M?n?galdo, Nov. 1994. Etudes Britanniques 8. Presses Contemporaines

1995. <http://ebc.chez-alice.fr/ebc81.

Malcolm, David. UnderstandingIanMcEwan. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2002.

Masterman, C. F. G. The Condition

Methuen,

1960.

of England.

1909.

Ed.

J.T. Boulton.

London:

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Michael

L. Ross

Time. 1987.Toronto: Lester, 2005. McEwan, Ian. The Child in -. Interview. Der Spiegel 19 July 2005. <http://service.spiegel.de/cache/ -.
-.

international/spiegel/0,1518.365767,00.html>. On Chesil Beach. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2007. Miller, Laura. "The Salon Interview: IanMcEwan."
Saturday. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2005.

9Apr. 2005. <http://www. 2005.

salon.com/books/int/2005/04/09/mcewan/print.html>. British Novelists. London: Routledge, Rennison, Nick. Contemporary On Zadie. Smith, Beauty.Toronto:Viking Canada, 2005.
Widdowson, Peter. E. M. Forster's Howards End: Fiction as

Sussex UP, 1977.

<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/nl7/zize01_.html>.

History.

London:

Zizek, Slavoj. "Knee-Deep." London Review ofBooks 26.17 (2 Sept. 2004).

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