Ian McEwan

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INTERVIEWER

It takes courage to write without irony. To write, for example, about Evil with a capital E.

McEWAN

Especially when you don’t believe in it. Where there’s no God, it’s difficult to give much intellectual credence to evil as an organizing principle in human affairs, as a vaguely comprehended supernatural force. In "Black Dogs", June believes in evil in these terms and her husband Bernard does not. But he knows it’s a potent idea. It’s a useful way of talking about a side of human nature, and it’s metaphorically rich and, for that reason, hard to live without. Harder to live without evil, it would seem, than without God.

-- Ian McEwan at The Paris Review

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Ronald Reagan

At the Republican National Convention in 1980 there was a lot of strange talk about a co-presidency between Reagan and former-President Ford. One supposes the idea was seen as useful by those who were worried that Americans might be too shy about handing over the reins of power to a right-winger like Reagan.

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[Reagan] had picked Bush to be his running mate only at the very last moment. He so resisted the notion of choosing Bush, the obvious choice to some if not to the Reagans themselves, that the Gipper had seriously pursued the Dream Ticket with Ford. Just a day earlier, the entire assemblage in Detroit - the media, the delegates, the hangers-on, the operatives - was convinced that the two men would go under the gun and marry at the political altar. Negotiations between Ford’s and Reagan’s representatives didn’t break down for good until near midnight. Having exhausted all options, Reagan only reluctantly called Bush.

-- Craig Shirley, “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America”

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Mark Strand

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Well, poetry—at least lyric poetry—tries to lead us to relocate ourselves in the self. But everything we want to do these days is an escape from self. People don’t want to sit home and think. They want to sit home and watch television ... We seem to want instant gratification. Violent movies give you instant gratification. And drugs give you instant gratification. Sporting events give you instant gratification. Prostitutes give you instant gratification. This is what we seem to like. But that which requires effort, that which reveals itself only in the long term, that which demands some learning, patience, or skill—and reading is a skill—there’s not enough time for that, it seems. We forget that there is a thrill that attends the slower pleasures, pleasures that become increasingly powerful the more time we spend pursuing them.

-- Mark Strand at The Paris Review

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