Thinking about thinking -- portrayed by Ian McEwan
Meta-thinking? Is that what it's called when you observe your own thoughts and emotions and try to influence your mental processes--or at least become aware of their habitual nature?
In his novel Saturday, Ian McEwan brilliantly portrays this inner mental and emotional terrain. Henry Perowne, a brain surgeon, happens to wake in the night and go to the window, just in time to see a burning plane flying across the London sky, apparently heading for Heathrow. The year, circa 2004, makes the outcome predictable: Henry's mind goes into overdrive and he begins to imagine the worst.
Through this character, McEwan shows how the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the media and government responses to them have changed moods, attitudes and expectations.
Unlike many who remain unaware of this insidious process, Henry Perowne sees himself "becoming a dupe--the willing, febrile consumer of news fodder...the docile citizen...only too happy to let the story and every little shift of the news process colour his emotional state."
We are becoming, Henry sees, "a community of anxiety," dancing to the "sweet repetitive tunes of pessimism." He sees the addiction to news as "an orthodoxy of attention, a mild subjugation in itself."
In another part of the novel, Henry foresees that there will be more attacks; the city is impossible to protect. Henry's thoughts are tragically prescient. The summer after the book appeared came the attacks on London Transit, and recently, of course the London riots.
Saturday was published in 2005 in London by Jonathan Cape, and as an audio book by HarperCollins the same year. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
McEwan's most recent book, Solar (Jonathan Cape 2010), tackles the issue of climate change. He talked about and read from that book in Vancouver last April; it went on to win the Bollinger Everyman Woodhouse Prize for Comic Fiction.