Problems with the Contemporary Political Novel (& Ian McEwan)

Following these ruminations on Iraq, Shakespeare and the contemporary political novel, I came across this post by Nick Cohen in which he discusses the provenance of some scenes in Ian McEwan’s new novel Solar. I’ve not read the book – which is, at least in part, about global warming – but McEwan’s publishers promise “a serious and darkly satirical novel, showing human frailty struggling with the most pressing and complex problem of our time. A story of one man’s greed and self-deception, it is a profound and stylish new work from one of the world’s great writers.” Of course they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Anyway, Cohen relates that at one point McEwan’s protagonist, a seen-better-days physicicst named Michael Beard, addresses the Institute of Contemporary Arts:

“When he mentioned the metastudies reporting that girls’ language skills were greater on average than boys’, there was a roar of derision and a speaker on the platform rose fearsomely to denounce him for the ‘crude objectivism by which he seeks to maintain and advance the social dominance of the white male elite’.