“Disconnect from the internet for at least two hours a day and treat your own thoughts like a garden through which you are strolling,” was the advice offered by the novelist Ian McEwan to younger writers after being made a Companion of Honour in December. The capacity to be curious about mental processes – while simultaneously experiencing them – is an important one for an author seeking to describe the human condition. But anyone who values self-awareness will be used to noticing how their mind works and wondering why.
“Only connect” was the maxim of another famous novelist, EM Forster. Forster used the characters in his novels to put flesh on his arguments against the emotionally repressive code of the time. But McEwan’s recommendation to disconnect should not be understood as a repudiation of Forster’s humanism. He was not warning writers off paying attention to other people’s minds and ideas – but drawing attention to the need to spend time with our own. In a world of permanent connection, in which attention has been commodified, switching off and away from the outside world is arguably harder than ever before.
