Reading Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know, which is fascinating, or maybe just really propulsive in an intellectual way, and certainly twee in spots. For example he makes the point that seems almost overdone at this point, that we have, as a global civilization, lost our way, that the future seems untenable, that progress has halted. He makes this point framed as a college lecture given in the future after a series of great global calamities, and as a precursor to the two people teaching the course becoming lovers, which undercuts the apocalyptic story, though not in the way I think he intends–the effect is not to show “despite it all, people will fall in love,” but to reinforce the idea that there is nothing we can do, humans are shit at thinking forward and changing the world for the better, so we might as well fuck. Still, I am enjoying the story, he really is great at characterization and narrative force, just wish he wasn’t saying the same old thing we all seem to be trying to convince ourselves, that the world is screwed, we did it, and there is nothing we can do about but keep calm and carry on.