A Brief Summary of Ian McEwan’s Saturday

Begin day. Pre-day. Brain Surgeon awakes suddenly “some hours before dawn.” Opens window on London square from fancy big apartment. Condescending observation of square peons. Sees a distressed plane and its trail of fire cross the sky to an unknown fate in the west. Fears terrorism. Biologically reductive reveries about terrorism and religion. Nature, nurture, Darwin, genetics. Enter the family. His wife: he met her by curing her brain disease; fucks her. The father-in-law, the famous washed up alcoholic poet and blues lover; his daughter, the saucy soon-to-be-published poet; his son, the budding benign laid back blues prodigy. Begin post-breakfast day. Drive Mercedes; delayed and detoured by war protest; ruminations about the wisdom of the coming Iraq war. A car accident, near-mugging, and bruising punch to the sternum by what turns out to be a specimen of brain-disease-induced violent tendencies. Mr. Brain Disease. Attempts to palliate and control Brain Disease with diagnosis and hint of possible cure (worked on his wife) but just humiliates Brain Disease in front of his friends, who leave. Gets away and has an emotionally charged, competitive squash game with a typically aggressive American medical friend. Wins, American calls foul, they replay, he loses. To the fishmonger for dinner supplies. Stops by to see his brain-diseased mother in a nursing home. Is he being followed? Back to make dinner for the family reunion scheduled for that evening; the elder poet to forgive the younger her success and sexuality, and she his envy. TV: Fears of terrorism turn out to be unfounded–a benign plane. Mr. Brain Disease returns with Brain Surgeon’s wife, a friend, and a knife. Not benign. Daughter poet must strip and do a pre-rape reading of one of her poems–her mother’s life depends on it. Nudity reveals pregnancy. Grandfather poet suggests she pawn off Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach as her own. Mr. Brain Disease is touched (”You wrote that!”) and calls off the rape. Friend leaves–Brain Disease has failed him again. Father and pacifist blues son attack, crack open Brain Disease’s skull. Redemption of squash skills. Brain Surgeon goes to the hospital and patches his skull back up so Brain Disease can run his natural course. Back to bed with the wife. Biologically reductive reflections about Brain Disease’s genetically induced propensity for violence. Fucks his wife. Sense-of-vulnerability-induced reflections about life, getting old, familial diaspora, death, Iraq, terrorism. Another attack is as inevitable as the fate of Brain Disease, whom he decides not to press charges against. Camaraderie of mortals, pity for poetry-sensitive neurological victims, reductive sense of causal connection to and responsibility for family terror: ill-considered intersection with the genetically determined fate of Brain Disease; car accident, altercation, diagnosis, home invasion. Blowback? Trying to reason with demented thugs, whether products of religion or biology, will just get you in trouble? Reflect further on connection to unmentioned Islamofascists on your own time. End day.

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