In Which I Can't Let Go of Ian McEwan's "Solar"

Mr McEwan, your book is bad and you should feel bad.

Apparently, some people found Solar hi-la-ri-ous because of all the "fatty eats a lot" stuff. It's so ironic, you see. Michael Wood from the Huffington Post writes:

We can't miss the relish in the writing here, the pileup of horrible detail; but it's worth pausing over the relish's double focus: Beard is wallowing in his own gluttony and recklessness, while McEwan's narrator is writing with the mesmerized horror of a much thinner person. This sort of disjunction is essential to the novel's irony, allows us our complex laughter, and means that McEwan, or his narrator, can treat Beard without sympathy and without condemnation. 

(It's actually a very nice, complex review, if you're interested in reading more about the novel. But I must take opposition with this bit. I'm obviously not part of the "us".) 

First of all, there's nothing complex about laughter at fat people. Fat jokes have been skinned to the bone; there is nothing left but "fatty like to eat haha". It's really elementary school humor dressed up as intellectual fiction with some clever word choices. Secondly, this is exactly why I felt so alienated while reading it. Looking at the first chapter, I was hoping to see a realistically depicted, self-aware fat person, but then all the gluttony comes in and ruins it. It's just not very realistic, and we're obviously meant to see the fat person as an Other. While I may make excuses - he's a man, he's older than me, he drinks so much, etc. - I can't escape the fact that Beard has the same amount of "excess weight" that I have. So McEwan might actually be writing about me, among other people. And he imagines that his intellectual readers are going to be slim.

I did come to realize, though, that the mesmerized horror might actually not be so far off from a fat person's inner dialogue. Most of us have that voice inside of us, even those who are fat acceptant. The voice says, "OMG you're getting so HUGE! Will you stop eating so much!" or perhaps "Oh, eating a chocolate bar, are we? No wonder you're so fat." If you're a fat person and you eat anything, but especially specific "fatty foods" like bacon, chocolate, chips, etc. (which Beard also indulges in), you're bound to hear a voice inside you that says you really shouldn't. That's what this culture does to us. Exploring that voice might have been interesting, but McEwan doesn't bother to do that.

The problem with Solar is that it seems to suggest this is the voice of reason, not internalized fat hatred talking. This is, of course, what most people already think. Should I expect McEwan to rise above such cultural norms? Well, I'll say yes - he wrote Atonement, On Chesil Beach and many other beautiful novels where he really went into the characters' heads, even if these characters are women from another time. But apparently he can't afford such empathy and humanity with fat people.

I also disagree that the book is without condemnation. Bearing in mind that Beard drives an SUV (because he can't fit into other cars),  flies planes constantly, and eats primarily meat, McEwan might even be suggesting that fat people are particularly guilty of ecological "crimes" that cause CO2 emissions. Beard never once contemplates on this. When it comes to his body, even if Beard is aware of the fatness, he is also in deep denial about how bad things are. When the doctor gives his list of predictions, we're meant to think it's time for Beard to wake up - and yet he lapses into a blissful feeling of freedom as soon as he leaves the doctor's office. The ending of the book is left open, but most likely he has a heart attack and dies. It's alluded to in no uncertain terms. It may also be seen as a final judgement or punishment for his indulgence. 

In my view, the book would be a lot more powerful if Beard went on his big diet, lost all the weight, and became physically fit but was still a really disgusting human being. That might actually be a lot more current and deep-thought: poking fun at the fitness culture and people's obsession with their bodies; showing that someone who has "will power" over their body is not always a good person in other ways.

After writing the previous post, I've also thought of Battlestar Galactica and my favorite character, Gaius Baltar. Baltar is loathsome in many ways: cowardly, selfish, weak, arrogant, often rude. He has a lot in common with Beard in these ways. Interestingly, however, he is not fat. He is short, like Beard, and this might be an instance of lookism (or heightism?) in both stories. But Baltar was, throughout most of the seasons, quite thin. He indulged in smoking, drinking, women, and arrogance, but not in food. I never really thought of this before, but I like that. What if he had been fat? Would he have been even more irredeemable in some people's eyes? He is already loathed by many fans, but I love him. It might be because the writer Ron D. Moore and the actor James Callis decided to give him some humanity. Some empathy, a lot of guilt, a position as a pawn. There's a lot of humanity to his weakness.

Well, now I digress into my fandoms. My point was going to be this: if you have anti-hero character, and you wish people to care about it, you need to give him something we can relate to. Nobody is completely evil, and if you draw your protagonist that way, you're making a caricature, not a character. Beard is indulgent, selfish, despises most people, and doesn't even care about his own child. As he is the most central character, that soon begins to grate. On topic: Jason Cowley with The Guardian finds the protagonist one-dimensional. Tell me about it. 

It was always going to be high risk, wagering so much on having as your central character a comic grotesque so loathsome and self-pitying, with thoughts mostly so banal, and then leaving the reader trapped, unrelieved, in his company for nearly 300 pages.

I must say, this description is much closer to my feelings than the "complex laughter" quote above.

McEwan won a humor literature prize for Solar. He bought a pig and named it after the protagonist. How deliciously ironic.

This whole has angered me so much that I have decided to make an art project out of it. I decided to cut up the book and place some of the words on my fat body. I'm not sure if McEwan cares - in fact, I'm quite sure he doesn't - but the blubber wants to talk back. And it will.

Some preliminary ideas (my camera doesn't handle small text very well, sadly):

(These are not meant to be erotic pictures, more like feminist art. So I hope you don't mind the nudity.)