The MagazineOlder FictionNew novels from the aging ‘enfants terribles’ of British letters.Apr 19, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 29
• By TED GIOIA
 The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis Solar by Ian McEwan In 2006 the Muslim writer Ziauddin Sardar coined the term blitcon—a compression of “British literary neoconservatives”—as a term of abuse leveled at three writers who irritated him with their belief that “American ideas of freedom and democracy are not only right, but should be imposed on the rest of the world.” The three guilty culprits: Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, and Salman Rushdie. Alas, Sardar was forced to admit that this same trio dominates the British literary landscape, even enjoying front-page fame in an era when most fiction writers find their name in the paper only if their publishers take out an ad. Now, two of the blitcons have released major novels within a few days of each other. Amis’s The Pregnant Widow and McEwan’s Solar are generating buzz on both sides of the Atlantic, and are likely to spur further comparisons between two literary lions of roughly the same vintage (McEwan is 14 months older). Both were born at the end of the 1940s, came of age in the fast and loose 1960s, and are now in their 70s as celebrity scribes. McEwan may have more clout with the literary establishment—perhaps best measured by his six appearances on the annual Man Booker Prize short list, compared with just one for Amis—but Amis takes more chances, both in his public persona and his published works. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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