Ian McEwan’s short story in this week’s issue is drawn from his upcoming novel, “Lessons,” which examines how global political events penetrate our private lives. “It also looks at how large a role mere chance can play in anyone’s life story,” McEwan said.
” is set in 1962, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, and told from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old boy, Roland. What had you thinking back to that specific moment in time?
In a moment of heightened emotion and suspense—as he waits for Khrushchev and Kennedy to start a nuclear war—Roland responds to a sexual overture that his former piano teacher, Miriam, made a few years earlier. Why do you think he is drawn to her at that moment, when he’s spent the previous two or three years avoiding her ?
Roland is sexually abused by Miriam, although he is too young to identify it as such. But, beyond the sexual act, her behavior—the way she alternates between seductress/lover and dominating teacher/authority figure—seems almost expressly crafted to cause psychological damage. How do you imagine Miriam views what she’s doing?,” which will be published in September. In a later section of the book, Roland confronts Miriam forty years on. She attempts to explain herself.
Roland’s entanglement with Miriam offers him two possible fates, equally entangled. She could guide him to a career as a concert pianist, and at the same time force him to abandon his selfhood, his soul, if you like, to her. A kind of Faustian pact, one best expressed in a duet. Tartini’s famous violin and piano sonata “The Devil’s Trill” is a good musical expression of such a pact.
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