Ian McEwan is in hot water with some of his lesser known fellows. A group of self-styled ‘pro-Palestinian authors’ wrote to the Guardian on Monday, and expressed their regret that McEwan will accept the biennial Jerusalem Prize. They averred that the prize, which is awarded to those who explore the theme of individual freedom in society, ‘is a cruel joke and a propaganda tool for the Israeli state.’
Some politically strident people have been cracking that cruel joke: Jorge Luis Borge, Bertrand Russell, Simone de Beauvoir, Isaiah Berlin, Susan Sontag, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Miller, V S. Naipaul and J M. Coetzee. However, as you may have noticed, these tools of perfidious Israel’s cynicism are all dab-hands with a pen and a sheet of paper. A lucky few have even been recognised by the Nobel Foundation, an old and long-suffering friend of peace in Palestine.
Of course art can trespass into the crude territory of politics; and the award of prizes usually involves a little low-grade horse-trading. But, just as the Prix Goncourt does not excuse the excesses of the French Revolution, the Jerusalem prize does not confer propriety on the contentious moments in Israel’s past and present. McEwan has made an adamant riposte to the preening arrogance of his accusers. He tells today’s Guardian:
“There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics and for me the emblem in this respect is Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra [a collection of musicians from across the Middle East] – surely a beam of hope in a dark landscape, though denigrated by the Israeli religious right and Hamas. If your organisation is against this particular project, then clearly we have nothing more to say to each other. “As for the Jerusalem prize itself, its list of previous recipients is eloquent enough. Bertrand Russell, Milan Kundera, Susan Sontag, Arthur Miller, Simone de Beauvoir – I hope you will have the humility to accept that these writers had at least as much concern for freedom and human dignity as you do yourselves. Your ‘line’ is not the only one. Courtesy obliges you to respect my decision, as I would yours to stay away.”
I’m not sure McEwan belongs in such luminous company; I’m not sure he does either. But his insistence that literature is the first concern of literary prizes is a welcome note of sense amid the melodrama.
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