AUTUMN IS WHEN THE LITERARY establishment comes out to play, and publishers release books by their most prestigious names. The reasons are lost in time, but it may be connected to the end of summer: fun is over, they say, time to read some serious books. Or it may be because the book publishing year runs, like the academic year, from autumn to summer, and so we launch a new literary year with the titles that set the standard.
But in our multifaceted world, many establishments bump up against one another. The head boy of the senior literary establishment in England is Ian McEwan. (Hilary Mantel is head girl.) He started out as purveyor of fictions which would, in a world where books had the currency of music or television, have attracted tabloid demands to BAN THIS SICK STUNT. His blackly comic debut collection included a pickled penis and a teenager raping his 10-year-old sister; his first novel, , was a festival of incest.
