The flaws of humanity, seen through the role of a fictional physicist

NPR : About five years ago, the writer Ian McEwan joined a group of artists and scientists on a sponsored weeklong trip to the Arctic—the idea was to inspire artists to think about climate change.Before going to the Arctic, McEwan had been interested in the issue of climate change, but he couldn’t figure out a way to write a novel that wouldn’t sound preachy—until something about the disarray in the ship’s boot room gave him an idea."It seemed to strike a chord with a lot else that I’d understood about climate science, the politics of it and human institutions,” McEwan says. “We’re very good at making wide and sweeping statements of intent, but once we get down to it, often very little happens. And that, at least, gave me the first suspicion that maybe the route into this was through comedy, a comedy of human nature.” Facing a challengeThe result was a book called Solar. Like McEwan, the book’s main character, Michael Beard, takes a journey to the Arctic. Beard, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist, doesn’t care much about climate change; he just wants to get away from the chaos of his own life. He falls under the spell of the Arctic and his amiable companions, but he can’t put aside minor irritations like the messy boot room.Beard eats too much, drinks too much, and has virtually no moral compass.McEwan says this farcical portrayal of a scientist loaded down with bad habits is his way of depicting how difficult it is for spoiled, lazy, self-centered human beings to take on the challenges required to reverse the effects of climate change. And despite, or maybe even because of his many flaws, Beard was a fun character to create.