1) He wears a tie with images of a craniotome (tool for drilling holes in the skull); 2) He’s sixty; 3)Atonement has sold over 4 millions copies (that’s a lot of fish and chips); 4) According to McEwan, “Narrative fiction is primarily about withholding information.” 5) He likes to take long walks. 6) He was in a Friday lunch club over which Martin Amis presided. 7) He “hunted for scorpions in the desert with a jam jar and roughhoused in the Mediterranean” with his domineering and temperamental father. *Thanks to Daniel Zalewski’s 2/23/09 New Yorker Profile

P.S. My favorite quote in the article, “McEwan is a connoisseur of dread, performing the literary equivalent of turning on the tub faucet and leaving the room; the flood is foreseeable, but it still shocks when the water rushes over the edge.” I think that’s a great description of suspense. P.S.S. Wearing a novelty tie under any circumstances is not acceptable unless you are pediatric oncologist.

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