In a Morning News interview, Robert Birnbaum talks to Ian McEwan: “How do you now answer the question, ‘What do you do?’ I would say I was a literary dialogist, as puzzling as that might be. You might say you are a writer — IMcE: But that¹s not very helpful. I would say what I do is [long pause] investigate human nature within a form which also provides a degree of entertainment as well. Or absorption as well. Entertainment in its broadest sense. But to write a novel is to set yourself on a journey of investigation of our condition, where we stand at this particular time in history. Or whatever particular time you want to set the novel. RB: Does that mean when you completed Saturday, finished Atonement, that you knew things, had a grasp of things that you hadn¹t had before? IMcE: Yeah. RB: So every fiction is an education. IMcE: More than an education. Every time I write a novel and I think I am getting it right, I have arrived at a degree of mental freedom that I didn¹t have before.”