First published in 2016; published by Vintage on June 19, 2018
“My Purple Scented Novel” is a short story of literary evil, the worst kind of evil imaginable in the world of serious literature: plagiarism. Two lifelong friends have known each other since college. Both are writers. One turned out to be successful. The other had children. Eventually, the world believes that one stole a novel from the other, and in fact that’s what happened, but the theft is not what it appears to be.
The reader might wonder what motivated the evil writer to act as he did. Jealousy? He denies it. A desire for wealth and fame? He claims to be content with a drafty house, a professorship that is dragging its way to tenure, and a legacy of out-of-print novels. But given his fiendish conduct, the reader might be disinclined to believe a word he says.
Maybe the evil deed is something that Ian McEwan could imagine himself doing if not for the talent that assured he would never be a mid-list, out-of-print author. Perhaps all great writers are a bit evil, at least in their imaginations.
Perhaps the point of the story is not so much the writer’s motivation as the deed itself, the audacity of behaving in such a selfish way and getting away with it. If it weren’t so awful, the display of chutzpah would almost be admirable.
“My Purple Scented Novel” was first published in the New Yorker and is now available as a Vintage Short. It is quite short, but McEwan fans who don’t want to read it (or listen to McEwan read it) on the New Yorker website now have the option of downloading it to a reading gadget. The story is worth a reader’s time regardless of how the reader decides to experience it.
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