The Background Hum
Daniel Zalewski talks to the novelist, whose empirical temperament distinguishes him from his friends Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie.
"Julian was reading an article about a ship frozen in polar ice in 1893. He handed it to me. I said, 'That's amazing. A wind turbine in 1893!' He said, 'No, no! It's the final sunset!'" Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes, novelist friends for decades, demonstrating their different minds.