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Mildly interesting TV scripts. Because Ian McEwan's other work, especially the novels that came later, is so compelling, there's little point in spending time on these rather ho-hum efforts.
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The imitation game and other plays
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Picador paperback, 1982. The Imitation Game: Three Plays for Television. Early work by Ian McEwan.
175 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1,1981
This edition
- Format
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175 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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January 1, 1982 by Houghton Mifflin
- ISBN
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9780395329337
- ASIN
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0395329337
- Language
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English
About the author
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Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.
McEwan lives in London.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.
McEwan lives in London.
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Rating(4 / 5.0, 14 votes)
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14 reviews All reviews
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I really enjoyed reading these. Wish that I could see the finished films now.
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Of the three plays in this collection, only the title piece is extraordinary. I'd give the others 2 stars. "The Imitation Game" is about Cathy Raine, hoping to do her bit in WWII despite society's assurance that she is a decorative non-entity. She becomes one of the hundreds of Bletchley Park women who, in complete ignorance of what she is really doing, endlessly records and transcribes the radio signals that feed the electronic "brains" that Alan Turing (here named "Turner") and other men are directing. By seducing Turner, Cathy manages to learn the truth, becoming "the woman who knows."
I'm not a big fan of historical fiction, but this particular story fascinated me. I especially enjoyed McEwan's introduction, which helped put the story in perspective. He writes, "I had come to think of Ultra as a microcosm, not only of the war but of a whole society. Peter Calvocoressi graphically described Ultra's organization on the 'need to know' basis as a set of concentric rings. The closer you moved to the centre, the more men you found; the further you moved to the periphery, the more women." The story illustrates the absurdity and consequences of such a structure.
I'm not a big fan of historical fiction, but this particular story fascinated me. I especially enjoyed McEwan's introduction, which helped put the story in perspective. He writes, "I had come to think of Ultra as a microcosm, not only of the war but of a whole society. Peter Calvocoressi graphically described Ultra's organization on the 'need to know' basis as a set of concentric rings. The closer you moved to the centre, the more men you found; the further you moved to the periphery, the more women." The story illustrates the absurdity and consequences of such a structure.
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As a fan of McEwan's novels, I was interested in seeing what he could do in a dramatic format; unfortunately, these are not PLAYS, per se, but the scripts for some TV dramas he produced early in his career. The first two pieces are trifling bagatelles with twists at the end, which are neither terribly surprising, nor clever. The second of these, 'Solid Geometry' is primarily of interest in that, after it had begun production, the BBC decided it was obscene (largely, apparently, on the basis of a prop of an enormous penis persevered in a jar of formaldehyde!), and halted it.
The final, longer, titular work was of interest since I'd just finished the author's most recent book, Machines Like Me, and both concern AI in some form. Unfortunately, even this disappoints, kind of a desultory 'Bletchley Circle', as McEwan turns cracking the Enigma Code into a turgid examination of prejudice against women during the war effort. Worse, he changes the character of the notoriously homosexual Alan Turing into the character of Turner, a straight (albeit impotent) man ... and then subverts his 'imitation game' (which was used to determine whether machines could think, and if so, whether a person could determine if someone was man or machine by virtue of their thoughts alone), into whether a person could determine the SEX of an unknown entity via the same method.
The final, longer, titular work was of interest since I'd just finished the author's most recent book, Machines Like Me, and both concern AI in some form. Unfortunately, even this disappoints, kind of a desultory 'Bletchley Circle', as McEwan turns cracking the Enigma Code into a turgid examination of prejudice against women during the war effort. Worse, he changes the character of the notoriously homosexual Alan Turing into the character of Turner, a straight (albeit impotent) man ... and then subverts his 'imitation game' (which was used to determine whether machines could think, and if so, whether a person could determine if someone was man or machine by virtue of their thoughts alone), into whether a person could determine the SEX of an unknown entity via the same method.
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Enjoyable. Three plays in the same style as his earlier short stories. Jack Flea's Birthday Celebration (forever the baby), Solid Geometry (the science of disappearing), ans The Imitation Game (codebreakers and women in the army).
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These three plays are all fascinating but, if you like the absurd, you might especially enjoy 'Solid Geometry' - I had already read it as a short story but thought it would make an excellent play. Like so much of what Ian McEwan has written, it is rather unpleasant, but it does have a slightly comical side to it. And if you do not have much time, the whole book makes a very quick read!
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I think my problem with McEwan's writing is that he too often borders on the weird for futile reasons. The first two plays both feel quite randomly strange, while the imitation game - while interesting - feels rushed and incomplete.
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The first two plays left no particular impression, but the third one did.
The context: Second World War. Due to a shortage of manpower, women are joining the effort as secretaries, cooks, etc.
One note in the introduction preceding the play, an excerpt from a wireless broadcast that Ian McEwan found in the Imperial War Museum Library: "Henceforward, as our colossal war machinery gets underway, no skilled person is to do what can be done by an unskilled person, and no man is to do what can be done by a woman."
Women become vital in the fight and gain independance by getting wages. But still they do not hold a position of power.
'The Imitation Game' is a good read.I do have to say that if I had not read the introduction, I wouldn't have enjoyed the play that much.
The other two, meh. Skip them unless you want to read about a preserved penis in an old jar ('Solid Geometry').
The context: Second World War. Due to a shortage of manpower, women are joining the effort as secretaries, cooks, etc.
One note in the introduction preceding the play, an excerpt from a wireless broadcast that Ian McEwan found in the Imperial War Museum Library: "Henceforward, as our colossal war machinery gets underway, no skilled person is to do what can be done by an unskilled person, and no man is to do what can be done by a woman."
Women become vital in the fight and gain independance by getting wages. But still they do not hold a position of power.
'The Imitation Game' is a good read.I do have to say that if I had not read the introduction, I wouldn't have enjoyed the play that much.
The other two, meh. Skip them unless you want to read about a preserved penis in an old jar ('Solid Geometry').
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