Antiwar protesters are satirized as self-regarding consumerist consumers by McEwan

Evidence

Banners proclaiming “Not in My Name” have a “cloying self regard” that suggests “a bright new world of protest, with the fussy consumers of shampoo and soft drinks demanding to feel good or nice” (72). Although, we are told, “Perowne cannot feel, as the marchers probably do, that they have an exclusive hold on moral discernment” (73), he sometimes manages an air of sanctimony that is every bit as self-congratulatory. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 112

Categorization

• SHARE: One to send to someone who has read Saturday — McEwan’s actual prose smuggling consumerist sneering into what should be the novel’s moral high ground.
• SEED: Article angle: how arguably progressive novels of the 9/11 decade encode conservative sneers at protest, and what that says about the framing of the ‘liberal novel.’