It’s the birthday of British novelist and short story author Ian McEwan (b. 1948), who has produced enough great and powerful works of fiction to be included on all of those “greatest authors of the twentieth century” type lists that are so ridiculous yet addictive. (Speaking for a friend.) A quick glance at the summaries of some of his works reveals subject matter that is often highly grisly and macabre and other times merely terribly terribly disturbing.

McEwan was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. His father was in the army and posted all over the world, so McEwan grew up in Germany, the Far East, and North Africa. He had no idea growing up that he actually had an older brother. His mother, Rose, originally married to a man named Ernest, had an affair during WWII with McEwan’s father, David. When she gave birth to a son, she placed an ad in the newspaper asking for a home for a one-month old baby boy and then gave the child to the first couple who answered the ad. Ernest then died at Normandy and Rose married David and together they had McEwan and raised him in a somewhat dysfunctional home. The brothers were not reunited until well into middle age. (Still, I have to say: not as weird as his novels.)

McEwan studied at Sussex University and won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 with First Love, Last Rites, his first collection of stories. His first novel, the unsettlingly entitled The Cement Garden (1978), is about several orphaned children determined to stay together so they bury their mother in cement (like you do) and then naturally the two oldest end up in an incestuous relationship. A couple of disturbing novels later he won the Whitbread Novel Award for The Child in Time (1987) and then the Booker Prize for Amsterdam (1998). His latest novel, Nutshell (2016), was inspired by Hamlet and “is narrated by a fetus whose adulterous mother plots with her lover to kill the baby’s father” (britannica.com). McEwan lives in London with his second wife.

It’s also the birthday of—and anyone who’s been reading this post the last couple of days should appreciate this—the birthday of Mary McCarthy (1912-1989), the famously acerbic critic and novelist who said that playwright Lillian Hellman (whose birthday was yesterday) was a “dishonest writer” whose every written word was a lie, including “and” and “the.” McCarthy said this in an interview on Dick Cavett’s show and as a result, Hellman sued McCarthy, PBS, and Dick Cavett for two and a half million dollars. Hellman died before the suit went to court and McCarthy said she was disappointed; she wanted Hellman to live so she could lose the suit. Read Cavett’s gentle and compassionate account of this sad affair right here.

Have a non-litigious Thursday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.