I have to say, I found McEwan's comments idiotic. The art (NOT science) of theory is not to slavishly analyse the conscious intentions of the author, but to detect/recognise patterns, usually unconscious, in a text that allow relations to be drawn between that text and other texts; between the literary and the nonliterary and very often this is all about discovering what the author has done without realising it; what has been done "through" the author not necessarily "by" them, so yes, those interviewers were idiotic to ask McEwan for his "theory of the body" but on the other hand McEwan was idiotic to criticise PhDs sent him from the perspective of what he himself had in mind. Anyway, what sort of fuckhead writes with "conscious intentions"? I thought the light was just sposed to pour out of you. And yes, anyone who tries to apply the ideas of theoretical thinkers programmatically without flexibly allowing room for dialogue between the author's text and the ideas they are checking out with it is hardly a paragon of contemporary academic excellence - anyone can criticise such a fuckwit; nice work McEwan; but actually engaging with what might surprise you about your own thought as it is inserted into a collective takes sensitivity McEwan (due to an inflated and vainglorious will to power, an overmastering ego, pretensions to unprecented control over the effects of written language) evidently lacks.
YUK.
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black cats are lighter
because they absorb more light