Inside joke of the day

Saturday is Ian McEwan's brilliant new book (Buy it. Buy it now.) about a day-in-the-life of Henry Perowne, a skillful and flourishing neurosurgeon living in the very center of London. Like so many of you, Henry is smart, solid and thoughtful, and he also has something of a revulsion for modern literature. Here is how McEwan describes it:

"What were these authors of reputation doing -grown men and women of the twentieth century- granting supernatural powers to their characters? He never made it all the way through a single one of those irksome confections. And written for adults, not children. In more than one, heroes and heroines were born with or sprouted wings. Others were granted a magical sense of smell, or tumbled unharmed out of high flying aircraft. One poor fellow spotted through a pub window his parents as they had been some weeks after his conception, discussing the possibility of aborting him."

What's the big inside joke? Well, that last sentance is a reproof of the crucial scene in McEwan's own The Child in Time, which was published in 1987.