Celebrated British author Ian McEwan hit the Farm yesterday in a whirlwind appearance — speaking to an intimate gathering in Margaret Jacks Hall in the morning before reading from his novella “On Chesil Beach” to a packed house in Kresge Auditorium last night and addressing issues ranging from the publishing industry, writing style and literary fame.

“When I started writing fiction in the 1970s, it was rather an obscure ambition,” said McEwan, who appeared as part of the Creative Writing Department’s Jean and Bill Lane Lecture Series. “Writing fiction for a mainstream publishing house was seen as a stuffy, gentlemanly thing to do. It changed sometime in the early 80s — it acquired a whiff of celebrity of the most tawdry sort.”

McEwan said he has been working on the novella for the past six months, which was published in The New Yorker last December. The story describes the insecurities and misadventures of a virginal young British couple on their wedding night in 1962. One of the key themes in the novella, McEwan said, was exploring the myth of sexual freedom surrounding the 1960s.

“I’ve got a feeling there was a great gap between presentation of sexuality in movies and magazines and everyone’s private nervousnesses and insecurities and fears,” he said. “Partially, I wanted to put this story out and see if it meant anything to a twenty-year-old now, or if to them the situation seems simple, two people can just ‘get it on.’”

McEwan has written in varying styles during his career, ranging from collections of short stories to a children’s book. “On Chesil Beach” is a short work, weighing in at 37,000 words. At the colloquium, McEwan reflected on the specific demands of novellas.

“What I love about the length is it’s a bit like going to a movie for a reader,” he said. “A reader can sit and digest it in two or three hours and hold the whole shape of it in his mind at once, which one can’t do with a novel. A novella is something like a short story but with a space for psychology, a space for people.”

Another major recent project has been the libretto for an opera focusing on the womanizing of an elderly conductor.

“I both love and hate operas,” he said. “I love the music but hate the plots — too many people turning into oranges or pumpkins, too much fairy tale. They bring such serious emotional intensity to the music and so little to the plots. Is it possible to sing one’s way through a serious psychological episode?”

McEwan is also currently acting as Executive Producer for the film adaptation of his novel “Atonement,” directed by Joe Wright (“Pride and Prejudice”) and starring Kiera Knightly and Vanessa Redgrave. Although McEwan has adapted his own works in the past, he says he elected not to write the screenplay for “Atonement.”

“I’ve done screenplays before and know it’s hard to do your own stuff,” he explained. “It’s infuriating to take something you’ve written and be told, ‘No, this character wouldn’t say that.’ It’s as though you’re writing by committee. I’d rather ruin someone else’s novel.”

The audience greeted McEwan’s excerpt with cheering and applause. However, some students, many of whom ended up sitting on the floor due to the numbers of adult attendees, felt alienated by the crowd in the more intimate colloquium.

“I always appreciate that we have such esteemed authors at our school,” said senior Chade Severin. “I do regret, though, that a majority of the audience was not from the undergraduate community. For a literary forum ostensibly directed for undergraduates, most of the question and answer segment was dominated by adults.”

The age of the audience was not lost on McEwan either, who at the start joked worriedly that he had been told he would be talking to undergraduates.

But other students applauded the colloquium’s arrangement.

“People had more of a chance to talk to him than at the reading,” said junior Ian Goodfellow. “I’ve read many of his books, but it was fascinating to see a different side of him and hear about other facets of his work.”