Ian McEwan finds a defender in Pynchon

Reclusive author Thomas Pynchon has defended Ian McEwan, who is facing criticism over allegations that he used details from another book in his 2002 bestseller “Atonement.”

Pynchon, author of “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “Against the Day,” said in a letter to Britain’s Daily Telegraph that all writers of historical fiction who were not present at the events they describe “must turn to those who were.”

“To discover in the course of research some engaging detail we know can be put into a story where it will do some good can hardly be classed as a felonious act -- it is simply what we do,” Pynchon’s letter reads.