Cronenberg does Martin Amis

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Well, yes and no. Satire always seems to appear to attack, but in fact celebrates the things it despises, if not in the eye of its creators then certainly in the eyes of its targets. Yuppies love anti-yuppie satire, no?"
Don't think that I can fully agree with this oft-stated view - it's not as simple as that surely. Sometimes it may celebrate but that's not always the case and definitely not the full story - even if yuppies love anti-yuppie satire it hardly increased their standing in the eyes of others.
 

mind_philip

saw the light
Not surprised Mark didn't like him. But personally I really enjoy seeing absurd talent being exercised, even if it's purely for show. And at the sentence level, Amis was untouchable for a time.

I suspect Mark also hated showboating footballers too.
 

version

Well-known member
Jonathan Glazer's just made a film of Zone of Interest that's been getting decent reviews at Cannes.
 

jenks

thread death
I can imagine Amis being infra dig on here for a variety of reasons but for some of us he was a key figure - Success, Money, London Fields, Times Arrow, The Information, Experience, The War Against Cliche. He didn’t weather well into the 21st C but I think his influence still reverberates- even if it is as a reaction to the high/low bloke voice. I think also he wanted to make serious comedies like Dickens and no one tries that shit anymore cos they can’t.

That whole generation are in a mess. Hanif pretty much paralysed in an Italian hospital, Rushdie lucky to be alive but half blind, Hitch gone, Amis gone. The clean living McEwan irrelevant, Ishiguro tame and safe. The only one of those men still doing interesting stuff is Barnes - last novel starts normally enough before swerving into a detailed account of a 4th century saint.

Anyway, I remember reading The Information when it came out and laughing hard at the descriptions of how awful the narrator’s novel was. On his day Amis was as good as he thought he was.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've read The War Against Cliche about a million times. I used to flatly dislike the novels but over the years I've slowly got around to reading (or listening) to a big chunk of them. I've even started reading/listening to the by common consent shit ones, like The Pregnant Widow.

I've been quite surprised to see an outpouring of love for his work on Twitter/the Gruniad, where you'd be hard pressed to find much at all about him before that wasn't accusing him of Islamophobia or misogyny, or both.

I always felt very conflicted about him and my addiction to him. Even his best novels are flawed, feel somehow empty, but (for me) are unputdownable. They're like sweets.

Geoff Dyer (who I've come to dislike) summed it up quite well here

"the truth is that with the exception of Time’s Arrow Amis’s other major novels were all overlong. I tired of them even in the midst of relishing them. London Fields sagged fatally – then sprang back into life. The Information was unable to sustain the weight and momentum of its opening. What this meant was that he was at his consistent best in the collections of journalism such as The Moronic Inferno and The War Against Cliche. His signature strength as a writer – the electrifying prose – was also a component of his shortcoming as a novelist. In some ways, an unflashy writer such as Tessa Hadley seems to get closer to the permanent mystery of great fiction than he ever did."

One quote that came up in tributes quite a bit was his belief in "the pleasure principle", and ultimately I'd say that's where his novels outshone almost anything else I'd pick up and read. Probably most importantly for me was they were often very funny.

I've been reading "A Tale of Two Cities" this past week, and I've become aware of how influential Dickens must have been on Amis, as much as Nabokov in a way. Many of the criticisms levelled at Amis can be levelled at Dickens: two dimensional characters (often yobs/plebs or nobs/toffs, with nothing in-between of much interest), 'nothing' female characters (either being bullied by horrible men or pallidly virtuous), even a sort of misanthropy (which in Dickens is directed at the London and Parisian mobs).

What Dickens does, though, which Amis doesn't, is people his novels with morally good characters. Some of these characters are vivid, but none are remotely as vivid as the cunts. I find myself sighing whenever e.g. the detestable Cruncher disappears and I have to flick through another ten page scene of earnest sentiment. (Perhaps Amis comes closer to Evelyn Waugh, in fact.)

No doubt the inability to write about "real" people, either complexly good or complexly bad, is a shortcoming in Amis. But there's definite compensations to be had in writing what often amount to satirical cartoons.

He was my favourite contemporary writer, and now he's gone I can't imagine I'll be reading anything much contemporary again! I'm not aware of any writers around now who are as thrilling to read. I'm sure there are but I'm absolutely out of the loop. (And I've got Dickens to read, haven't I?)
 

jenks

thread death
I've read The War Against Cliche about a million times. I used to flatly dislike the novels but over the years I've slowly got around to reading (or listening) to a big chunk of them. I've even started reading/listening to the by common consent shit ones, like The Pregnant Widow.

I've been quite surprised to see an outpouring of love for his work on Twitter/the Gruniad, where you'd be hard pressed to find much at all about him before that wasn't accusing him of Islamophobia or misogyny, or both.

I always felt very conflicted about him and my addiction to him. Even his best novels are flawed, feel somehow empty, but (for me) are unputdownable. They're like sweets.

Geoff Dyer (who I've come to dislike) summed it up quite well here

"the truth is that with the exception of Time’s Arrow Amis’s other major novels were all overlong. I tired of them even in the midst of relishing them. London Fields sagged fatally – then sprang back into life. The Information was unable to sustain the weight and momentum of its opening. What this meant was that he was at his consistent best in the collections of journalism such as The Moronic Inferno and The War Against Cliche. His signature strength as a writer – the electrifying prose – was also a component of his shortcoming as a novelist. In some ways, an unflashy writer such as Tessa Hadley seems to get closer to the permanent mystery of great fiction than he ever did."

One quote that came up in tributes quite a bit was his belief in "the pleasure principle", and ultimately I'd say that's where his novels outshone almost anything else I'd pick up and read. Probably most importantly for me was they were often very funny.

I've been reading "A Tale of Two Cities" this past week, and I've become aware of how influential Dickens must have been on Amis, as much as Nabokov in a way. Many of the criticisms levelled at Amis can be levelled at Dickens: two dimensional characters (often yobs/plebs or nobs/toffs, with nothing in-between of much interest), 'nothing' female characters (either being bullied by horrible men or pallidly virtuous), even a sort of misanthropy (which in Dickens is directed at the London and Parisian mobs).

What Dickens does, though, which Amis doesn't, is people his novels with morally good characters. Some of these characters are vivid, but none are remotely as vivid as the cunts. I find myself sighing whenever e.g. the detestable Cruncher disappears and I have to flick through another ten page scene of earnest sentiment. (Perhaps Amis comes closer to Evelyn Waugh, in fact.)

No doubt the inability to write about "real" people, either complexly good or complexly bad, is a shortcoming in Amis. But there's definite compensations to be had in writing what often amount to incredibly complex satirical cartoons.

He was my favourite contemporary writer, and now he's gone I can't imagine I'll be reading anything much contemporary again! I'm not aware of any writers around now who are as thrilling to read. I'm sure there are but I'm absolutely out of the loop. (And I've got Dickens to read, haven't I?)
That’s good, that.

Yes. You have Dickens to read too.
 

version

Well-known member
I've considered picking up something of his from time to time, but none of the novels I've heard of sound good. I remember reading he'd done one with a character called 'Lionel Asbo' and just groaning.
 

jenks

thread death
As I said above post 9/11 he went well and truly wonky but he did recant. He admitted he was wrong. I’d refer you back to @Corpsey post - War Against Cliche and Experience are superb examples of his non fiction. Money, London Fields, The Information may not suit everyone here but they’re burning with ambition and invention. A proper prose stylist - not something everyone wants and it can be a bit flash and it can sag and miss but picking up on one late novel is hardly representative of his body of work. It’s like not listening to 60s Aretha Franklin cos she did a duet with Annie Lennox in the 80s.
 

version

Well-known member
I think if I read one I'll probably read Money or Time's Arrow. I've always been a bit put off by the whole time moving backwards thing in the latter though, sounds like some gimmicky Ben Elton or Vonnegut sort of thing. I was intrigued by the title of The Information then saw it was a novel about novelists and immediately lost interest.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
With a writer like Amis I think you'll know if he's for you or not within a page or two. And even if he is for you, as he is for me, he'll irritate you fairly consistently.

This Amazon sample gives you a hefty chunk of the start of "Money". Read it, and if you hate it, don't bother reading the rest. The plot, the characters, the themes, these are all of little interest with Amis's novels. It's the voice, it's the style. If you like the style/voice you'll wind up, like I have, guzzling the rest of it down greedily, even when it makes you feel a bit sick.

 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Incidentally, for those who DO enjoy Amis, I thoroughly recommend the audiobooks read by Steven Pacey. Pacey is fantastic, he reads them near-enough perfectly and brings out the acerbic humour in (every other) line.

Listening to him read Amis's novels made me realise that Amis's novels are basically extended comic riffs, sit-down comedy, and they work best (especially 'Money') read out loud.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Incidentally, incidentally

I'm always doing this. Using a word I've used a sentence (or less) before. I had to edit a post in this thread earlier cos I'd repeatedly and accidentally used "levelled" three times.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Read Success, Einstein's Monsters and, of course, The Moronic Inferno. All pretty enjoyable.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I read the autobiography one that came out a few years ago and I'm pretty sure (although could be wrong) that when reflecting on Hitchens fight with cancer, Amis reckons that he'd probably just give up rather than go through the treatment. Strange now.

Money was one of the first novels I read but I can't remember if I liked it.
 

version

Well-known member
I read the autobiography one that came out a few years ago and I'm pretty sure (although could be wrong) that when reflecting on Hitchens fight with cancer, Amis reckons that he'd probably just give up rather than go through the treatment. Strange now.

He ended up with the same cancer too.
 
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