― the bellefox, Tuesday, 12 April 2005 14:50 (nineteen years ago) link
I hate it when books have information in them. I mean, if you want information, you can always read an information book, can't you? CAN'T YOU?
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 16:01 (nineteen years ago) link
― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 12 April 2005 16:22 (nineteen years ago) link
― dylan (dylan), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 04:42 (nineteen years ago) link
― Sam (chirombo), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 11:38 (nineteen years ago) link
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/detail/offer-listing/-/0224050613/used/ref=sdp_usedb/202-8095063-7235853
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 13:48 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 13:57 (nineteen years ago) link
― dylan (dylan), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 16:20 (nineteen years ago) link
I read a Denim article in Mojo. Nothing else.
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 14 April 2005 09:10 (nineteen years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 14 April 2005 09:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― the bellefox, Thursday, 14 April 2005 13:07 (nineteen years ago) link
― Sam (chirombo), Thursday, 14 April 2005 15:32 (nineteen years ago) link
I think I got my threads muddled up somewhere along the line.
― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 14 April 2005 15:36 (nineteen years ago) link
I'm no doubt prejudiced though - I've never understood the appeal of Amis. He's not interested in plot, his characters are uninteresting and self-hating, his overly showy style is just hopeless to my eyes.
― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), Friday, 15 April 2005 08:24 (nineteen years ago) link
Not to mention implausible and ludicrously stereotyped as soon as he gets away from the people he meets in his own social circle. A Martian who'd seen two episodes of Eastenders could write more convincing working class characters than Amis.
― frankiemachine, Friday, 15 April 2005 10:17 (nineteen years ago) link
But Z, I think you have to put my approval of the book in the context at my bewilderment at Amis's capacity for squandering his gifts in other books. I think he squanders less, here, for the reasons I tried to give.
― the bluefox, Friday, 15 April 2005 11:02 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ally C (Ally C), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 21:56 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 19 April 2005 22:32 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 20 April 2005 08:14 (nineteen years ago) link
― the bellefox, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 13:34 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jeff LeVine (Jeff LeVine), Monday, 18 September 2006 18:30 (seventeen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Monday, 18 September 2006 20:38 (seventeen years ago) link
Then read somebody else.
― Why does my IQ changes? (noodle vague), Monday, 18 September 2006 21:23 (seventeen years ago) link
Well ... I happened to start w/ The Information, loved it, and moved onto London Fields and Time's Arrow, then to a few of the non-fiction books (War ... Cliche, Visiting Mrs. Nabokov). Guess I'm one of the few that prefers his fiction to his non-fiction. I thought Amis wrote the bitter/oblivious writers of The Information well.
Are there differing summary judgments of Amis in a US/UK breakdown?
― Jamesy (SuzyCreemcheese), Tuesday, 19 September 2006 00:58 (seventeen years ago) link
it's flawed (i almost threw the book out the window at the point where amis idly muses that, all things considered, he'd much rather be incinerated at hiroshima than sentenced to the gulag), but pretty much everything he sez about lenin AND hitchens (haha, the ideal couple!) is OTM.
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 19 September 2006 05:47 (seventeen years ago) link
this thread is very British. innit.
― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 19 September 2006 06:25 (seventeen years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 19 September 2006 07:36 (seventeen years ago) link
and someone said "pretentious sixth-form puffery"!
― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 19 September 2006 09:01 (seventeen years ago) link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/26/colm-toibin-teaching-martin-amis
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 26 January 2011 11:06 (thirteen years ago) link
he sounds rather decent there, surprisingly.
― thomp, Wednesday, 26 January 2011 15:26 (thirteen years ago) link
unfortunate url. colm toibin teaching martin amis to do what?
― thomp, Wednesday, 26 January 2011 15:27 (thirteen years ago) link
Yes, he sounds decent in that piece, misleadingly.
Not that Amis has no decency, necessarily, but the things he says here are a farrago of facades.
I'm not sure how much I like Toibin. His novel Brooklyn is widely read but very blank. And his LRB reviews, in a worrying sign, are sprawling, unstructured and unilluminating.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 27 January 2011 08:27 (thirteen years ago) link
if we must have fictionalised accounts of henry james eyeing up the bootboy, give me david lodge any old day
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 27 January 2011 09:03 (thirteen years ago) link
Enjoy Toibin in the LRB, mostly – article on the Pope was great – but his crit doesn't stick with me. Still, I imagine he'd be a better or more engaged teacher than Amis; probably a better guide to the conventional mechanics of fiction?
― portrait of velleity (woof), Thursday, 27 January 2011 09:45 (thirteen years ago) link
I liked Brooklyn: a minor thing very well done.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 27 January 2011 11:58 (thirteen years ago) link
he's a better novelist than Amis.
I tried and could not get into The Information, and then I did what I think I haven't done with any other novel -- skipped the first section, and thoroughly enjoyed the remaining couple hundred pages.
― An Artily Shot Sesame Street (Eazy), Thursday, 27 January 2011 17:19 (thirteen years ago) link
in some ways i'm a big amis fan -- adore the war against cliche, some other essays, and time's arrow -- but i'm halfway through the very slim house of meetings and it's taking me forever, not because it's hard but because it feels... rushed. a little too sure of itself? and there are plenty of good bits of elegiac Christ-what-happened-here prose, but amis isn't robert conquest when it comes to the weird blend of detachment, irony, and utter brutal specificity that works so well for descriptions of stalinism. (there are not a lot of robert conquests.) plus his method of approaching The Human Aspect is to overlay this nasty love triangle ganked from nabokov, which keeps falling into this very particular tone of weird affected sexual wisdom that feels callow in a postwar british schoolboy way. (this happens in other books too.) in some ways i preferred koba the dread even though everything everyone said about that was pretty much right.
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 27 January 2011 18:00 (thirteen years ago) link
Different Amis, same Conquest, but perhaps just about worth noting that The Egyptologists (written by Conquest, heavily revised/co-authored by Amis) is a dreadful dreadful piece of shit.
Just in case anyone was ever tempted to check it out. A horrid stain on both their sometimes rather dubious careers.
― Herr Kapitan Pugvosh (GamalielRatsey), Thursday, 27 January 2011 18:17 (thirteen years ago) link
For those of you who are keeping an eye on him...
― alimosina, Saturday, 30 April 2011 18:49 (thirteen years ago) link
Ms. Egan belongs to the slice of the Brooklyn literati that has just entered its prime. The book contracts are steady and robust. The glossy assignments come so easily they can be comfortably turned down. Some of these writers can even afford sports cars.
Wait -- is this true?
― My mom is all about capital gains tax butthurtedness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 30 April 2011 18:53 (thirteen years ago) link
I like to think that he will take it all in stride, and then in three years a book will come out that will be a perfect send-up of the neighborhood
oh dear
― Ismael Klata, Saturday, 30 April 2011 19:01 (thirteen years ago) link
omg. Daniel Radosh quote was pretty funny.
― A Bop Gun for Dinosaur (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 30 April 2011 21:03 (thirteen years ago) link
"Martin Amis is exactly who we've all been waiting for," said Starlee Kine, a journalist and prominent radio personality at work on her first book in Williamsburg, where she lives next door to Henry Miller's childhood home. "And if there was ever a neighborhood that could use someone like Martin Amis, it's Cobble Hill."
is this a joke?
Starlee Kine ... can't see what the joke would be.
but the sentiments cannot be serious.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 1 May 2011 09:45 (thirteen years ago) link
The book contracts are steady and robust. The glossy assignments come so easily they can be comfortably turned down. Some of these writers can even afford sports cars.
bullshit
― guy mann-dude (m coleman), Sunday, 1 May 2011 12:17 (thirteen years ago) link
also LOL @ Kurt Anderson's "I was here first" one-upsmanship
― guy mann-dude (m coleman), Sunday, 1 May 2011 12:19 (thirteen years ago) link
It occurs to me that Martin Amis's place in literary history has been shrinking.
I suppose I mean that he might not be remembered as a very major writer.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 19 February 2023 12:49 (one year ago) link
You wanna put money on that?
― after the pinefox (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 19 February 2023 14:10 (one year ago) link
It occurs to me that Martin Amis's place in literary history has been shrinking.I suppose I mean that he might not be remembered as a very major writer.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 19 February 2023 14:23 (one year ago) link