Martin Amis: fire away!

It's in the Hitchens' thing linked above:

"The sounds she was making," I said unsmilingly to my wife on her return, "would not have been out of place in the deepest cellars of the Butyrki Prison in Moscow during the Great Terror. That's why I cracked and called Caterina [the nanny]."

You couldn't make it up

Thanks, should have checked that. It's the nanny bit that really makes the quote, isn't it.

It's sort of comforting to know that Kingsley never had to witness Terminator 3.

David Cameron = Gwyn Barry

I wonder what he thought about T2?

I guess we'll never know.

another great moment comes when amis breaks down the way trotsky phrases something in his autobiography and goes on for like three pages about how subtly it proves how heartless and inhumane the man was -- evidently oblivious to the fact that he's reading a translation, not trotsky's actual words.

i dunno why everyone hates him, or why they love him so. but i read his interview in gq this month. hes an interesting figure. agreed with some of his points. his main problem with muslims becoming more religious though seemed to be that pre 9-11 he was able to fuck "muslim talent" (his words) and now since then, men like him (white upper class poshos?) have found it harder to do.

perhaps that has been the biggest downfall of the war on terror? less muslim women sleeping with old white men?

I read a piece a while back where he summed up his position as something like: 'for multiethnicity; against multiculturalism'. I think that was probably a better way of putting it.

he's been married for 15 years. well, 25. so idk if he'd openly talk about shagging other women. i guess he's making a general point.

A historical point in his case, I think - he did go on about former girlfriends in the piece I read.

yeah i know hes not really talking about himself, more his 'successors' perhaps.

"'for multiethnicity; against multiculturalism'. "

that makes sense.

it makes some kind of syntactic sense i guess

seems like hes saying hes fine with ppl of all diff races, just as long as its a bit more monocultural.

The novel Amis is currently working on, State of England, will, he believes, "be considered as the final insult" to his country. The story of a violent criminal, Lionel Asbo, who wins the lottery, it's "a metaphor which translates well, I think, our state of moral decrepitude: a huge reward for no effort".

Lionel Asbo.

lolsome piece generally
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/18/martin-amis-england-moral-decrepitude

London Fields was the first novel I read that accurately portrayed modern evil. I thought: this will date quickly, like Hangover Square, and it has... but for that novel alone Amis has to be recognised as a great writer, despite his dire Islamophobia and general reactionary vibe.… pic.twitter.com/9UhAaceFT6

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) May 20, 2023

Reading several old (Amis) reviews of Mailer et al today reaffirms an old assessment. Most people agree that Amis was uneven and flawed as a novelist. But he was, at his best, an unusually brilliant book reviewer. Such a humble trade, but I've seen few better at it, again and again. Eventually, understandably, he left it behind, but perhaps his most consistently outstanding work remains in this occasional genre.

Indeed.

Liked what he wrote about Ballard for example.

'Dead Babies' was a good read. The obsession with teeth was pretty creepy.

I haven't read a lot of his stuff, but his takedown of Hannibal by Thomas Harris is brilliant.

xp huh that’s funny you should say that. I’m sure I’ve said before that I don’t really know his work at all but one of the reasons I get major bullshitter vibes off him is from the piece he wrote when Ballard died. It was iirc mainly a personal remembrance and fine, quite touching even, but I’ll never forget the thudding wrongness when he got around to the work and praised the “creaminess” of JGB’s prose(!)

i only read the Rachel Papers, London Fields, the Information, and Time's Arrow, but I love all four of those novels. RIP grump.

Hmm. It’s been awhile but the thing I seem to remember him writing was something like “the way to get the hang of Ballard’s prose is to realize he has no sense of humor.” Maybe this was even in an old introduction to High-Rise. It’s sort of almost unfair but basically true at the same time. If he has a sense of humor it’s totally deadpan as if you are not quite sure that he is in on the joke or not like, say, Adam West.

Can’t find the exact sentences I am looking for, but the whole thing is mentioned here: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/14764/3/14764.pdf

The War Against Cliché is at the top of the Amazon Charts! Well. one of them anyway.

That and *Experience* are both fantastic books. I'd take *Money* of the novels but have a soft spot for *The Information* and *Night Train*. I think he's right about Ballard, FWIW, but it does kind of miss the point? Bit like saying Stockhausen didn't bring the funk.

Hmm. He also wrote an introduction to Ballard's Complete Stories.

Yes surely the man who wrote 'The Assassination Of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As A Downhill Motor Race' had no sense of humour

Experience is his best .

RIP.

As I've said in various threads he's someone I read a lot 15-23 & has always had too much room in my head - contemplating aspects of Mart has way too much draw for me & I ended up reading well past the recommended date.*

There isn't a novel without deadly flaws I think - even Money, there's an endless hundred pages (more?) where Self's almost redeemed and a worthless plot and, fuck, the 80s pomo with 'Martin Amis' and ofc anything to do with women. & it's been 25 years since I read London Fields & mostly remember the fucking Nicola Six nonsense and Keith Talent being a grotesque too far (but I think I'll re-read it now).

but but but the best parts of the best of them, when he's on his turf, I still think 'yes' - dense grotesque, shit old London, repugnant falling-apart men. A sometimes brilliant local comic novelist of sour grime who had some silly ideas about his own seriousness but was immense fun to read.

I'd take Success and Money as the best right now - agree that Experience is his most successful literary work but the other mess is what made/makes me interested in him.

Again RIP. I'm going to miss you being around

* imo Yellow Dog, genuinely bad & mechanically broken; Lionel Asbo, not as bad as I'd expected but that's an incredibly low bar; Pregnant Widow, did not finish; still reading Inside Story - some of his best stuff since Experience but really flabby, right down to sentence level. Gaps - Zone of Interest (will read), Koba the Dread, Night Train.

I sorta see what he might mean about Ballard but otoh "Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months"

"it's been 25 years since I read London Fields & mostly remember the fucking Nicola Six nonsense and Keith Talent being a grotesque too far"

how so

WHAT ABOUT THE CREAMY PROSE

Lol

Zone of Interest and Night Train weren't bad. Koba the Dread I never got round to.

Wonder if I made up the thing about the sense of humor or humour even. Don't think so.

Okay, this is what I found in his review of High-Rise:

I hope no one wastes their time worrying whether High-Rise is prescient, admonitory or sobering. For Ballard is neither believable nor unbelievable, just as his characterization is merely a matter of ‘roles’ and his situations merely a matter of ‘context’: he is abstract, at once totally humourless and entirely unserious. The point of his visions is to provide him with imagery, with opportunities to write well, and this seems to me to be the only intelligible way of getting the hang of his fiction. The prose of High-Rise may not have the baleful glare of that of Crash or Vermilion Sands, but the book is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers in the mind and chronically disquiets it.

Amis, Martin. The War Against Cliche (Vintage International) (p. 103). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

It's here, as you said:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/25/jg-ballard-martin-amis

Ballard will be remembered as the most original English writer of the last century. He used to like saying that writers were "one-man teams" and needed the encouragement of the crowd (ie, their readers). But he will also be remembered as a one-man genre; no one else is remotely like him. He was a talisman. Very few Ballardians (who are almost all male) were foolish enough to emulate him. He was sui generis. What was influential, though, was the marvellous creaminess of his prose, and the weird and sudden expansions of his imagery.

Some of his books seems to be out of print in the US, including Money and The Rachel Papers.

they were mainstays of the remainder table for at least a decade

feels like that generation of british male authors (amis, will self, julian barnes) have failed to cultivate new readers in this century.

suppose this is true also of jeanette winterson, to keep it from being solely male authors. I'm in the US so perhaps this hasn't held true in the UK, but all of these writers got a large amount of international attention in the 80's and 90's and then they seemed to just vanish on the US market.

Just now recalled that Christopher Priest ended up considering the terrible reviews he got from Martin Amis as badges of honor.

I think he has them on his website for every book of his that Amis reviewed.

Priest is admittedly a very patchy writer. The Affirmation is really good though.

I have some remembered fondness for M. Amis, as well as some frustratingly not-quite-my-sort-of-thing bits. I do not think I want to reread any of him. The Information and London Fields had good bits but nothing I wish to revisit. Information especially was too much of its time.

I recall Rachel Papers being a trifle unpleasant, but Metroland being worse. Which one has the reused condom scene?

In contrast, though, I could really easily reread Sexing the Cherry, The Passion, Flaubert's Parrot, and possibly History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (well, not all of it but I could skim the good bits).

Actually I think I DO reread

Actually I think I DO reread Flaubert's Parrot every 10 years or so.

I agree that authors like these are probably not attracting new readers in the current century. Neither is Douglas Coupland.