What I remember of The Line of Beauty is that its characters often saunter (along pavements) or dart (into and out of rooms) and occasionally linger (over light lunches): all things I think that would have boiled the piss of Martin Amis in the 80s.
― fetter, Monday, 5 June 2023 19:07 (ten months ago) link
For all the talk about keeping the dictionary open at all times, meticulously crafted sentences, etc., etc. I find myself as a writer responding much more to Elmore Leonard's famous 10 rules:
1. Never open a book with weather.2. Avoid prologues.3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"…he admonished gravely.5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Monday, 5 June 2023 19:19 (ten months ago) link
That piece is something: Martin Amis had THREE layers of generosity?! Come on, now..
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 5 June 2023 19:52 (ten months ago) link
Cheese, guava, almonds
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 5 June 2023 20:07 (ten months ago) link
fwiw I'll buy that Amis was probably a nicer guy in person than he came across as (and made strenuous efforts to come across as). Who could be like that full time in public and private? Only truly rarefied titans of misanthropy like Ginger Baker can pull that off
― Toploader on the road, unite and take over (Bananaman Begins), Tuesday, 6 June 2023 08:22 (ten months ago) link
No comparison to Pope. Pope was a foot shorter.
Nice piece. 'Devout' is well-chosen. A more generous way to look at the canon-hugging and status anxiety and the effortfulness of his weaker prose.
― woof, Tuesday, 6 June 2023 09:47 (ten months ago) link
Lol at Ginger Baker comparison.
― CeeLô Borges (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 6 June 2023 11:36 (ten months ago) link
did he become a nicer person with the new fangs or
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 6 June 2023 11:38 (ten months ago) link
heh
― CeeLô Borges (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 6 June 2023 12:15 (ten months ago) link
Another hack tribute. This one was so desperate to get his tribute in he got it published in Norwegian
Here’s my tribute to Martin Amis 1949-2023 for @Vinduet touching on his influential style and unorthodox way of writing fiction (in Norwegian for now but some things transcend national and linguistic boundaries)https://t.co/urs4z2efnI— Leo Robson (@leorobsonwriter) June 6, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 6 June 2023 18:59 (ten months ago) link
Fixed teeth transcend national and linguistic boundaries.
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 6 June 2023 19:07 (ten months ago) link
Picked up Nabokov's 'Speak, Memory', as it seems a little bit like Amis' Experience. Nabokov writes about his father a lot, though by no means exclusively so. Feels like -- both in The New Statesman piece above and the John Self piece where he talked it as the book for people who hate Amis -- that Experience could be the book that lasts as the white, Oxbridge-educated, middle-class hacks who cared to pay a tribute have been trying to sell it a bit more than some of his later novels, say.
Reading the Nabokov I could see why. Both were prickly, nasty people, who grew up well, but in these memoirs they write about things you are not going to be that nasty about. Get quite jaded about that attitude. Can't you be tender about people you made up?
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 8 June 2023 10:45 (ten months ago) link
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/16/martin-amis-ian-mcewan-and-anna-wintour-honoured-in-kings-birthday-list
Amis's posthumous knighthood surprises me as
a) I have never heard of a posthumous knighthoodb) he writes in EXPERIENCE, I think, of knighthoods being ridiculous (at least he says that Sir David Hare's is)c) if he didn't want it, he can't now turn it down. Or had he already agreed to it?
I believe that David Bowie refused honours. What if Bowie had been posthumously awarded them in Summer 2016?
― the pinefox, Saturday, 17 June 2023 10:27 (ten months ago) link
I would also sayd) After Savile died we were told that he couldn't posthumously be stripped of his knighthood as it ended with his death anyway.
― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 17 June 2023 10:38 (ten months ago) link
the ‘martin amis faked his death’ conspiracy theory starts here
― rick semper moranis (bizarro gazzara), Saturday, 17 June 2023 11:32 (ten months ago) link
Amis accepted it, apparently they told him about it last month. & they have dated it to the day before he died because the convention is still that knighthoods don’t apply posthumously (can’t change that or Charles might have to officially revoke that of his hero savile) So the idea is amis is officially retroactively a Sir for one day and then not, it’s v pointless
― Grandall Flange (wins), Saturday, 17 June 2023 11:39 (ten months ago) link
or the knighthood killed him
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 17 June 2023 11:41 (ten months ago) link
It would be great if it had that effect on all recipients
― two grills one tap (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 17 June 2023 13:05 (ten months ago) link
a sudden nerve twinge made charles slash instead of dub, rip martin
― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 17 June 2023 13:20 (ten months ago) link
Given that Fosse won the Novel today I should bring up this tweet.
Where, like Fosse, we have some deployment of repetition
Anyone who says Martin Amis wasn’t a stylist is, frankly, an idiot pic.twitter.com/orr7Q0ieLe— Max Lawton (@maxdaniellawton) September 1, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 5 October 2023 15:19 (six months ago) link
*Nobel
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 5 October 2023 15:25 (six months ago) link