What platform are we on? Is this the darts board? Is it my throw?. "Good throw, Keith, you cunt." Neil, I think you are so right about Martin Amis, who had an admirable command of his page. By which I mean. he could feel thing, emotionally, but he had a powerful, overarching intellect that was pulling and pushing the language for effect. Sticking to PC attitudes is what you have to do in so many real-life situations, but not if you want to write a compelling book.
"Did you notice, during the Norway game, how the faces of our stars degenerated as the match went on? Kevin Keegan, a cross between Marc Bolan and Donny Osmond when he spun the coin in the centre circle, resembled a grimacing Magwitch by half-time. Paul Mariner, a picture of pampered, hammy self-love at club level, reminded me, as he trudged from the park, of the standard, traumatically chinless mod who puts in depressingly regular appearances at South Coast magistrates’ courts after Bank Holiday weekends. Trevor Francis, usually the identikit poet, dreamer and heart-throb of the lower sixth, looked like a mean and frazzled brawler when he missed that easy header in the second half. As for Terry McDermott, who cuts a pretty unreliable figure at the best of times ... By the final whistle, England looked like a scratch team from a remedial borstal, whereas the Norwegians, their blond locks bouncing in the air, were romping about like cosseted college boys."
Good quote. As is the one that Radio 4 used this morning about a tennis game. Then the darts stuff. Anyone would think that Amis's main thing was sport! Actually, I prefer his quotes about writing; thinking and writing; thinking and writing and living. And I like the way that tenderness snuck into his later stuff that had been so bad boyish for so long.
Ha, yes, I think the sport thing is a good route into his work. So many good quotes:
“A sense of humor is a serious business; and it isn't funny, not having one. Watch the humorless closely: the cocked and furtive way they monitor all conversation, their flashes of panic as irony or exaggeration eludes them, the relief with which they submit to the meaningless babble of unanimous laughter. The humorless can programme themselves to relish situations of human farce or slapstick — and that's about it. They are handicapped in the head, or mentally 'challenged', as Americans say (euphemism itself being a denial of humour). The trouble is that the challenge wins, every time, hands down. The humorless have no idea what is going on and can't make sense of anything at all.”
Yes, great quote, but it's in early Amis vein. Not a flicker of sympathy for the human condition. Remorselessly pursuing anyone not as clever or as funny or as quick as Martin. Reminds me of Will Self who worships his own intelligence and can only show empathy with members of the A list. That in itself dates him.
It is rare to see people punching down nowadays but it can, I’m afraid, be very funny. I find Amis less convincing when he gets sentimental, too abstract, perhaps.
Not sure if this will still be true when I kick the proverbial bucket, but I've made to 53 and the only Amis prose I've ever read is the black sheep of his literary family, Invasion of the Space Invaders :) It is an entertaining softcover book, and was pricey for a while as it was out of print. I bought mine in the 80s from a remainder bookshop. As a kid the line that stuck in my head was his tip for Asteroids, which was not to go trigger happy at the start of a level, lest you be, "stoned to death like an Iranian rapist".
I request it from Sheffield library vaults. Highly highly recommend Money.
"In LA, you can't do anything unless you drive. Now I can't do anything unless I drink. And the drink-drive combination, it really isn't possible out there. If you so much as loosen your seatbelt or drop your ash or pick your nose, then it's an Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later. Any indiscipline, you feel, any variation, and there's a bullhorn, a set of scope sights, and a coptered pig drawing a bead on your rug.
So what can a poor boy do? You come out of the hotel, the Vraimont. Over boiling Watts the downtown skyline carries a smear of God's green snot. You walk left, you walk right, you are a bank rat on a busy river. This restaurant serves no drink, this one serves no meat, this one serves no heterosexuals. You can get your chimp shampooed, you can get your dick tattooed, twenty-four hour, but can you get lunch? And should you see a sign on the far side of the street flashing BEEF - BOOZE - NO STRINGS, then you can forget it. The only way to get across the road is to be born there. All the ped-xing signs say DONT WALK, all of them, all the time. That is the message, the content of Los Angeles: don't walk. Stay inside. Don't walk. Drive. Don't walk. Run! I tried the cabs. No use. The cabbies are all Saturnians who aren't even sure whether this is a right planet or a left planet. The first thing you have to do, every trip, is teach them how to drive."
Your reflections on literary tribalism come quite neatly off the back of my finishing Matthew Battles book 'Library - An Unquiet History'. It is fascinating to see how (the preservation or not of ) literature has been directed by tribal allegiances. And I cannot help but think of the big fat stupid stooshie related to Jenny Lindsay and Magi Gibson in terms of Scottish writers who have been hounded out of literary establishments because of not being in the 'right' tribe. And yet your selection of passages alone show the beauty of contrasting works -both which establish a curiosity in me for different reasons. And if I was 'challenged' by the characters doesn't that represent the power of the work as it butts against the world we live in individually or collectively. Isn't that a most interesting starting point?
What platform are we on? Is this the darts board? Is it my throw?. "Good throw, Keith, you cunt." Neil, I think you are so right about Martin Amis, who had an admirable command of his page. By which I mean. he could feel thing, emotionally, but he had a powerful, overarching intellect that was pulling and pushing the language for effect. Sticking to PC attitudes is what you have to do in so many real-life situations, but not if you want to write a compelling book.
So many great passages:
"Did you notice, during the Norway game, how the faces of our stars degenerated as the match went on? Kevin Keegan, a cross between Marc Bolan and Donny Osmond when he spun the coin in the centre circle, resembled a grimacing Magwitch by half-time. Paul Mariner, a picture of pampered, hammy self-love at club level, reminded me, as he trudged from the park, of the standard, traumatically chinless mod who puts in depressingly regular appearances at South Coast magistrates’ courts after Bank Holiday weekends. Trevor Francis, usually the identikit poet, dreamer and heart-throb of the lower sixth, looked like a mean and frazzled brawler when he missed that easy header in the second half. As for Terry McDermott, who cuts a pretty unreliable figure at the best of times ... By the final whistle, England looked like a scratch team from a remedial borstal, whereas the Norwegians, their blond locks bouncing in the air, were romping about like cosseted college boys."
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n22/martin-amis/football-mad
I did like Will Self's piece on the porcelain plonker.
Good quote. As is the one that Radio 4 used this morning about a tennis game. Then the darts stuff. Anyone would think that Amis's main thing was sport! Actually, I prefer his quotes about writing; thinking and writing; thinking and writing and living. And I like the way that tenderness snuck into his later stuff that had been so bad boyish for so long.
Ha, yes, I think the sport thing is a good route into his work. So many good quotes:
“A sense of humor is a serious business; and it isn't funny, not having one. Watch the humorless closely: the cocked and furtive way they monitor all conversation, their flashes of panic as irony or exaggeration eludes them, the relief with which they submit to the meaningless babble of unanimous laughter. The humorless can programme themselves to relish situations of human farce or slapstick — and that's about it. They are handicapped in the head, or mentally 'challenged', as Americans say (euphemism itself being a denial of humour). The trouble is that the challenge wins, every time, hands down. The humorless have no idea what is going on and can't make sense of anything at all.”
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/11337.Martin_Amis
Yes, great quote, but it's in early Amis vein. Not a flicker of sympathy for the human condition. Remorselessly pursuing anyone not as clever or as funny or as quick as Martin. Reminds me of Will Self who worships his own intelligence and can only show empathy with members of the A list. That in itself dates him.
It is rare to see people punching down nowadays but it can, I’m afraid, be very funny. I find Amis less convincing when he gets sentimental, too abstract, perhaps.
Not sure if this will still be true when I kick the proverbial bucket, but I've made to 53 and the only Amis prose I've ever read is the black sheep of his literary family, Invasion of the Space Invaders :) It is an entertaining softcover book, and was pricey for a while as it was out of print. I bought mine in the 80s from a remainder bookshop. As a kid the line that stuck in my head was his tip for Asteroids, which was not to go trigger happy at the start of a level, lest you be, "stoned to death like an Iranian rapist".
I request it from Sheffield library vaults. Highly highly recommend Money.
"In LA, you can't do anything unless you drive. Now I can't do anything unless I drink. And the drink-drive combination, it really isn't possible out there. If you so much as loosen your seatbelt or drop your ash or pick your nose, then it's an Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later. Any indiscipline, you feel, any variation, and there's a bullhorn, a set of scope sights, and a coptered pig drawing a bead on your rug.
So what can a poor boy do? You come out of the hotel, the Vraimont. Over boiling Watts the downtown skyline carries a smear of God's green snot. You walk left, you walk right, you are a bank rat on a busy river. This restaurant serves no drink, this one serves no meat, this one serves no heterosexuals. You can get your chimp shampooed, you can get your dick tattooed, twenty-four hour, but can you get lunch? And should you see a sign on the far side of the street flashing BEEF - BOOZE - NO STRINGS, then you can forget it. The only way to get across the road is to be born there. All the ped-xing signs say DONT WALK, all of them, all the time. That is the message, the content of Los Angeles: don't walk. Stay inside. Don't walk. Drive. Don't walk. Run! I tried the cabs. No use. The cabbies are all Saturnians who aren't even sure whether this is a right planet or a left planet. The first thing you have to do, every trip, is teach them how to drive."
Very purple and very 80s ;)
Your reflections on literary tribalism come quite neatly off the back of my finishing Matthew Battles book 'Library - An Unquiet History'. It is fascinating to see how (the preservation or not of ) literature has been directed by tribal allegiances. And I cannot help but think of the big fat stupid stooshie related to Jenny Lindsay and Magi Gibson in terms of Scottish writers who have been hounded out of literary establishments because of not being in the 'right' tribe. And yet your selection of passages alone show the beauty of contrasting works -both which establish a curiosity in me for different reasons. And if I was 'challenged' by the characters doesn't that represent the power of the work as it butts against the world we live in individually or collectively. Isn't that a most interesting starting point?
100%. I seek out challenges!!!