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Martin Amis

Shade said:
Success is interesting but, in my view, an apprentice piece. Oh and you mean Lucky Jim ... unless Martin Amis was the love child of Joseph Conrad. :eek:
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That's it. Well, Success isn't really turning me on. I have Running with Scissors waiting, so I may just move on to that.
 
Shade said:
Success is interesting but, in my view, an apprentice piece. Oh and you mean Lucky Jim ... unless Martin Amis was the love child of Joseph Conrad. :eek:
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And I went and got Shade confused with Angus . I won't be doing that again either. No offense, Angus!

:D
 
I was going through the bookstore today and saw that there was a Penguin Classic of Money on the wall. I picked it up because I thought all the Penguin Classics that this store carried were by Canadian authors and I wasn't familiar with the name. I'm pretty familiar with the Canadian authors that would be published that way. Reading the back cover got me interested. Reading this thread got the book on my TBR list.
 
ions said:
I was going through the bookstore today and saw that there was a Penguin Classic of Money on the wall. I picked it up because I thought all the Penguin Classics that this store carried were by Canadian authors and I wasn't familiar with the name. I'm pretty familiar with the Canadian authors that would be published that way. Reading the back cover got me interested. Reading this thread got the book on my TBR list.
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Hope you 'enjoy' it. Just keep away from Yellow Dog. :)
 
I read London Fields earlier this year. It's not really a book I'd reccomend, although it was cleverly written. It was very boring at times, as there didn;t seem to be any kind of plot, or a slow moving one perhaps. The characters were interesting though, esspecially the downtrodden type. The book was a little weird at times - references to pedophilia, rape and the like, but I suppose that's fairly normal for modern literature. It was just the description in these parts of the book was a bit graphic, and somewhat crude. O well!
 
kirsty said:
I read London Fields earlier this year. It's not really a book I'd reccomend, although it was cleverly written. It was very boring at times, as there didn;t seem to be any kind of plot, or a slow moving one perhaps. The characters were interesting though, esspecially the downtrodden type. The book was a little weird at times - references to pedophilia, rape and the like, but I suppose that's fairly normal for modern literature. It was just the description in these parts of the book was a bit graphic, and somewhat crude. O well!
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This book annoyed the hell out of me at the end. I read it a while ago now, but I remember there seemed to be no resolution to the whole affair. But apart from that, I thought it was ok. It was a bit too long and dense, though, I thought.

However, Yellow Dog was about a hundred times worse and practically unreadable.
 
Just finished reading Night Train and Time's Arrow over the weekend. I found both to be unique and intriguing enough to have requested another two of his books, Eintein's Monsters and Heavy Water, from the library.

CDA (and others), what makes Yellow Dog so bad? It's also available at the library, but should I not bother?

ell
 
I wouldn't say Yellow Dog is unreadable (I read it, after all: twice), but it's certainly not his best work. The King Henry IX sections are pretty poor, but the Clint Smoker stuff is brilliant - showing perhaps that Amis is at his best when dealing with lowlifes - and in particular in the tabloid deal with footballer Ainsley Carr.

Don't know if you'll get as much out of Heavy Water or Einstein's Monsters as you did from Time's Arrow or Night Train, Ell, the latter being two of my favourite Amises. The two you've ordered, as you may know, are collections of stories. I recall only really liking one of the stories in Einstein's Monsters - Insight at Flame Lake, which I thought superb - and similarly thought Heavy Water was mixed (though I liked the opening story, where screenwriters and poets swap places in the universe).

Of his longer novels, I would recommend Money and The Information.
 
Yellow Dog is just boring. I personally didn't find enough going on to keep me interested all that much.

Einstein's Monters and Heavy Water - both good, but maybe a tiny bit hit and miss.
 
Thanks for your opinions, Shade and CDA. I will give Money a try after I finish the collections.

I was quite impressed with Time's Arrow and Amis's ability to maintain coherence throughout the backwards storytelling. It could easily have gotten derailed in less skillful hands.

And thanks to AngusBenton for starting this thread. I might not have tried Amis otherwise.

ell
 
I've just finished both Einstein's Monsters and Heavy Water. I'm a big fan of well-written short stories, so approached these collections with cautious optimism. I was both pleasantly surprised and a tad disappointed by some of the pieces. As previously mentioned, the quality varies quite a bit. I suppose this is expected as the publication dates of the stories range from 1976 (Denton's Death) to 1997 (What Happened to Me On My Holiday).

I thought Einstein's Monsters a bit heavy-handed in the 'message' Amis was delivering, but the stories were enjoyable enough to keep me reading. His introduction was probably more interesting than the stories themselves. The introduction expounds his views about nuclear weapons and the nuclear age in a way that I found quite interesting (esp. when he interjects his perception of his father, Kingsley's, views on the matter). I found these opinions inform many of his later stories.

The collection in Heavy Water ranged from brilliant (Straight Fiction) to heart-breaking (the title story, Heavy Water) to godawful waste of my time (What Happened to Me On My Holiday). Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Worthwhile read, on the whole.

Next on my Martin Amis request list at the library: The Information

PS. perhaps a mod could move this thread to "Author Discussion"?
 
I recently got Heavy Water from the library as well. Um.... That's all I've got since I haven't started it yet.
 
godawful waste of my time (What Happened to Me On My Holiday)
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Interesting that you took this view, Ell. I saw Amis at a public reading once and he read this story (as well as from Night Train: how's it going, Moto?) before Heavy Water came out. Hearing it read in the intended nasal twang, without the spelling trickery to interfere (though I actually liked that), made it come alive. As a result it's actually one of my favourite stories in the book! For those who haven't read it, here's an example of what I mean:

A derrible thing habbened do me on my haliday. A harrible thing, and a bermanend thing. Id won'd be the zame, ever again.

Bud virzd I'd bedder zay: don'd banig! I'm nad zuvvering vram brain damage - or vram adenoids. And I gan wride bedder than thiz when I wand do. Bud I don'd wand do. Led me egsblain.

I am halve English and halve Amerigan. My mum is Amerigan and my dad is English. I go do zgool in London and my bronunziation is English - glear, even vaindly Agzonian, the zame as my dad's. Amerigans avden zeem zurbrised do hear an eleven-year-old who zbeegs as I zbeeg. Grandaddy Jag, who is Amerigan, admids thad he vinds id unganny. As iv zuj an agzend reguires grade ganzendration even vram grownubs, led alone jildren. Amerigans zeem to zuzbegd thad the English relags and zbeeg American behind glozed doors. Shouding oud, on their redurn, 'Honey, I'm home!' My other grandvather veld divverendly: English, do him, was the more najural voize. Zo thiz zdory iz vor them, doo, as well as vor Eliaz. I dell id thiz way - in zargazdig Ameriganese - begaz I don'd wand id do be glear: do be all grizb and glear. There is thiz zdrange resizdanze. There is thiz zdrange resizdanze.
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Interesting. It did occur to me that it would be different if I actually heard it as he intended, but in my mind, it came across as someone with a very bad head cold.

I wonder if it's the way I - with my Canadian ear - interpreted the pronunciation? i.e. the way you hear it in your head is different than the way I hear it. Am I making myself clear? I rather wish I had heard his reading.

ps. Shade, how are you liking Fifth Business?
 
I have actually finished Fifth Business, just this morning, but haven't decided what to read next, so it's still up there as my current read. I loved it, and will post more on a Robertson Davies thread if there is one, or start one if there isn't...
 
I've got three of his books at home "The information", "koba the dread" and "other people" but i haven't read them yet :eek: :eek: :eek:

Here in Italy his books are published by a good and very important publishing house (Einaudi), at least it's the one I prefer ;) but Amis is not very well known as a writer. even if critics are very kind with his works.

Ok, i've to read one of his books, then i'll come back
 
So I finished Night Train this morning - surprisingly good!! Angus' comment about Amis' "sick and talented mind" nearly put me off, but when I saw this book at the library sale I picked it up.

Not really sure what to think about the ending - firstly in regard to
what actually happened to Jennifer. I wasn't sure what the lithium meant. Did she OD on it? Why did she actually commit suicide?
Maybe I read it too quickly and missed something. I think I'll have to go back and read it again. Secondly in regard to
what Mike's plans were - why was she so upset with her findings regarding Jennifer? Obviously she was having suicidal thoughts herself given she was about to go get hammered, which would result in possible death given her condition, but I think because I didn't understand the final conclusions regarding Jennifer's suicide then I didn't really understand this.

That being said, I really enjoyed the language and the use of imagery. The character of Mike was really well developed, and I could really 'feel' her - I could see her swagger, the way she would carry herself, and the expressions she would make. I like being inside a characters mind like that.

I gotta read over it again.
 
I'm glad you liked it Kook - it's certainly worth a reread. In relation to the questions you raise:

1.
No Jennifer didn't OD on lithium, in fact she wasn't even taking it. She just faked it as a line of enquiry to make people think she was depressed so that provided a 'rational' reason for her suicide.

2.
You're absolutely right that Mike intends to go and drink herself to death (via 'fulminant hepatic failure' which as you point out was signalled earlier in the book) in 'Battery, and its long string of dives.' The only hope against this is that she can hear Tobe's steps 'bending the stairs out of joint' as she's about to leave - we might dare to hope that he will stop her. The reason she is so upset about Jennifer's suicide is because she and Jennifer are paired (a recurring motif in Amis's work): Mike sees Jennifer as everything she isn't - beautiful, feminine, happy, in love - and figures that if Jennifer can't see anything to live for, why should she?

"A woman fell out of a clear blue sky" - I love that line.
 
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