The stylish, sharp, amusing and brilliant author of 'Money'{1984}, 'London Fields'{1989} and 'The Rachel Papers' {1974} Martin Amis has just died. The writer was not afraid to speak boldly and was his own man to the last!
'The Future could go this way, that way. The future's futures have never looked so rocky. Don't put money on it. Take my advice and stick to the present. It's the real stuff, it is the only stuff, it's all there is, the present, the panting present.' So says the main character John Self of Martin Amis's novel 'Money.'{1984}
The novel is a lyrical description of the travails of a businessman intending to make a new film while travelling between New York and London and how he is letting himself go by overdrinking, overeating and overdoing just about everything. Life has been reduced to one endless feeding trough where the character has lost control of all constraints. Self boasts that 'I am not allergic to the twentieth century. I am addicted to the twentieth century.' From those lines you quickly gather that Amis not only adores lyrically playing with words but amusing the audience.
In this regard the works of Amis are rich in witty catch phrases and sayings. Some of those short sayings could succinctly sum up an era in just a few words. Amis argued that the role of literature was to not only provoke lively thought, but to make people laugh. He claimed that by nature any good writer would make people laugh because life was funny. He could see the humor in Kafka. The word 'panting present' perhaps sums up the tragedy of the price a person is paying succumbing to any addiction. A person feels fatigued with every step he or she is making. A hard life with all its whims, caprice and chaos can overpower even the strongest wills. After all the efforts to fulfill you dreams you are left panting on the slippery stairway. In one sad scene while John Self is sitting down with his cap fallen down a passerby mistakes John for a homeless beggar and tosses a coin into his cap. It reminds you of a similar scene from Dostoevski's 'Crime and Punishment ' where Raskolnikov's unkempt and shabby experience draws sympathy from an old woman who hands him a coin.
There are a lot more laughs from this novel. When John Self is given a book 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell he regards it as a book for children. He complains 'What next? Rupert the Bear?' And then you hear John Self recklessly proclaim 'YIELD say the traffic lights - but don't you listen! Not yielding, that is the thing. To strive, to seek, to butch it out- it's all a question of willpower.' It is clear that John Self personifies the coming highly materialistic, ambitious and at times reckless 'me generation' that arose in the late 1980's and into the 1990's and is still with us. This type of character who refuses to yield to any law or court decision has become an quintessential archetype of the 21st century. Martin Amis turned out to be very perceptive about the behavior of a future generation addicted and ensnared by all kinds of lust.
The English writer Sebastian Faulks wrote in his work 'On Fiction' {2011} about Amis's novels that 'Almost every sentence contains a verbal surprise, a word or phrase forced into an unfamiliar context. Few novelists have been so recognizable from their prose ; few have invested so much and so obviously in language as the principle pleasure of their books.' '{page 91, Faulk's On Fiction} But not everyone was amused by his novels. Some literary critics complained his works were too long, lacked a plot to hold the narrative together and overstated things. But Amis, being a master of rhetoric always had an answer. To those who complained of length he said "I did not take a vow of poverty." And concerning lack of plot he stated "What mattered most was the voice of the character. Plots really matter only in thrillers." As for overstating things he would candidly and casually admit with a 'so what' emphasis that " I am not subtle. I 'm extreme." And Amis could make extreme theatrical statements such as all religion and beliefs are based on violence.
Martin Amis was implacably opposed to attempts to turn literature into a religion or thrust it into the framework of some ideology. He thought this was very dangerous and would lead to the suppression of free literary expression. He agreed with the German philosopher Nietzsche that 'convictions are prisons.'The notion of 'sensitivity readers' changing the words of an author horrified him. Like many Russians I have met he would claim that what mattered most of all was not the personal or political views of a writer, but the quality of his work. Fiction, in a sense, is one of the freest forms of expression. If you accuse an author of advocating this or that view the writer is entitled to state, "It is my character which is expressing those views and not myself." It seems that a lot of literary criticism is based on banal statements such as a novel having unlikeable characters or this character behaved in an incorrect way. But why should an author be forced to make his characters pleasant or acceptable to a literary critic? Who decides whether this character is likeable or not? Who cares?
One of Amis's biggest critics was his own father the writer Kingsley Amis. When Amis put his own character into the novel 'Money,' his father complained 'Breaking the rules. Buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself' was all egoism. In fact, it was a novel literary device which allowed Amis to claim that he himself should not be confused with the character 'John Self.' This is because a lot of people claim that the fiction of some authors is simply disguised autobiography. But a lot of characters are simply the invention of the author. They just don't exist full stop. I think the storyteller Daniel Ogen grasped this when he told me how he was mesmerized by the eccentric character Miss Havisham from Dickens's work 'Great Expectations.' Daniel asked me, "Where did Dickens get the idea to invent a character such as Miss Havisham?" He marveled at the inventiveness of Dickens. And this inventing did not undermine the credibility of the character.
Amis hated cliches. One cliche he strongly disagreed with was 'Reality was stranger than fiction', or the common phrase 'You couldn't invent it.' On the contrary, there is a lot a creative and competent author can dream up. Amis was full of advice about how to go about writing in his work 'Inside Story, A novel'. The title seems a misleading misnomer or provocative move. The book turns out to be largely his memoirs and it is often autobiographical where he fondly remembers his own past girlfriends, fellow authors and expresses his views on just about everything. He writes about his friends Saul Bellow, Philip Larkin, Jane Howard and Christopher Hitchens. It is not surprising that his hero is the Russian writer Nabokov who also adored stylishly playing with words to amuse people.
In this work Amis is rich with advice to budding writers of fiction. For instance, don't introduce too many characters in your novel, and don't write about religion or dreams as it bores potential readers. He goes into trenchant detail about all kinds of punctuation an author should and should not use. For example, on editing your own work 'It is the rhythm, not the content , that you're refining. And such decisions will be peculiar to you and to the rhythms of your inner voice. When you write, don't forget how you talk.' He even goes into detail about how to correctly use a thesaurus! I'm not sure I can agree with suggesting writers avoid going on about dreams. I mean some people consider Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams' {1900} as a masterpiece in storytelling! And Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' was not marred or too dented by comments on how religion influences the decisions of the characters. But Amis still gives a lot of useful tips which can aid writers.
But what interested me much more was the tender advice he offers authors. He approves of Nabokov's suggestion that we have to meet the world with 'a fresh, loving eye.' He states, 'Don't trust anything, don't even dare get used to anything. Be continuously surprised. Those who accept the face value of things are the true innocents, endearingly and in a way enviably rational; far too rational to attempt a novel or poem.' {page 498, Inside Story, Vintage, London , 2021.} In this respect he states we have to relearn to love the snow again just as we once did when we were children. This might be a feat. As he states, 'Snow loves the young [giving them snowballs and snowmen together with other treats ]; and the young love it back.' {page 489, Inside Story} As we get older we begin to curse the snow for delaying and impeding our way to work or making us colder. 'Snow hates the old' laments Amis. But Amis argues we still have to love it back or at least try and love it ! This is Amis at his most moving and poignant.
Anyone who has not yet read the works of Martin Amis is in for a treat ! The world will certainly miss his wit. He had an alluring and amazing voice which immediately stood out. Or should I say that he still has such a voice? After all his words live on!
Acknowledges sources
1. Martin Amis, 'Money', Vintage, U. K . 2005.
2. Martin Amis, Inside Story, A novel, Vintage, U.K. 2021. Amis 's reflections on how we face and experience death are worth examining especially when he quotes Wilfred Owen's wartime poem 'Strange meeting.'
3. Martin Amis, 'The Second Plane', Vintage Books, London, 2008. In one fascinating account Amis attempts to imagine the last moments of a terrorist who had hijacked a plane on September 11 in his chapter ' The Last Days of Muhammad Atta.'
4. 'The Penguin History of Literature', Edited by Martin Dodsworth, London, 1994. See Dodsworth's negative criticism of Amis in the chapter 'The Novel since 1950'.
5. Sebastian Faulks , 'On Fiction, A Story of the Novel in 28 characters.' Random House, BBC books, 2011, London. Faulks offers generous praise of Martin Amis.