Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
Martin Amis
Vintage 2008
When I think of Martin Amis I see the picture of him on the back cover of Dead Babies or The Rachel Papers – the very young, rather dashing prodigy who had attended dozens of crammers and ended up with a first at Oxford and his first novel published in his early twenties. It’s difficult to believe that actually he’s now turned 60 and is beginning to look more like his dad in his later years than the youthful go-getter in the photo. If reports in the press are to be believed he’s started to think like Dad too: bigoted, curmudgeonly, well to the right. This book, a collection of journalism, book reviews, and two short stories about September 11th and its aftermath, gives the lie to that though. His views, whilst undoubtedly strong, are thought through and persuasively expressed. Far from the illiberal rant I had expected, this is a balanced and thought-provoking work with political and religious extremism as its target. In Koba the Dread Amis presented the lunacy of Stalinism; here early on he asks: “What has extremism ever done for anyone? Where are its gifts to humanity? Where are its works?” He is thus particularly cogent on the absurdities and cruelty of Islamism and its affinities to “the thanatoid poltical movements we know most about, namely Bolshevism and Nazism”, and on the cynicism of the Iraq war. Although much of the book is inevitably concerned with these areas, I also enjoyed his forthrightly expressed views on literature: the tyranny of the politically correct curriculum, and the present emphasis on “sentiment as the prince of the critical utensils”. Sometimes, and sometimes rightly, Amis is criticised of going too far the other way, and getting so bogged down in stylistic pyrotechnics that the content becomes impenetrable, but that is certainly not the case most of the time here. The Second Plane is instead ferociously well-written, often witty, and never patronising. Highly recommended.
11 March 2010
http://www.martinamisweb.com/
See also: House of Meetings; The Pregnant Widow
|
|
