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Money noted
"Money represents a high-water mark in Amis's career,
building on the strengths of his earlier novels but far exceeding them in scope, depth of
characterization, and organic unity. It also stands as one of the indispensable novels of
and about its decade." --James Diedrick,
Understanding Martin Amis.
[Site manager's note: this page contains links to two complete essays on Money,
as well as a selective bibliography of criticism, reviews, and interviews relating to the
novel.]
Essays:
Articles and Sections of books containing discussions of Money:
 | Alexander, Victoria. "Martin Amis: Between the Influences of
Bellow and Nabokov." The Antioch Review (Fall 1994): 580-90. |
| Ashley, Leonard R.N. "`Names are Awfully Important': The
Onomastics of Satirical Comment in Martin Amis's Money: A Suicide Note." Literary
Onomastics Studies 14 (1987): 1-48. Amis's inventive, suggestive use of names in his
novels deserves sustained attention. Ashley's analysis of Money is a start, though his
compulsive, discursive style detracts from his insights. |
| Bernard, Catherine. "A Certain Hermeneutic Slant: Sublime
Allegories in Contemporary English Fiction." Contemporary Literature 38
(1997): 164-84. Discusses the "revival of allegory and the almost coincidental
emergence of a postmodernist form of the sublime" in the works of contemporary
British novelists Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Graham Swift, D.M. Thomas, and Jeannette
Winterson. Money: A Suicide Note, London Fields, and Time's Arrow are
central to Bernard's analysis of these writers' simultaneous attraction to and suspicion
of allegory and the sublime. "In such indeterminacy may lie the hermeneutic stance of
much of contemporary English fiction, poised between a postmodernist distrust of discourse
and a modernist belief in language" (182). |
| Brantlinger, Patrick. Fictions of the State: Culture and
Credit in Britain, 1694-1994. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Brantlinger's
genealogy of "public credit" takes him from the founding of the Bank of England
to the 90s, from 18th-century Augustan satire to Martin Amis's account of 1980s yuppies in
Money. Brantlinger finds a common basis of both financial and literary fictions
in credit, or belief. Apropos of Amis and Money, Brantlinger writes that in the
postindustrial, postmodern period, the "once almighty pound continues to lead a sort
of spectral/spectacular existence" (254). |
| Doan, Lara L. "'Sexy Greedy Is the Late
Eighties'": Power Systems in Amis's Money and Churchill's Serious Money."
Minnesota Review 34-5 (Spring-Fall 1990): 69- 80. Faults Amis for participating
in some of the power structures (especially heterosexist) he is ostensibly satirizing.
Inexcusably reductive. |
| Lodge, David. After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism.
London: Routledge, 1990. Excellent brief discussion of Money, which Lodge calls a
"skaz narrative in the Notes from Underground tradition, a demonic
carnival." |
| Massie, Allan. The Novel Today: A Critical Guide to the
British Novel 1970-1989. London: Longman, 1990. A chapter on "the contemporary
scene" discusses Amis's career up to Money, which Massie calls "an
entrancing work of art." |
| Miller, Karl. Doubles: Studies in Literary History.
London: Oxford University Press, 1985. Important in establishing Amis's fiction as worthy
of serious literary analysis. Miller places Amis in a tradition of writers preoccupied by
the "double." Contains brief but suggestive readings of Success, Other
People, and Money as "orphan deliriums."
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Selected reviews:
| Burgess, Anthony. "Self Possessed" (review of Money).
Observer 30 (September 1984): 20. |
| Review
of Money by John Gross (New York Times Book Review, March 15, 1985). |
| Geng, Veronica. "The Great Addiction" (Review of
Money:
A Suicide Note).
The New York Times (24 March, 1985): 7: 36. |
| Hamilton, Ian. "Martin and Martina" (review of Money).
London Review of Books 20 (September-3 October 1984): 3-4.
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Selected interviews and profiles relevant to Money:
| Haffenden, John. "Martin Amis." Novelists in
Interview. London: Methuen, 1985, 1-24. The best extended interview with Amis, who
talks at length about his narrative strategies and concerns. Includes important discussion
of Money. |
| McGrath, Patrick. "Interview with Martin Amis. Bomb
18 (Winter 1987): 26-29. Reprinted in Bomb Interviews. Ed. Betsy Sussler (San
Francisco: City Lights Books, 1992, 187-187. Good extended discussion with Amis; covers
some of the same ground as the Haffenden interview. |
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author of
Understanding Martin Amis, 2nd edition (2004).
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10 December, 2004.
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