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From
"Writers and Wrongs," by John Walsh
The Independent
8 May 2003
"If I had to live my life all over again", said Woody Allen, "I'd do it all
exactly the same---only I wouldn't read BEOWULF." You know how he feels. The
relationship between the reader and the Work of Literature is sometimes a
chilly, argumentative one, full of ranting pretension on one side and fuming
incomprehension on the other. Three hundred pages into THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN or THE
GOLDEN BOWL, the first-time reader of Thomas Mann or Henry James can start to
shout internally, "Why are you telling me all this?" Reading a book you cannot
abide, but have forced yourself to read because of its author's reputation, can
make you feel as though you're chained to a madman (William Burroughs) or dining
with a monster of solipsistic preciousness (Virginia Woolf) or stuck in a prison
cell with an interminable, academic mega-bore (JRR Tolkien).
The BBC is shortly to announce the 100 most popular novels in English, as voted
for by the British population. Discovering the nation's favourite-ever work of
fiction in The Big Read will go on for months until the final Top 10 are given
their own discursive showcases in October. We thought it might be more
entertaining to discover which books make people's blood boil, and bring out
their most attractively teeth-grinding qualities.
So draw near, gentle reader, as 50 leading lights on the literary, political,
opinion-forming and media scene identify their worst reading experiences,
confess their hatred of global superstars from Shakespeare to the authors of the
Bible, and administer a good kicking to victims across the literary spectrum,
from Jacques Derrida to JK Rowling.
Johann Hari / THE WAR AGAINST CLICHÉ by Martin Amis / "It reveals what a
disgusting, malformed, literary dwarf Martin Amis is. His whole approach to
life---that if you write good prose you are morally superior---is so ridiculous
and snobbish."
"Nick" responds to Hari, on the Amis Discussion Web,
Thursday, May 08, 2003 1:24 a.m.:
"His whole approach to life---that if you write
good prose you are morally superior---is so ridiculous and snobbish."
"It's the sort of hysterical book that intellects read because they are too
snooty to watch EASTENDERS like everybody else."
'Snobbish', 'snooty'. These words remind one of Amis' introduction to The
War Against Cliche: "The reviewer calmly tolerates the arrival of a new
novel or slim volume, defensively settles into it, and then sees which way
it rubs him up. The right way or the wrong way. The results of this contact
will form the data of the review, without any reference to the thing behind.
And the thing behind, I am afraid, is talent, and the canon, and the body of
work we call literature. ... These 'feelings' are seldom unadulterated; they
are admixtures of herd opinions and social anxieties, vanities, touchinesses,
and everything else that makes up a self."
Either Amis and other 'intellects' have been correctly and devastatingly
summed up by these indignant critics, or Amis seems to have anticipated (and
rendered inert) Hari's reaction to the 'talent elite'. Although the great
David Cross has warned us that 'false teeth tell false truths', I think I'll
throw in with Miss Tramis on this one.
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