Topic:	War Against Cliche--The Foreward (2 of 13), Read 85 times
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	nothingfancy g.partch@worldnet.att.net
Date:	Wednesday, February 21, 2001 07:54 PM

 

Topic:	Seven Types of Ambiguous Bullshit (3 of 13), Read 87 times
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	Lars Vanderquist vanderquist@hotmail.com
Date:	Wednesday, February 21, 2001 09:40 PM

Memo to nothingfancy: Neil Armstrong didn't revise his line. He muffed it. His intention was to say the following line: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." But he omitted the indefinite article out of sheer forgetfulness. (Which, come to think of it, is the only sane reaction when you're walking on the moon.)

Regarding Amis's foreward. I have just one question: What the hell is this guy talking about? Inquiring minds wanna know.

MARTIN AMIS SAYS: "Literary historians know it as the Age of Criticism...What ended it? The brutalist answer would consist of a single four-letter word: OPEC."

LARS VANDERQUIST SAYS: Since when has the cost of living ever impeded the flow of literary criticism? Literary criticism is right up there with death & taxes. The Hacks of Academe keep churning it out on a 24-hour basis. It's an odious testament to Amis's monumental solipsism that he conflates the Age of Criticism (whatever *that* is) with his own personal Age of Bohemianism.

MARTIN AMIS SAYS: "Literary criticism, now almost entirely confined to the universities, thus moves against talent by moving against the canon."

LARS VANDERQUIST SAYS: Amis truly belongs in an Oxford ivory tower, where he can worship The Literary Canon (whatever *that* is) and piss on the rabble below. He has a misplaced faith in Literary Absolutism. The Literary Canon isn't based on merit. It's based on popularity.

MARTIN AMIS SAYS: "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 knowledge we call literature."

LARS VANDERQUIST SAYS: The thing behind has ruined Amis's fiction. Amis has a show-offy compulsion to take quotes from The Canon and to insert them into his own fiction. This results in wankerature, not literature. Martin has devoted his life to trying to impress the schoolteachers with his diarrhea-flow of literary allusions from The Canon. He thinks it'll help him get his own novels included in The Canon. I've got news for Martin. It won't.

MARTIN AMIS SAYS: "In the long term, though, literature will resist levelling and revert to hierarchy. This isn't the decision of some snob of a belletrist. It is the decision of Judge Time, who constantly separates those who last from those who don't."

LARS VANDERQUIST SAYS: Spoken like a true literary Darwinist. But he's wrong again. Literature isn't a neat little hierarchy like they have in the English departments. Literature is a universe. There's a lot of unpopular uncanonized stuff that's good. And there's a lot of popular canonized stuff that's crappy. So don't take any shit from Martin Amis or any other arrogant literary-absolutist.

 

Topic:	Seven Types of Ambiguous Bullshit (4 of 13), Read 81 times
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	StephenP
Date:	Thursday, February 22, 2001 07:21 AM

LARS VANDERQUIST SAYS: Spoken like a true literary Darwinist. But he's wrong again. Literature isn't a neat little hierarchy like they have in the English departments. Literature is a universe. There's a lot of unpopular uncanonized stuff that's good. And there's a lot of popular canonized stuff that's crappy. So don't take any shit from Martin Amis or any other arrogant literary-absolutist.

For an intelligent man, William, this is a dumb riposte. Amis is saying that, while the good stuff is at present submerged by a pile of crap, the crap won't last. He's right, isn't he? I may not like a lot of stuff I read from two hundred years ago, but I can acknowledge its quality. The crap gets newly re-written for each successive market.

 

Topic:	Seven Types of Ambiguous Bullshit (5 of 13), Read 84 times
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	lobby lobby.ludd@mymail.tm
Date:	Thursday, February 22, 2001 07:54 AM

“Enjoying being insulting is a youthful corruption of power. You lose your taste for it when you realise how hard people try, how much they mind, and how long they remember (Angus Wilson and William Burroughs nursed my animadversions - and no doubt the animadversions of others - to the grave). . . . I am also struck by how hard I sometimes was on writers who (I erroneously felt) were trying to influence me: Roth, Mailer, Ballard.”

More feeble Amis tosh.

Enjoying being insulting is just one of the many pleasures each new day offers.
And Amis has allowed his head to grow and grow if he thinks a hip old geezer like William Burroughs “nursed my animadversions - and no doubt the animadversions of others - to the grave”.(what an ugly way of putting it – so typical of the contrived and rarified wordplay of the dwarf.)

 

Topic:	Judge Time is an unreliable judge (6 of 13), Read 51 times
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	Lars Vanderquist vanderquist@hotmail.com
Date:	Saturday, February 24, 2001 11:50 AM

STEPHENP SAID: "Amis is saying that, while the good stuff is at present submerged by a pile of crap, the crap won't last. He's right, isn't he? I may not like a lot of stuff I read from two hundred years ago, but I can acknowledge its quality."

But he also implied that historical reputation is The Ultimate Opinion. This is the literary equivalent of papal infallibility. He gives far too much credence to Established Critical Opinion.

Okay. Here's the thing: All I'm trying to say is that the value of entertainment is strictly a matter of personal taste. Reputation should have nothing to do with it. I don't give half a shit about reputation. ROMEO & JULIET and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM are unreadable because of all of those fucking rhymes. KING LEAR is based on a ludicrously stupid & corny plot-complication. (Namely, the ass-kissing contest at the beginning.) HAMLET is insufferable because the character of Hamlet is insufferable. People can continue to engage in deep-suck sessions on Shakespeare's shiny white ass till the end of time, but it's not gonna change my opinion.

Ya know why Martin dislikes DUBLINERS? Because those stories aren't stylized out the wazoo like Amis's empty exercises are. Ya know why Martin can't help but have a grudging admiration for ULYSSES? You guessed it. Because it's stylized out the wazoo like Amis's product. ULYSSES was recently voted the greatest novel of the 1900s. Needless to say, it's an honor based on pure reputation. Because nobody bothers to read the piece of shit. So much for the judgemental reliability of Judge Time.

NED ROREM SAID: "Until an Absolute is established as to what defines 'good music', I will retain my right to call trash certain works of Beethoven: the Emperor, the Appassionata, the end of the Ninth."