Martin
Amis Discussion Web
From: DaveL
Date:
Bronteboy wrote:
"There are similarities but they are superficial ones for the following
reason. There is a spectrum of female
characters in Amis ranging from Nicola and Amy Hide
at one end ranging through all the women in eg , Dead Babies with Hope,
Gina and Martina Twain at the other end. There is no such spectrum for male
homosexuals as I endeavoured to make clear."
Of course there are more female characters than homosexuals in Amis's work, and so it follows that there will be a broader
spectrum. Does that make the similarities in the argument superficial? I don't
think so, you do, I guess others can judge for
themselves.
Bronteboy again:
"But what of MA's hetero men? Again there is a spectrum across which we
find psychopaths ( Keith, Steve Cousins), villains, conceited fools, boors,
dupes, dummies, etc, and the cast is pretty skewed towards these types, but
(with the exception of the psychopaths) there is always a degree of authorial
empathy generated for them--particularly Guy, Richard Tull.
Even John Self."
Authorial empathy there may be, but what I was trying to say was that you
wouldn't hold them up as positive characters. They still don't do men any favours and you wouldn't say they were the male equivalent
of the type of female characters those who castigate Amis
for his portrayal of women call for. I stand by my belief that those who crticise Amis for his supposedly
pejorative portrayal of certain groups need to look at the wider picture - he
is interested in the darker side of life, and most of the characters, of all
sexes and persuasions, are unpleasant in some respect. As he says in London
Fields, happiness is written white on the page (or something like that).
By the way, welcome and congratulations for posting something of interest,
something to do with Amis and literature, something
we all have our different opinions on and can discuss, and something which is
not just senseless bile with a jpeg attached to it.
Dave
Topic: Amis &
Homosexuality
Conf: Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:
Date:
This has been a real
pleasure to read, I've gotta tell you. The bar has been
raised, and poor Geoffrey has toppled underneath it (Professor, why don't you
just delete everything lobby posts: there must be a
macro to help you while you're away).
It's too late and I'm too busy (this being my private life, these days, as
opposed to relief from work) to go into this, but a reference to two points:
'Making Sense Of Aids', in The Moronic Inferno (p 187
in my copy). This was written in 1985, the month after Money was published. Now
look, this is sickeningly sycophantic of me, but Diedrick has got this right,
in two ways. First, Amis's journalism finds him far
more 'human' (and thus we may presume, 'true-to-life') than his fiction. So, Amis the journalist, told to write explicitly what he
thinks (as opposed to all the implications we make of his novels), writes:
"Homosexuality isn't a version of heterosexuality. It is something else
again "(p191). He knows it, he just can't write it.
Second, it's like with women: Amis isn't that
bothered, in his fiction, with homosexuality as a 'theme': he has homosexual
characters, and like all the others (women, blacks, footballers, drug addicts,
posh men), they bend to the particular purposes of his fiction: they are
grotesques (though rarely quite as thin as cardboard).
In his fiction, Amis may fail to extend 'imaginative
empathy' to homosexuals, and women, and blacks, in the way he does to the great
characters (who are all fat men). This failure may cost him, in the long term,
the 'Great Novelist' tag that he covets (but it may not).
Read 'Making Sense of Aids'. That's what Amis thinks about it all. There is an incomprehension he
would do well to avoid in his fiction - see his astonishment and terror at the
'disco dummies' (come on Mart, someone's winding you up, as you'd know, if you
weren't so full of amazed and disgusted credulity). In his recent articles on
porn, Amis properly assured us that what he really
objects to in hardcore is erect penises. Well, the lady doth protest too much.
If he's going to produce the fictional masterpiece he ought to, he's going to
have to write himself in a lot less, and extend the humanity and wisdom of his
journalism to his novels.
Topic: Amis is a
non-theological homophobe
Conf: Martin Amis Discussion Web
Date:
Long ago
& far away (when I wore a younger man's thong), I whitewashed Amis's homophobia because my real purpose was to publicize
& insult Jewish homophobia. Needless to say, I was too soft on Amis. (If you'll forgive the penile
metaphor. And---no---I am not typing this post with a soft-on, thank you
very much.)
I'm grateful to masma for providing the following
paraphrased quote from OTHER PEOPLE: "It's meant to be good being queer;
you're supposed to enjoy it. But I don't. I don't like being queer at all. I
wish I didn't have to be."
Ya know, it's one thing for
a fictionist to create heterosexual characters who parrot the author's
homophobia. But it really takes a lotta nerve to
throw in a character who's a self-hating homosexual. Full
marks for gall, Martin.
What Martin obviously needs is a tiny bit more authorial arrogance. Then he can
write another novel and throw in a character named "God" and have God
himself insult homosexuals. Oh---wait a minute. I almost forgot. The Jews
already wrote such a novel. It's called The Bible.
Martin Amis is almost---but not quite---arrogant
enough to insult homosexuals in the name of God. But unfortunately for Martin,
he doesn't have enough Judeo-Christian theological shit in his eyes.
Topic:
Amis is a non-theological homophobe
Conf: Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:
Date:
Bilge
Delighted to see you're back, posting under my take of your very own name (I
like David Lodge's characters too!). And giving the
"eternal fissure fungus of humanity" another of your apoplectic
broadsides. What happened to make you this way, Bilge? Did you fail to
gain entry into art school because the Jewish ( or
crypto-Jewish ) examiners were incapable of recognizing your talent?
But on MA's writing you post:
"Ya know, it's one
thing for a fictionist to create heterosexual characters who parrot
the author's homophobia. But it really takes a lotta
nerve to throw in a character who's a self-hating homosexual. Full marks for
gall, Martin."
I wouldn't have thought it took much nerve or gall at all. Just the capacity to
honestly reflect upon the observation of humanity in action and disregard the
adverse consequences it might have on your prospects for a Booker. Amis, to his eternal credit, doesn't write about a world
populated by people as they would like to imagine they are, or pretend they
are, but as they actually are. Striving to depict the opposite of a despicably
dishonest "Amelior " type of universe, Amis
populates and drives his novels with exaggerated characters so as to sustain
what I call the " underbelly " prism. In this world, which resonates
very satisfyingly with the real world, the celebrity authors with beautiful
titled wives for whom the word uxoriousness publicly
defines the relationship transpire to have dead in the water marriages, sleep
with the help and pay the wife of their " best
friend " to perform fellatio on them. And where homosexual men aren't
necessarily, indeed aren’t generally, as cock- a -hoop as they purport to be
over their sexual attraction to their own gender. (Take a look at WH Auden's ravaged tormented face in his older photos for one
deeply unhappy old bugger ) It may be impolitic to
acknowledge it in an era when “ Proud and glad to be
gay ” has assumed the force of quasi-religious dogma and to suggest anything
that derogates from that is howled down as heresy, but that doesn’t alter the
truth of the matter.
Gregory Riding is another example of Amis’s
not-happy-with-their-sexuality homosexuals. With his brittle, in-your-face,
hubris he is easily recognizable as an archetype, albeit somewhat exaggerated.
Untypical to the archetype, Riding’s “ old money ” background was not invented
by him, whereas Fielding’s “ father was called Beryl
and owned half of Virginia and his mother was also probably called Beryl and
owned the other half ” ... , mother was a K Mart shopper and lived in a trailer
park. The Gorgeous Gore, so confident and urbane, and above all relaxed with
who he is, doesn’t seem capable of being interviewed without telling the
interviewer: 1) that his Daddy was appointed head of the first Federal aviation
authority; 2) that his maternal grandfather was a Senator ( from Oklahoma -
which, if you know anything about that State’s political history is tantamount
to admitting your family is a hybrid of L’il Abner’s and more criminal version of Huey Long’s); 3) his step-brother’s half-sister’s first cousin (
Marge?) was Jacqueline Bouvier and he knew “Jack” so
well he was able to conclude that he was “ fun”.
Perhaps Amis recognizes in these portraits that being
a homosexual would be a hard row to hoe, not because of the varying degrees of
discrimination encountered, but because of the existential angst inherent in
being “ the other” - the other that has no role to
play in the dynamic which drives human continuity. Amis
both relishes fatherhood and clearly contemplates its wider psychic
implications ( eg, the palliative
to the recognition that nature has finished with men by the time they are 40).
The Gorgeous Gore dismisses such notions of the centrality of heterosexuality
and the marginality of homosexuality, pardon me " pansexuality",
with a smug smirk - one suspects he conceives of those who do create the next
generation of humans as a helot class of “ breeders” whose role it is to
provide nature’s aristocrats such as himself and Howard with gardeners, cooks,
drivers and toy boys.The moderately talented Edward Albee ( he had one work in him, a fictionalised
version of the emotional warfare that took place between his adoptive parents -
it was pretty good - the other “ Three Tall Women ” was a rehash of his mum )
told Melvyn Bragg in response to a question about his biological parents, after
demurring on the subject: “ I’m the first of my line.” The pertinent
observation here is not the ludicrousness of that proposition but that he is
the last of his line and he knows it full well.
Given that about 400 million people speak English as their first language, it
seems fair to have in Amis one contemporary author
who is prepared to make candid observations upon the noisy clamouring
phenomenon that Christopher Hitchens calls ‘ Faggotry ’ :
“ Faggotry, in my judgment, is as good a metaphor for
that little world as any other.'
to provide some semblance of balance against the homosexualist self-indulgence of authors like Edmund
‘Killer’ White, Jeanette Winterson, Robert Dessaix, Sumner Locke Elliott, Timothy Mo, etc.
Topic:
Amis is a non-theological homophobe
Conf: Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:
Date:
Bronteboy wrote:
"Perhaps Amis recognizes in these portraits that being a homosexual
would be a hard row to hoe, not because of the varying degrees of
discrimination encountered, but because of the existential angst inherent in
being “ the other” - the other that has no role to
play in the dynamic which drives human continuity."
Isn't this the point that Amis is exactly trying to
make in "Straight Fiction"?
Topic:
Amis is a non-theological homophobe
Conf: Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:
Date:
Scout
Yep. Pretty unambiguously so I would have thought.
Topic: Martinian homophobia & characterological solipsism
Conf:Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:
Date:
STEPHENP SAID: "If
he's going to produce the fictional masterpiece he ought to, he's going to have
to write himself in a lot less".
That's a spot-on diagnosis of Amis's fatal flaw as a
fictionist. (Amis's second-biggest flaw is, of
course, knee-jerk alliteration.) Amis's homophobia
should be subsumed under the broader failing of characterological
solipsism. Remember when Kingsley accused Nabokov of solipsizing himself into all of the characters in LOLITA?
(I think it's an erroneous accusation, by the way.) Well, I'm surprised that
Kingsley never made the same complaint about Martin. Or maybe he did privately.
Thank goodness for the buttadelic presence of bronteboy. The Australian beach-hugie
who steadfastly refuses to let himself be
transmogrified into a bumboy. Without bronteboy, we never would've known that WH Auden's wrinkles were caused by pure unadulterated buttlove. Fruity-toot-toot! I'm looking forward to bronteboy's speculations on the etiology of Noel Edmonds' crinkley bottom.
Bronteboy gives the routine social-darwinist justification for homophobia. Homosexuals have
"no role to play in the dynamic which drives human continuity". Or
maybe they do. Maybe bronteboy is ignoring the
millions of homosexual & bisexual parents who populate Planet Earth (and
who repopulate Planet Earth).
Bronteboy also quoted some macho-liberal tripe from
Christopher Hitchens. Every time the Hitch's heart
bleeds for some poor suffering victim-group, the Hitch has to compensate for it
by beating up on homos in order to prove that he's still one of the boys. It
reminds me of the time when Norman Mailer gave a speech at Harvard. Naturally,
Mailer was terrified of being mistaken for an over-refined rich-kid sissy. So
he delivered a gratuitous insult of homosexuality. Luckily, he got booed for
it. But he would've gotten cheered for it in the peasant beerhalls
of the world. The most homophobic sector of society is the peasantry. A large
percentage of the male peasantry is composed of machismo-worshiping fascist
bullies. Like Steve Cousins, who hates tennis because it's
"effeminate". Hitchens has spent so much
time identifying himself with the peasants that he's been osmotically
infected with peasant homophobia.
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