From: Jezzaroona
Category: Amis
Date: 7/15/99
Time: 10:24:24 AM
Remote Name: 195.44.204.118
Interesting that you compare Fry with Amis - from what a friend told me, Fry is extremely self-reflexive and unreliably narrated etc so common ground there.
As for Hawes and Garland, they just don't cut it. The similarity between Amis and Hawes is undoubtedly superficial - "clever"/disenchanted young London men narrating with strong "voices" as they say in the writing trade - but this would be like comparing Alain de Botton to Martin Amis, or Andy Mc Friggin Nabb with MA.
One novel that has really stood out for me recently was ALMA COGAN by Gordon Burns, a Whitbread 1st novel prize winner and though he's compared to Amis on the cover (usually a sign that there are no reasons for comparison), there is so much common ground where it matters: amazing recycling of "ordinary" language, subtle game-playing with historical fact and points of view, the sheer doom and gloom of it all. But even better than that, he's ORIGINAL and highly talented.
So there you go.
PS re-reading WHITE NOISE by DeLillo. Genius.
PPS flicked through MONEY at a friend-of-a-friend's house (you know how it gets: they're talking about how *Notting Hill* had some good bits, you're bored and someone's got an Amis novel on the shelf...pretty soon you're reaquainting yourself with your favourite paragraphs as if they were old friends you hadn't see in a while, chuckling to yourself in the corner, not noticing everyone staring at you as if you were mad) - came across the following at random (!):
"I came down the steps and into the street. Above, all was ocean brightness: against the blue sky the clouds had been sketched by an impressively swift and confident hand. What *talent*. I like the sky and often wonder where I'd be without it. I know: I'd be in England, where we don't have one."
Could anyone else make this kind of point so effortlessly? Action, interiority, observation and satire all in one brief moment - and I came across this by accident!!