From: StephenP
Category: Amis
Date: 7/19/99
Time: 9:34:05 AM
Remote Name: 195.171.125.1
My favourite song, and my favourite writer. What a treat.
'I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together': Richard Tull is based on the bit of Amis which is self-doubting and self-loathing. (Marty said that Gwyn Barry was based on him too but noone believes him, do they?). Yet, Richard also stands for every man, standing in his phone booth, weeping: 'see how they run...I'm crying'. We are all together with Richard, ultimately doomed, weeping and alone (men anyway. Sorry ladies.)
Richard is eating breakfast cereals with his kids when his madness arrives ('Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.)
Richard smokes too much and this affects his health; Amis mocks him for this: 'expert texpert choking smokers don't you think the joker laughs at you. Ha ha ha hee hee hee, and furthermore, haw haw haw'.
The most important text 'informing' the Information is King Lear and its themes of madness, aging, revenge and fragile parent-child relationships. Similarly, John Lennon's rant against authority and lost childhood segues, with masterful serendipity, into King Lear: 'Sit you down father, rest you.'
Richard is disgusted to sit in doggie afterbirth at Demi's family's house. This is an obvious reference (I don't know how I missed it) to 'yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye.' Other end, but still...
Male walruses, notoriously, have problems with their teeth when they get old. QED.