From: jleveau
Category: Amis
Date: 7/27/99
Time: 11:26:43 PM
Remote Name: 152.163.195.194
Antagonistic, bitter and hoodwinked --these are the emotions I feel after putting down 'Night Train.' Need to engage in some kind of "group therapy" in order to cope with reader rage--the equivalent of being shoved out of a rush-hour subway car just as the doors are about to close. That is the kind of hostility Amis provokes when, after leading the reader up a winding mountain path of false promises and clues, he decides, just as they are about to skin the top and take in the great, wide view, to push his reader off the cliff, watching with cold delight as she spirals down into the abyss.
The fact that you have been dispensed with so ruthlessly, that you have been deceived into following this book into an intellectual void--is not the only problem with it. Like the suicide at the center of Night Train, "it is many loose threads" tied with a weak, sawed off knot. It is infuriating to be stood-up so boldly at the end, and I, as an admirer of Amis--perhaps that's what makes this case of reader rage more acute-- am amazed at the feckless way in which I have been cast aside, just as I was about to reach the end. Only to discover that the end was the end. And that there was really no end except the paperbag that was placed over my head.
If there are any other victims out there, who have also experienced reader rage after reading MA, I offer you both my support and great sympathy.