From: Thomas Enqvist
Category: Amis
Date: 7/28/99
Time: 7:05:59 PM
Remote Name: 129.219.247.97
[Pöster's nöte: The big drawback to the Svedish langvage is that it doesn't have a definite article. In other vords, there is no Svedish eqvivalent for the vord *the*. Vell---actually there is. But it's a piss-poor substitute. The Svedish vord for *the* takes the form of a suffix. Martin Amis's book *The Information* vas translated into Svedish as *Informationen*. But don't get the vrong idea. I didn't actually read the Svedish translation. Are you kidding? I vouldn't go back to Sveden for all the smack in China. Remember Gvyn Barry's tennis coach named *Buttrugvena*? Amis says that Buttrugvena "spent every vaking moment vondering vhy he vasn't a resident of Monte Carlo". A resident of Monte Carlo. Like---for example---me. And Björn. And Stefan. And Mats. And lemme tell ya something, Smedley. I'm here to play and I'm here to stay. Right here in Grimaldi Gulch. I'm not going back to Malmö. They can't make me go back. Because I'm not going back. I'm sick to frigging hell of the tvanging siren-song of the Great Vhite Night. Screw that crap.]
THE INFORMATION: "It was the tiredness of time lived, with its days and days." PHILIP LARKIN: "What are days for? Days are where we live...Where can we live but days?" [From *Days*.]
THE INFORMATION: "I expect you get many young girls who. You will be delighted to hear that the air tickets will be. The judges reached their decision in less than. These terms are, we feel, exceptionally. I am beginning to be translating your. Here is a photograph of the inside of my." PHILIP LARKIN: "I am directed to inform you that under the will of the late Mr Getty...Dear Philip, You'll be interested to know that old Humpleby is at last giving up the Library at Windsor, and HM...of course, only 10,000 pounds, but there's a rather jolly little grace & favour Georgian dower house in the Great Park that seems to go with the job...Dear Mr Larkin, I expect you think it's jolly cheeky for a schoolgirl to---...Dear Dr Larkin, My freind and I had a argument as to which of us has the biggest breasts and we wondered if you would act as---...My youngest, she's fourteen and quite absurdly stuck on your poems---but then she's advanced in all ways---refuses to wear a---." [From Philip Larkin's letters.]
THE INFORMATION: "On the mantelpiece Richard thought he saw a devotional knickknack or icon, lit from within by a bulb the shape of a closed tulip; it was the Virgin Mary (he sensed), but travestied, with joke breasts outthrust like the figure of a redoubtable maiden on a ship's prow." PHILIP LARKIN: "Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, each rope distinct, flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits arching our way". [From *Next, Please*.]
THE INFORMATION: "Demi told tales of lost kittens, beloved ponies, myxomatotic marmots, rabid rabbits". PHILIP LARKIN: "I make a sharp reply, then clean my stick. I'm glad I can't explain just in what jaws you were to suppurate". [From *Myxomatosis*.]
THE INFORMATION: "In the stairwell some Angaoas or Iaiain would be bent over his bicycle clips or patting the pockets of his donkey jacket." PHILIP LARKIN: "Hatless, I take off my cycle-clips in awkward reverence". [From *Church Going*.]
THE INFORMATION: "And he had no trouble visualizing her poolside with the five-million-a-pop screenplay writer, walking the chateau grounds with the belly-worshipping Francophile". PHILIP LARKIN: "So the shit in the shuttered château who does his five hundred words then parts out the rest of the day between bathing and booze and birds is far off as ever". [From *The Life with a Hole in it*.]
THE INFORMATION: "Richard thought that the adults looked like child-murderers, and so did the children, with their hairdos and earrings and their shallow, violent eyes." PHILIP LARKIN: "How few people are, held apart by acres of housing, and children with their shallow violent eyes." [From *How*.]
THE INFORMATION: "But at three in the morning something woke them with the fizzy rush of an old flash camera, and there they all were, staring down the sights of their lives and drawing a bead on the information." PHILIP LARKIN: "Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there...the dread of dying, and being dead, flashes afresh to hold and horrify." [From *Aubade*.]
THE INFORMATION: "And then there is the information, which is nothing, and comes at night." PHILIP LARKIN: "And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless." [From *High Windows*.]