From: Gooch McCracken
Category: Amis
Date: 7/30/99
Time: 12:20:24 PM
Remote Name: 129.219.247.97
[From *The Independent* newspaper. July 28, 1991.]
*DEAR MARTIN AMIS, YOUR STREET CRED'S AT THE CLEANERS* / BY TERENCE BLACKER
The man's a god, of course. Nothing, under normal circumstances, would induce me to say a word against the life or work of the author of *Money*, or *Success*. It's not that Martin Amis can do no wrong---more that, even when he blunders, he's still rather interesting.
But lately there have been signs that Martin and middle age aren't getting on so well. Discovering that Planet Earth was on the way out did nothing for his writing. A vast, apocalyptic metaphor hovered over *London Fields*, turning a perfectly good story of lust and murder in Notting Hill Gate into a 10-headache read.
That was all right. So someone showed the English swot a few tricks in the science lab. He'd amble back to the library sooner or later. Who knows, maybe in the next book he'd spare us the three-page essay on black holes, quasars and Chaos Theory when all he was trying to tell us was that Nicola Six had a particular bedroom quirk.
We fans are indulgent. When Martin told *Rolling Stone* magazine, "I really do believe that people are nice, one at a time---even Germans", we took it as light irony. His description of the creative process---"Almost the first thing I ask about a character that I am about to get going on is, 'What are they like in the sack?'"---we dismissed as no more than slightly gauche.
As far as we're concerned, the man cannot be boring. Even his shopping-lists would be worth reading.
Except Martin doesn't write a shopping-list. He doesn't go shopping. According to an *Evening Standard* profile, written by A N Wilson, his wife "caters, plans the family holiday, she engages the nannies and the domestic servants, she even buys his clothes".
What? No, calm, calm. Remember the Queen Mother, Lord Denning---this A N Wilson hardly has a reputation as a reliable narrator. But here are Martin's own words: "I'm not interested in money. My wife does all that. I could not open a letter from an accountant. Just couldn't physically do it."
He's gone too far. This is celebrity-speak. Suddenly he's not Martin Amis any more; he's Madonna. Only, instead of jogging around Hyde Park with a platoon with neanderthal guards in dark glasses, he's off to his writing office at the first whiff of real life.
Enough. It's time for one of his fans, on behalf of literature, to put him back in touch with his accountant.
- Hello, Mrs Amis, you don't know me but I'm a great admirer of your husband's work and...
- He's just left for the office in his special writing suit I bought him last week and won't be back until suppertime, which is his favourite...
- No no no! That's my point. Let the little chap get his own supper. And the next time a letter comes from the accountant, push it across the breakfast table and say, "Here Mart, it's for you." If he backs away saying, ugh, no, he just couldn't physically open the letter, tell him to grow up. It will only be news of more royalties. Believe me, Mrs Amis, if he wants to know the meaning of true terror, he should hear from my accountant.
- Martin happens to be a writer. He has other things to worry about.
- Oh please. What's he worrying about today? The end of the world again? What can a man who hides from his accountant possibly tell me about the end of the world? Or Time? Or the subtle connection between black holes and a mildly perverse sex act.
- Actually the next novel...
- I know all about that, Mrs Amis. Martin's new book tells the story of the Holocaust, but everything's backwards. It probably starts with "END THE", the dialogue's upside down. When someone gets dressed, his clothes fly away from him to different corners of the room. Does this sound like the work of a normal man, Mrs Amis? The man's cranium is on emergency overload. For God's sake, put some VAT forms in front of him before it's too late!
- If you must know, Martin leads a very far from sheltered life.
- Yeah yeah, I know. He plays snooker with Iain Hamilton and James Fenton. Or maybe has a poker evening with Al Alvarez and the guys. Weekends, it's down to Ruth Rendell's cottage for a literary tennis tournament with Julian Barnes and Marina Warner. But does he Jif the kitchen surfaces? Does he comb the fur-balls out of the cat's coat? Has he ever changed a nappy?
- You clearly never read his 30-page essay in Granta, *Diaper Dreams*.
- All right, I admit he once changed a nappy and wrote all about it, but that was when he was going through his famed feminist period. Whatever happened to that, by the way?
- Martin's a post-feminist now.
- Of course. Look, Mrs Amis, let me quote you some words from John Updike, a man your huband admires: "The 'successful' writer acquires a film over his eyes. His eyes get fat. Self-importance is a thickened, occluding form of self-consciousness. The binge, the fling, the trip---all attempt to shake the film and get back under the dining-room table, with a child's beautiful clear eyes." You see? Updike doesn't actually mention poker evenings with Al Alvarez, but the message is pretty clear, don't you think?
- I don't believe Martin's the only writer who puts the work before the life.
- Of course not. More's the pity. An afternoon spent pushing a trolley around Sainsbury's would do your pal Julian Barnes a power of good. Do you think he'd have time to agonise about the precise nature of love---whether it's like an airport, or the inside of a rather old car engine, or, yes that's it, like one of those funny little coloured umbrellas that stick out of cocktails---if an angry pensioner was prodding him in the bag and asking if he was going to buy the Jeyes fluid or not?
- I really have to...
- These celebrity writers aren't living in the real world any more. They have their people to do it for them. It's no wonder fiction's becoming so self-conscious and clever, with narrators forever turning to the reader, prodding him in the chest, complaining that he's not paying attention, asking whether he's getting bored or...
- Look, I'm sorry, but I promised I'd get him some more trousers. D'you think a sort of artistic, bohemian beige would...?
Oh well, it was worth a try. So what if Martin only has time for Time, if he prefers Chaos Theory to chaos? The rest of us have reality to spare.