From: A. Kournikova
Category: Amis
Date: 8/1/99
Time: 4:23:47 PM
Remote Name: 209.135.80.138
First off, I have heard that of writers and writing that one cannot write about their "home" until they are far far far away from it. If one's intentions are to slag their native land, then the geographical distance makes sense, however the *snerk* Canadian author who offered up this bit of advice was probably speaking of the emotional distance required to produce a work of art.
Secondly, I do not care what anyone says about the inappropriateness of Amis or any other ex-patriot chewing up their homeland like some nasty overprocessed sugary gummy treat. Because their very essence is ENGLISH, and even though you can take the man out of the land, you can't take the land out of the man, no matter how twittery or snobbish or pretentious the land is. Amis and his fellow daft-dodgers are all the same as those who remain on English terra firma (Julian Barnes and what ever other smatterings of english media that choose to manifest themselves overseas, I'm looking at you). They make fun of everything english and laugh and snigger, but behind that facade of joviality and "look, aren't we simply a bunch of tea drinking pansies" there is the ever present sneer of superiority. The rest of the world is going to an ironic hell, but the English beat us to it, and they're flaunting it, it's just that no one has recognized it because everyone in the western world is too busy laughing its ass off.
See, that's part of amis' game. He can gush and write all the books he wants about the quirks of American society, but it's pretty obvious that America is his whore. If you tear away his delicate gilded phrasing, his essays are just fish-out-of-water pieces, and while the yanks think he's so swell for capturing their very yankiness, he's just capitalizing by reducing their yankiness to an english understanding--as if all cultures are not cultures until an englishman can literalize it and make it palatable for everyone who counts (a.k.a the english). I bet that if Amis could, he would put up heads of well-known american celebrities on his walls, so he could point out to his very close daft-dodging friends "that I loved America so well I felt I should immortalize it for all my tea parties and scone fests guests".
By the way, has anyone seen my pedophilic boyfriend anywhere? I caught him making googly eyes at that whining swiss miss earlier.
THE lobbing lolita.