Re: Amis chews up Harris and spits him out

From: Brooklyn
Category: Amis
Date: 8/5/99
Time: 2:07:31 PM
Remote Name: 207.238.28.10

Comments

The Amis factor forced me to pick it up and aside from being of biblical length the *Hannibal* review is scathingly funny. Not that Thomas Harris is likely to be spewing milk through his nostrils from uncontrollable guffawing. Nor are any of the critics who happened to like the novel:

"The publication of *Hannibal* back in June cut the ribbon on a festival of stupidity." to "There's really not much you can say to the miserable idiots who were "skewered" to their seats by this harpoon of unqualified kitsch. And I found I could sit still while pundits talked about Harris's "real moral impact," how "every line...is suffused with the sense of a titanic struggle with evil in its blackest form," despite the clear fact that the novel is helpless voulu, sentimental, and corrupt. But when I see *Hannibal* enlisted as literature ("a plausible candidate for the Pulitzer Prize," "a momentous achievement"), then my pen is obliged to flash from its scabbard."

voulu?

[Later we find out] "The author's original title for *Hannibal* was, apparently, *The Morbidity of the Soul*. Well, somebody must have had a word with him about that..."

[Amis on the title character] "By now, I think, it should be clear that Lecter is of that stratospheric breed of men to whom the world is but a gout of pulp... He is (in other words) that awesome presence, a European aristocrat."

[Martin gains sarcastic strength toward the end] "Then comes the moment with the firelight "dancing in the golden wine"-and the sub-Faulkner high style of a strong man quaking over his ThinkPad. Let's see if I can bear to type this out:...

[Martin does manage, but I can't. Suffice it to say Mart & Mr. Harris probably won't be teaming up for any bake sales in the near future. This is a thorough ripping.]