From: Jim M
Category: Amis
Date: 8/20/99
Time: 7:11:32 AM
Remote Name: 195.11.50.209
The games we can play with this one! Let's face it...if you write a book then you die, it's very unlikely (unless you're someone of Kubrickian stature) that what you wrote is gonna end up as what gets published. Asprey coulda twiddled bits, Missy coulda twiddled bits, whoever the editor was coulda twiddled bits. Remember also that the story is written by a dying man...would you really expect a tour de force from such a guy, especially if some of it was written in haste? Even if he'd been fit and well, what Sam set out to write, a story surrounding him but which he removed himself from, was always going to be a tricky enterprise. No wonder his authorial voice sounds a bit weird.
PS. For what it's worth, Jonesy, I'd be willing to lend Mike Hoolihan a fiver (so long as she promised me she wasn't going to buy booze with it).