From: Brooklyn
Category: Amis
Date: 8/25/99
Time: 10:37:11 AM
Remote Name: 207.238.28.10
[A VERY, VERY, OLD EXCERPT]
Mr. Bellamy rocked on his heels before the marble chimney-piece. He had so many hairs sticking out of his nose that I was unconvinced, after nearly an hour in his company, that they weren't a moustache. He sounded about fifty - he went on as if he were fifty -... I assumed he had a private income. How else could he sit about drinking gin, girdled by bound books, in a Hamilton Terrace drawing-room, pretending to teach English and wishing he were an Oxford don with real live queer undergraduates to bore?
He was a short-arsed little bastard - about five-five. Hirsute brown jacket, knobbled face, rusty Brillo-pad hair. Being posh and rich and unhurried, he managed to get away with it, though what he did with it then was open to doubt. He had virtually no sexual presence, didn't look as if he could be bothered even to masturbate.
[In my never ending quest to not get a life I spent last night scouring the Amis opus for references to the dreadful age of 50. That chore would have been much easier if Marty would learn to type the number instead of spelling it. In any case this, from *The Rachel Papers*, was all I found. I've heard Martin say that a writers peak years are between 50-60. Since he seems to be as conscious of posterity as the next guy, we should be in for a nice run.]