From: Jim M
Category: Amis
Date: 9/3/99
Time: 6:08:50 AM
Remote Name: 195.11.50.209
Mats Wilander? Blimey, Bill...you're really get screwy now.
Hey, so Ed, I just read 'Crying of Lot 49' also and was knocked out by its jazziness. What it all means is WAY beyond me, but for a sheer ride, it's pretty unbeatable. There are so many gorgeous things in it to dwell on, but just Pyncheon's consistent reference to music is fascinating and dazzling. I've got to read more of his stuff.
I've also read 'About a Boy' which is frightful excrement of the highest order. 'High Fidelity' had a sort of knowing charm, but 'About a Boy' is drastically clinical...it's very much of the post-Bridget-Jones school of indulging us in our complacency, prodding us into folksy sentimentality with a cold cold hand. Literature is in a woeful state at present...all these books which encourage women, and men (in the case of Hornby's latest) to fester and wallow in their rot, in their insecurities and their problems. Nasty! Thank God for Don DeLillo who stunningly explodes all that, revealing the decay and darkness at the heart of the lifestyles Hornby and his cohorts sickeningly rhapsodise about. I think it's sick, dangerous and mind-numbing literature, and it's selling in its millions. London is beset with posters for the latest in the genre, 'The Making of Minty Malone' (even the title makes you want to gag), which looks absolutely ghastly. Enough of these dreadful apathetic books. They're bad for people. Insidious horror.
Jim M