From: StephenP
Category: Amis
Date: 9/6/99
Time: 9:50:43 AM
Remote Name: 195.171.125.1
Just back from 2 weeks brushing up the old French. A combination of my perfect Provencale accent and the thought of Geoff Norcott with his Greek tan and ringpiece in ribbons should be enough to send BJ into the sort of paroxysms I experienced as a happy 13-year-old when I read the naughty bits in 'How To Save Your Own Life.' I can still quote the lesbian scene more or less verbatim...
I had a lovely holiday, thanks for asking. I read Amsterdam (trivial) and Pale Fire (wonderful, of course). I would have read more, but I got stuck on level two of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the Game Boy. If anyone knows how to dispatch that bouncy twat in the swamp dungeon please annoy everyone and let me know.
We're all doing the Jarma intertextual thing these days (don't fight it, Murphman) and I've got one from Pale Fire. Remember when cher Guillaume pointed out that Amis nicked 'bullybag' as a term for the family jewels from Lolita? Well, he nicked 'brash virilia' (see Gregory round at Torka's in Success) from the 'bold virilia' that Kinbote describes jutting out of one of his catamites. I'm reading Pnin now and if I find 'ignoble billyclub' in there I'll swing for Marty so I will.
Nabbers is superduper of course but I'm beginning to tire of his prissy-imperfectnarrator-European-sex-perverts-on-tour gig. When's he going to give me a Mikey Hoolihan? But is there a funnier sentence in the English language than 'they were both in a manly state and moaning like doves'. Or the passage where he describes the king's calamitous attempts to shag the missus?
And, Bill, I saw your stuff about Vlad's inscrutable signposting in Lolita vis-a-vis the car tool in Asprey's car. He does it in Pale Fire, too, with the photo of John Dark in the judge's newspaper when Kinbote arives at his house at the start. And talking of writers recycling their 'box of tricks' for each nov, I couldn't agree more with Jim! re About a Boy. A lot of silly fuss and nonsense. Spare us, Hornby, give us a sequel to American Psycho or something. To paraphrase Bobbi Fleckman in Spinal Tap, get out of the eighties, we don't have this mentality any more.
Is anyone on the Nabokov discussion web from the Zembla site? It all happens through e-mail so I'm not sure if it'd be wise to sign up. If anyone is, please let me know how much traffic is involved. Bit highbrow, too, though I bet porn's allowed.
Well, my dear chum William has set me a task , so here goes with the translation of the VMN and L'Information reviews...
VMN reviewed by Francis Rozange:
Martin Amis is considered an important writer. Anglo Saxons (everyone who isn't French is an Anglo Saxon, they're such tossers aren't they) being fond of columns written by important writers, we find his signature in magazines such as the Observer and Esquire. You can't help remarking the diabolical ease with which he covers the most diverse subject matter. God knows how boring chess tournaments can be for the layman: and yet here we are, trapped, panting, asking ourselves how the duel between Karpov and Kasparov is going to end having seen the enormous plotting which lies behind these two innocent little wooden pawns (sic). A woman's tennis match, a visit to Mrs Nabokov and the filming of Robocop 2, are only a few of the subjects all treated here with equal enjoyment. Martin Amis, even if he has a tendancy to take the easy route perhaps because of his outsized virtuosity, is a writer who has the good fortune to be equipped with enormous mental finesse. I admire this all the more since my own efforts rise all too rarely to a refinement which I would like to be instinctive and more frequent (his tautology, not mine), to my great shame, like the charge of cavaliers mounted on elephants themselves perched on tanks rushing pell-mell into a concrete wall. (*clears throat*)
You will have understood that these articles which begin with Graham Greene and end with Pritchett's century are devoured with real pleasure. For the record, the cover photo is by a certain... Mathieu Bourgois. He (Mathieu) is from one of those families that you dream of belonging to. If my karma permitted, I would give up with pleasure my place as the future great-grandson of Caroline of Monaco for that of the cousin, even a distant one, of the cleaning woman of any member of the Bougois family.
Well, no idea what he's on about at the end there. I'll do the translation of the Information review tomorrow. Dialling to do. 'Mon petit Guillaume, tu veux que je suces un merde surgele? Mais ca ferait mal a l'haleine, petit mechant...'
A tout a l'heure, mes braves...