From: Jezzaroona
Category: Amis
Date: 9/6/99
Time: 7:27:52 PM
Remote Name: 195.44.14.112
Lane sez: "every meaning one could attach to Amis' characters is hopelessly deferred".
I like this (as I do his "information instinct" as something parallel with the "death instinct" - see the *White Noise* clip I posted on "You got the Rushdie quote") because it captures something about Amis' characters being caught in vicious circuits of cause-and-effect, of chasing their own tails until they are phsyically/spiritually exhausted.
Exhumed from other recent posts:
From *London Fields*: "Keith sighed. Tomorrow he would take Nicola's stuff to GoodFicks in Cathcart Road. They would, of course, cheat Keith, and, having brought it all home, he would have to take it all back again..."
But also Richard Tull smoking and drinking to console himself because of what smoking and drinking had done to him, or Guy dressing Marmaduke to only have to undress him and re-dress him again etc
This is a little more narrative-orientated than Lane's post - but then the "purely self-reflexive system of notation" that he refers to is surely illustrated in the *doublisms* and the *triplisms*
From *The Rachel Papers*: "Don't I do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Bayswater Road."
or
"And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit. You got that? And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look, and feel, like shit."
and
"New York is a jungle, they tell you. You could go further, and say that New York is a jungle. New York *is a jungle*."
PS - something that has always intrigued me in *London Fields* is the way Keith refers to pork pies as "Porp Pies" when he and Theolonius attempt to knock off the corner shop. The scene built up slightly, as if Keith might share in some kind of minor criminal success rather than reinforce his endless cycle of petty cheating - turf accountants - petty cheating - turf accountants - and so on, but of course the pork pie is the only material gain Keith makes out of the whole enterprise (and even that is past its sell by date, its value timed out, if you will) and the use of "porp" is both onamatpaieac (oops - spelling) and hilarious. But is there a sense of Keith's language simply just breaking down here into a misappropriated phoentic mess, such is his frustration with his paltry effort:effect ratio?
PPS - And what about that circuit of blunders that involves the porno that was water and the water that was Outrage and the Outrage that was porno - or something like that?