From: Jezzaroona
Category: Amis
Date: 9/7/99
Time: 3:07:12 PM
Remote Name: 195.44.201.106
As a teenager (incidentally when I first read *London Fields* - but never picked up on the line to which you refer), me and some friends, with teenaged glee at Americanisms, resolutely used to say: "Fuck YOU" rather than "Fuck OFF" (very Brit in comparison.)
Now, as a skint wannabe-writer in his mid-to-late-twenties (excuse my sensitivity about this, I wanted to finish my first book by the time I was 25 - and it still looks as if its going to be another couple of weeks...*again*. So it goes), one of the part-time jobs I have to do is help a friend run his taxi business. Anyway, one of the employees at the firm, the guy who manages the fleet of drivers (an ex-mercenary flight mechanic!), is forever saying, "Fuck off out of it." I guess this is a particularly white, working class London thing that MA has observed.
In terms of non-sequiturness, isn't it an extension of Keith's habit of saying "Fuck off" to people when he doesn't agree with them (almost as funny as his "porp pies").
From *The Rachel Papers*: "The chemist was like a chunk of America, a neon labyrinth of bristle and cellophane...As a matter of routine, the moment I committed myself to approaching the counter the enlightened looking man disappeared beneath it, in favour of a woman with silver hair and a glacial uniform. Oh, come, *come*, I wanted to say, you must of course see that this is *too* much like low-brow American fiction...
'May I have a packet of contraceptives, please?'
She glanced at Rachel. 'Certainly, sir. Lura, or Penex?'
'The Penex, please if I may.'
'Twenty-five or thirty pence?'
'Oh, I think the thirty, please, if possible.'
'As she tunred away I felt Rachel's hand slide through my jacket vents. A fingernail poked my vertebra, making me jerk...My voice was husky as I spoke:
'Better make that a two-pack lady.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I'm sorry. May I have two packets, please?'
'Certainly, sir.'"