From: Ed
Category: Amis
Date: 9/10/99
Time: 3:26:26 PM
Remote Name: 194.230.16.201
My Friday nights are reaching a new nadir: 'Some Mothers do 'Ave Em'. So I turn, gratefully to the sanity of MAD. (Sorry, but I do like the oxymoron.)
I was continuing with the Hornby on this week's flight (to & from Amsterdam) & somewhere along the journey through the pizzarella breadcrumbs, salmon flywheel salad pyramid & mini bottle of Champagne I had a thought: I think you're wrong Jim! Hornby's minimal grasp of the intellectual & his 'overt' style are self-evident, but I did eventually realise what he shares with MA: bathos. He is not encouraging people 'to rot & fester in their insecurities' etc... he is celebrating the right of society's outcast to survive & prosper in (modern) life's straitjacket. In many ways it reminded me of a modern (down-market, of course) L'etranger. It does at least give the dysfunctional family man a raison d'etre...& who could be more dysfunctional than MA...& why are we all here (MAD)? To me this kind of stuff is a relief, if not a challenging read. It may be sad that there are so many of us like that around nowadays...but it's true. It's no use telling the depressive to cheer up, Jim!, just as it's no use telling the dysfunctional to 'get a life'.
On a different note: 'Laughter in the Dark' - was that a Nobokov coinage? Now used by every reviewer this side of the TLS it has been adopted for MA (Money: 'terribly, terminally funny: laughter in the dark...') & for the Hornby ('blah, blah...litd') amongst others I've seen.
And another thing..what are we all doing here? Haven't we learnt anything from Richard Tull? Geoff, Jezzaroona & I, destined to literary unfulfillment as a result of the need to pick apart our icons...