Stephen P responds to Frederic Raphael

from the Martin Amis Discussion Web

Raphaels’ review provoked a bit of argument on the site about whether Raphael, having called Martin an arse, was himself an arse, and therefore unjustified in calling Amis an arse. It doesn’t matter: if Stanley Kubrick had used every word of Raphael’s screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut, or not one, it makes no difference to the quality of the article which follows. Raphael is, as the cv quoted in the article bears witness, a hopeless under-achiever (‘He is the author of twenty novels’. Is he really? How many have sold as many as London Fields? Or even Night Train? How many, while we are politely inquiring, are still in print?) However, he can still review Amis’s writing, perfectly adequately, if he so chooses, and guide the reader in his or her buying decision. We cannot know, by the way, whether he (or Norcott or Jarma, for that matter) is motivated by envy.

Just for fun, and to demonstrate the hideously unfair nature of the press which Amis (uniquely for a writer) gets, I have made a precis of Raphael’s review. In many ways it is the culmination of all Amis’s reviews over twenty-five years, so it makes the exercise worthwhile. These are the same words, Raphaels’ words, in the same order, with a couple of notes by me in brackets. Ask yourself who else has to put up with this kind of shit. Ask yourself, unfashionably, how you would feel…

QUOTE

Kingsley spent his last bibulous years in a menage a trois. We have, so far, been spared hints of any sexual involvements with the Kilmarnocks. Kingsley became clumsy, incontinent and lachrymose, another storming and dranging tyrant. Kingsley would have doubtless reminded us the word ‘prestige’ derives from the Latin ‘an illusion’.

(In fact, his son Martin ‘reminds’ us of this fact in, er ‘Experience’, p258).

As for awards, Martin does not hesitate to advertise his own chagrin at ‘The Information’s’ failing to make the short list.

(In fact, he does not mention it specifically).

His father won it a brace of times for novels which I have not felt the vocation to read.

(Only in England would a reviewer reveal this, boast about this)

Martin recalls that Clive James announced his claim to the critical crown by declaring ‘Bull Fever’ to be ‘Bullshit’ – wow!- how long did Clive have to stay up to compose so inspired a put-down? Salman Rushdie won, I seem to remember, the best-Booker-of-the-quarter-century: the Bookest Prize, one might call it.

(How long did Raphael have to stay up to ‘compose’ this one?).

Young Martin is torn between honouring his father and seeing him for what he was: a serial adulterer – “caress the details”, Nabokov rightly advised - a self-regarding, self-indulgent hedonist and literary operator. Does a ‘decent man’ open the door of his London hideaway to his young sons and say “I’m not alone”…?

(…I don’t see why not…)

…Does he publish lists of friends who have been tight and never return their hospitality? Back in the 60s, he and Jane dropped in on Ios, cadged food and drink(s) …

(love Raphael’s prissy parenthetical plural)

… and never asked us back. Would I mention things like that in public?

(I assume Raphael is being ironic here. Kingsley Amis, on the other hand, is dead.)

Martin seems genuinely to believe that all of dad’s later novels were literature for the ages. He was given a deserved first-class degree in English.

(Martin Amis criticises almost all of his father’s later novels objectively and accurately- though I’m sure he appreciates that ‘deserved’, just as Nabokov would’ve appreciated, with a nod of solemn gratitude, Raphael’s earlier use of the word ‘rightly’: thanks for the endorsement… But it gets worse: get this…)

Young Martin has waited for his father’s demise. He is a 50-year-old kid whose bad teeth and murdered cousin Lucy are used to secure our sympathy for him. I just may write a trilogy about when I had piles and the surgery they required.

(For this sentiment and utterly inappropriate joke, I sincerely wish him bog paper like a butcher’s apron and pirhana-attack toilet flushes for many years to come. But it gets yet worse...)

There is Martin in endearing ignorance of the effect he is having. He has dumped early wives and kids for brighter, better women: a literary editor here, an Israeli there. Nothing offends Martin more than the allegation that ‘Time’s Arrow’ was anti-Semitic; may I append the remark that ‘Time’s Arrow’ was a display of stylistic antics danced on a million graves.

I liked ‘Experience’ sometimes for its wit. It is truly elegiac when it somes to Kingsley’s boozer’s death. I disliked its spleen,

(there is none, the tone is gentle regret)

smugness,

(there is none, in fact it tries too hard to be modest)

resentment

(‘resentment’, he says, and he’s just written this review)

and lack of self-knowledge.

UNQUOTE


(The irony is, ‘Experience’- which I’m just finishing, and it finishes brilliantly - has some real clunkers in it, if people would simply interest themselves in its literary merit . Even for a fan like me, some lines are embarrassing. Not just the sycophancy towards Bellow that Diedrick cites, but needless name-checking and literary cross-referencing (Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats) which Amis, in an earlier interview, told us had grown out of. I think these are the worst sentences Amis has ever written:

“I have high hopes for Israel and will never be entirely reasonable about her. I think about Israel with the blood.”

And, of suicides:

“Why drive a stake through their hearts when, as Joyce knew, their hearts have been broken already?”

(This is a vapid assertion with a vapid reference to Joyce.)

ps Ed: me & Jezzaroona want to play pool with you some time. Can you get in touch?

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