'Thick' readers

'Thick' readers

IN an interview with Aidan Smith for the 7 September, 2003, Scotsman on Sunday ("The Dog Bites Back"), Amis had this to say about Tibor Fischer's attack on Yellow Dog:

"He's a wretch," says Amis in his familiar louche drawl, at its sneery best on such occasions, and perfect for them. "In his case I think it's envy. As far as my other critics are concerned, the envy seems to have corroded down to hatred.

"We're talking here about the desire for a homogenisation of culture. Also, the push towards egalitarianism: the most powerful force in western society right now. They [his detractors] don't want anyone to be too conspicuous. They're made uneasy by humour because they can feel it moving round to direct itself against them. They don't like a prose style that reminds them how thick they are every couple of sentences, and how numb.

"I don't think they're pretending to hate my books while not hating them. They do hate them, they just don't know why. It's a new low, wouldn't you say?"

D. Soames of London wrote to the Scotsman on Sunday with this response to Amis's characterization of certain readers as "thick":

We really might have expected something a little less lame and churlish from Martin Amis "the overlord of the OED". His broadside against his critics seemed more like the rantings of a schoolboy than a literary lion.

I sometimes wonder if journalists and feature writers are drawn to him as a subject not only because of the extraordinary sums publishers will offer him to keep in business, the glittering company he once kept, his sneering arrogance - and of course his dad - but also because novelists manqués themselves, there is a Schadenfreude in watching their former idol suffer such self-inflicted indigity.

But they are doing him no favours. And since Amis is far from hard up, I can only think it might be a kindness to cast him into obscurity - just forget about him.

Who knows? Left to his own devices he might actually come up with something worth reading.

With the added benefit that he might not think us quite so irredeemably stupid.

D Soames, London

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