"He was so English I wanted to be him."
June 25, 2012 7:41 AM Subscribe
Alex Niven reviews Martin Amis' new book, Lionel Asbo: State Of England, mostly by examining the concept of "Cool Britannia", which he describes as "comic-book elegant slumming underpinned by cynical self-interest and harsh economic realism."
Let's not forget the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band who coined the term in this song.
posted by jonp72 at 8:43 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by jonp72 at 8:43 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
Weird to link Martin Amis and "Cool Britannia" (It's a mythos? I thought it was an ice cream from about fifteen years ago.) - both past their sell-by date, I suppose.
It's a terrible thing to say, but it does seem to me that Martin Amis has been crap since his father died. Was Kingsley his real audience all along?
posted by Segundus at 8:56 AM on June 25, 2012
It's a terrible thing to say, but it does seem to me that Martin Amis has been crap since his father died. Was Kingsley his real audience all along?
posted by Segundus at 8:56 AM on June 25, 2012
There's an interview with Amis about the book at the start of this BBC Radio 3 Night Waves episode (mp3).
posted by Busy Old Fool at 8:59 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Busy Old Fool at 8:59 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
Dammit, jonp72, I came in here to say that and you trumped me. Fie!
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 9:43 AM on June 25, 2012
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 9:43 AM on June 25, 2012
This is the one that grew out of Amis's fascination with Katie Price, yes?
Martin Amis is one of my guilt-authors; I feel that I should like his stuff, but I don't know that I've finished anything of his since Time's Arrow (hey, it was short).
posted by catlet at 9:51 AM on June 25, 2012
Martin Amis is one of my guilt-authors; I feel that I should like his stuff, but I don't know that I've finished anything of his since Time's Arrow (hey, it was short).
posted by catlet at 9:51 AM on June 25, 2012
Weird to link Martin Amis and "Cool Britannia" (It's a mythos? I thought it was an ice cream from about fifteen years ago.) - both past their sell-by date, I suppose.
Very much past their sell date, Niven argues, but his piece looks at the consequences of Cool Britannia and Amis' part in it.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 9:52 AM on June 25, 2012
Very much past their sell date, Niven argues, but his piece looks at the consequences of Cool Britannia and Amis' part in it.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 9:52 AM on June 25, 2012
Dick Dick. Reginald Cunt. Len Lottery. Kev Flatscreen. Dave Faketan. Stuff Crust. Darren Minge.From Jamie at Blood & Treasure; the best take on this new Martin Amis novel I've seen.
Yes, it took a long, long time and many lunches before Mr Amis and his publishers compromised on Lionel Asbo as the name for the hero in his latest novel. Then all the publishers had to do was try to talk him out of the idea that the hero got that name after being bitten by a radioactive Police and Community Support Officer.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:55 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
Ye gods, the purple prose in that Guardian review. I barely made it past the opening paragraph:
Anyway, much as you hate to judge a book by its cover and a band by its fans, it sort of confirms my own anti-Amis bias that his Guardian cheerleader would use a phrase like "withering coruscation of his writerly stare."
posted by gompa at 10:11 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
In the cover photo on the back inside flap of Lionel Asbo: State of England, the book's haughty scribe ("Martin Amis is the author of two collections of stories, six works of non-fiction and 12 previous novels...") gazes out, in glowering profile, at an anonymous London street. The pavement appears moist from a sudden rainstorm. (Has Amis been drenched in the downpour on his way to the photo-shoot? Is that expensive grey suit peppered with damp? The trademark tousled mane weighted by droplets, only recently – and impatiently – combed aside before he sits at a cafe table and glances into the melee?)Amazingly, this semiotic analysis of the jacket-flap photo continues for another four paragraphs. You would think, having belched out "the withering coruscation of his writerly stare," the reviewer would've felt he'd sufficiently prostrated himself before the "trademark tousled mane" of the "haughty scribe." That he'd genuflected properly before Amis' towering genius. That he'd well and truly fellated . . . damn, that overwordy thing's contagious I guess.
Behind him (having survived the withering coruscation of his writerly stare) a black family . .
Anyway, much as you hate to judge a book by its cover and a band by its fans, it sort of confirms my own anti-Amis bias that his Guardian cheerleader would use a phrase like "withering coruscation of his writerly stare."
posted by gompa at 10:11 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
I was just going to comment on the blunt instrument of the character's last name as a negative signifier (as in "when the title alone carries something this heavy-handed it doesn't bode well for the actual novel"), but MartinWisse's quote pretty much takes care of that.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:12 AM on June 25, 2012
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:12 AM on June 25, 2012
The Niven piece really is interesting and, I thought, well argued. Essentially he is saying that art like the books of Amis or the albums of Blur helped provide cover for Blair's neo-liberal policies that pretended to be "for all" but were weighted heavily towards those at the top. At the end he asks for a new art which "sees ordinary men and women as a source of hope rather than a subject fit only for satire."
posted by cell divide at 10:14 AM on June 25, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by cell divide at 10:14 AM on June 25, 2012 [2 favorites]
Only just noticed that I got the gender wrong on the Guardian reviewer. I regret the error. Also only just noticed this:
posted by gompa at 10:21 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
Because – like it or not – he is the father; the current father of English letters. Amis is the daddy – something his own daddy never really was (much as Martin persists in believing otherwise). Amis is the don. And anyone who has read Sophocles or Freud knows that while we all love our dads, we all still harbour a deep, secret urge to kill them. And then to have sex with our nans.Which, if this is where you felt obliged to go after the jacket-flap photo deconstruction, before you even got to whether the book itself is any damn good ("It is a book of lovehate. It is a powershake."), you really did need an editorial intervention. Someone needed to come in and calmly close the screen on your laptop and take you down to the pub for a quick pint and some perspective or something.
posted by gompa at 10:21 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
gompa, I keep rereading that squirm-inducing review hoping that I'll see the clue that it's really a clever parody. She didn't sincerely write all that loopy piffle, did she? C'mon, surely nobody would, right? Please?
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:25 AM on June 25, 2012
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:25 AM on June 25, 2012
As bad as Amis Jr is now, he is nothing compared to Shriver's godawful writing. It's basically misery lit with pretension.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:27 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by The River Ivel at 10:27 AM on June 25, 2012 [1 favorite]
gompa, I keep rereading that squirm-inducing review hoping that I'll see the clue that it's really a clever parody. She didn't sincerely write all that loopy piffle, did she? C'mon, surely nobody would, right? Please?
Well, I'm not English, so maybe there was an ironic antithesis of dry wit at work . . .
The novel is turbo-charged. It passes you on the A1 in a rainstorm with the top down. It has shagged your wife and mowed your lawn by the time you get home, exhausted, to find it lecturing your children on Latin and punk rock. The novel owns a choice parcel of the French Riviera and keeps a suite at the Ritz. African schoolchildren power their laptops from its latent heat. It is the truth and the light.
posted by gompa at 10:31 AM on June 25, 2012 [5 favorites]
Well, I'm not English, so maybe there was an ironic antithesis of dry wit at work . . .
It is a masterclass in the strange variability of modern language and diction. Amis can do the accents. In fact he can do them so well, so effortlessly, that he undoes some of them. He performs guerilla surgery on them – nips and tucks – then sews them back together again. And he never pauses for breath. The novel comes at you and comes at you and keeps on coming. It never flagsNope, loopy piffle it is.
The novel is turbo-charged. It passes you on the A1 in a rainstorm with the top down. It has shagged your wife and mowed your lawn by the time you get home, exhausted, to find it lecturing your children on Latin and punk rock. The novel owns a choice parcel of the French Riviera and keeps a suite at the Ritz. African schoolchildren power their laptops from its latent heat. It is the truth and the light.
posted by gompa at 10:31 AM on June 25, 2012 [5 favorites]
I'll probably never read this book, but I promise you I will be watching this thread until its last labored wheezes of laughter.
posted by lodurr at 10:44 AM on June 25, 2012
posted by lodurr at 10:44 AM on June 25, 2012
Niven seems surprised that enfants terribles like Amis, Albarn, Boyle and Hirst grow up and become the establishment they once stood against or satirised. This seems to have been a prevailing dynamic forever, from what I can make out.
posted by tigrefacile at 11:31 AM on June 25, 2012
posted by tigrefacile at 11:31 AM on June 25, 2012
Niven seems surprised that enfants terribles like Amis, Albarn, Boyle and Hirst grow up and become the establishment they once stood against or satirised. This seems to have been a prevailing dynamic forever, from what I can make out.
You'll of course have noticed that none of these socalled bad boys were actually ever a threat to the established order, nor their antics much more than overgrown schoolboy pranks. It's good to be a white, middleclass male with the right connections: you drop the occasional "fuck", get a bit into the old in and out, the old bit of ultra violence and scatology, and soon you're a rebel just like dear papa.
For the next couple of decades you can coast on your reputation, while the airport readers can safely read your novel reassured they won't be challenged but are reading literature.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:16 PM on June 25, 2012 [2 favorites]
You'll of course have noticed that none of these socalled bad boys were actually ever a threat to the established order, nor their antics much more than overgrown schoolboy pranks. It's good to be a white, middleclass male with the right connections: you drop the occasional "fuck", get a bit into the old in and out, the old bit of ultra violence and scatology, and soon you're a rebel just like dear papa.
For the next couple of decades you can coast on your reputation, while the airport readers can safely read your novel reassured they won't be challenged but are reading literature.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:16 PM on June 25, 2012 [2 favorites]
The Information is one of the most depressing things I've ever read. It very effectively put me inside the consciousness of a mean, bitter, vicious, hateful man, and I WANTED OUT!
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 8:11 PM on June 25, 2012
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 8:11 PM on June 25, 2012
Money, The Information, London Fields -- I was pretty obsessed with those books in my late 20's. Some good short stories too. And his memoir Experience is brilliant -- incorporating letters he wrote as a college student to his father Kingsley?
What the hell happened?
posted by bardic at 9:16 PM on June 25, 2012
What the hell happened?
posted by bardic at 9:16 PM on June 25, 2012
You grew up, Amis didn't.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:49 PM on June 25, 2012
posted by MartinWisse at 10:49 PM on June 25, 2012
I think MA's novels (after The Rachel Papers, anyway) have tended to stake a claim to reflect the contemporary scene which they couldn't altogether justify. He has always disdained research, which was amusing when he covered his ignorance of drugs in Dead Babies by saying 'I don't know much about science, but I know what I like'. But the gap has gradually widened and got less excusable. He didn't really seem to notice Thatcher or anything after that, and at times it has seemed to me he is marooned in a kind of dog-eared Long Seventies. Chutzpah is not quite enough when you call your book Money and yet seem to know little and care less about the complex financial mayhem transforming society all around you (let's not even talk about The Information). Yellow Dog's version of the zeitgeist appeared to have been written by an elderly man who doesn't get out much.
And then there's this whole business of motivation being fucked, a pet theory alluded to in several novels and supposed to sustain Night Train (a bold attempt doomed by the falsity of the theory). Sorry Mart, you still have to do that motivation stuff. You still have to do it. Is that OK Mart? Is that okay?
posted by Segundus at 2:46 AM on June 26, 2012
And then there's this whole business of motivation being fucked, a pet theory alluded to in several novels and supposed to sustain Night Train (a bold attempt doomed by the falsity of the theory). Sorry Mart, you still have to do that motivation stuff. You still have to do it. Is that OK Mart? Is that okay?
posted by Segundus at 2:46 AM on June 26, 2012
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Some of the Guardian's comments seem to agree. (No idea, myself.)
posted by IndigoJones at 8:39 AM on June 25, 2012