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Bring out the big guns The War Against Clich&# 233; Martin Amis (Vintage) A combative title for a collection of what is considered by non-practitioners to be a genteel art: book-reviewing. Well, its not. And fighting against clich&# 233; is as good a stance as any to adopt. Here is Amis on Michael Crichton's The Lost World (Malcolm and Rossiter, incidentally, are characters in the novel): The characterization has been delegated to two or three thrashed and downtrodden adverbs. (Amis here inserts a deadpan half-paragraph of select quotation, where everyone either says things irritably or gloomily. ) Malcolm seems to own gloomily'; but then you irritably notice that Rossiter is behaving gloomily too, and gloomily discover that Malcolm is behaving irritably. Forget about tensely and grimly for now. And dont get me started on thoughtfully.
All right, everyone knows Crichton is junk awaiting a large-screen adaptation. Lets see Amis on something all the other critics loved: Thomas Harris Hannibal. I got through the thing in the end, with many a weary exhalation, with much dropping of the head and rolling of the eyes, and with considerable fanning of the armpits. He goes on to explain precisely why such a reaction was provoked, but what was that from Amiss introduction, when he describes the current unsatisfactory state of criticism? The reviewer calmly tolerates the arrival of the new novel or slim volume, defensively settles into it, and then sees which way it rubs him up. The right way or the wrong way.
The results of this contact will form the data of the review This looks rather close to armpit-fanning as critical technique. Yet his sentence ends: without any reference to the thing behind. Amis provides plenty of reference to the thing behind which are in fact three big things: talent, and the canon, and the body of knowledge we call literature. This isnt elitism; its the expression of a strong desire to get writers to raise their game and stop treating us like idiots.
We know, now, that Amis knows plenty about talent, the canon, and literature. He is supremely qualified to write about writing; and this is a collection of what one would be tempted to say he does best, if this werent to back-handedly insult his novels, which I have no intention of doing. Im still reminded of the character in The Information of whom Amis remarks that when he reviews a book, it stays reviewed; and there is a very pleasing aura around each review that what Amis has to say about any given work is going to be the last word on the subject. This is what every reviewer hopes is the case, and is one of the reasons why I bought this in hardback with my own money.
That should give some idea of how impatient I was to get hold of it, even though Id read about half of the contents beforehand. His defence of Philip Larkins writing against the attacks of those who were scandalized by the details of his life is exemplary, and necessary. His analysis of political correctness is, well, the last word on the subject. (His pokes at Beckett, however, I impertinently choose to interpret as misguided homage to a possibly familial robust English common-sense. ) He is less funny, more clotted reverential about his heroes, Bellow and Nabokov but then that is highly understandable. Those essays are still the antithesis of almost all academic prose: readable, alert, engaging. And if you ever want to be a book reviewer, go off and get this. This is how its done.
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