https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/15/rishi-sunak-micke…
This in particular: “ In Martin Amis’s novel The Information, there’s one character who always feels like he desperately wants a cigarette even while he is actually smoking a cigarette. The Tories seem obsessed to the exclusion of all else with the remote possibility they could form the next government, even when they are actually the current government. Guys, live a little! Maybe even govern a little?”
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I’m not sure she is. I love a Marty quote as much as the next chap, but the idea that the Tories believe there is a remote possibility they can win the next GE is fantastical. It’s damage limitation all the way.
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Is she sure it’s the information? In Money Self has the line ‘unless I tell you otherwise I’m always smoking a cigarette”
Obvs not a great move for Hitch and him. But they lived. And how.
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I think it is a Richard Tull reference tbf. I’ll give Marina a pass on that one.
On that subject my favourite line in The Information is the passage likening impotence to easing an oyster into a parking meter.
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Google confirms tbf.
Still can’t believe he’s gone tbh
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Me neither. Not sure how his legacy survives… the TLS did a very kind review of the Rachel Papers a week or so before he died, but I’m not sure his contemporaries are so well disposed. He was very much the old guard towards the end.
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Disagree tbh. His peers all got on. Those that mattered anyway. McEwan, Rushdie, Fenton. Hitch obvs. I was hearing all about it only a week or two ago. Fashions come and go. I was surprised and heartened a couple of years ago to see Dolly Alderton rave about The RPs. Good for her. She knows a tale of male frailty shagnasty when she sees one. And Inside Story is a metafictional masterpiece imho. Easter eggs all over.
And for all those even now who think he was a farty, look out the account of his convo with his dad about what your forename says about you.
Also, never forget the role played in his literary life by the force of nature that was Elizabeth Jane Howard. And which he credited always. Her autobiography Slipstream is required reading for all booksters.
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I loved the first half of Inside Story - loads of great Amis-y observations - but the second half felt like it could have been cut down by 100 pages.
Also found it really weird that Phoebe aphelia was 100% made up.
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In the sense she’s a composite of real people? Or that he didn’t have affairs with ppl like that menkle journo?
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I remember forming the opinion - some decades ago - that Amis was a bit of a prick. Now I can't remember what led to that happening. But it's why I've never read any of his stuff.
Is it standing the test of time?
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Too soon to tell. That’s how art works.
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