I’ve torn my rug out getting my head round this
David Blackburn 5:44pm
BBC Drama was slammed for producing a predictably insipid adaptation of Emma, and the department recognised the need to respond with an original project. It chose...wait for it… Martin Amis’ Money.
As Michael Deacon writes at The Telegraph:
‘This is either going to be the most awe-inspiringly skilful achievement in the history of scriptwriting, or a giant, sucking quagmire of impenetrability. Because Money won’t be an easy novel to film. It isn’t even an easy novel to read. Although clever, original and often desperately funny, it doesn’t have a TV-friendly plot, or indeed much of a plot at all. (Look: does anyone fully understand, or find credible, what happens at the end, with Fielding Goodney’s absurdly complex financial scam?)’
Money is one of my favourite books – killingly funny, savage, critical, and stylistically and structurally bent. But it’s incomprehensible. John Self’s internalised meanderings cannot be filmed without a tedious voiceover, interrupted by occasional squirts of dialogue and the odd shot of self-consciously daring sex. Mind you, the same was said of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, which made an excellent film - albeit one bearing the faintest resemblance to the book.
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logdon
November 13th, 2009 5:38pm Report this commentIt's answer is in the final denouement.
But there's plenty in it to keep the plot moving along with transatlantic cuts and his London media wide boy demeanour.
Just as long as they don't trick it up too much, or turn it into an overtly steamy sex romp, it could be pretty entertaining stuff.
Martin Amis is, without doubt one of our finest authors. And also, lets not forget, commentators.
A classic modern Englishman, forthright yet still holding back an enigmatic core.
His Second Plane is a master class of PC avoidance, something the Speccie could do well to study in an age of vanilla journalism and please all opinion.
Leading to, yep, I had to sneak it in somehow.
Did anyone see even that lefty du jour Will Self's little aside on Neather?
An honourable man who would not exaggerate for self aggrandisement, was his conclusion.
So there we are, the stamp of approval from such an unlikely source.
Maybe one day we'll read a detailed analysis in these august pages.
There's a whole tale of high deception and gerrymandering which puts even the high priestess of the game, Dame Shirley Porter into total shade.
Sorry to labour it, but you know and we know that in the fullness of time the bombshell will erupt.
Where better for the blue touch paper than here?
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