The clan Amis
David Blackburn 4:02pm
Now there are three of them. Louis Amis’s review of Philip Roth’s The Humbling in this month’s Standpoint is among the most original on the subject. The contrived romance between an ageing actor and a lesbian 25 years his junior has got the professionally indignant yapping about ‘offensive sexual politics’. It may be a question of upbringing, but Amis is contemptuous of high horses.
The Humbling indulges Roth’s obsession with age and decline, a fixation inaugurated by the removal of Nathan Zuckerman’s prostate in American Pastoral and a theme that has dominated Roth’s work ever since. Given his age, 76, and health Roth's slightly morbid fascination is unsurprising, a point that Martin Amis emphasised in a recent debate with Clive James. Writers’ brilliance diminishes with age and they become transfixed by their own disintegration:‘Axler isn't a "potent man" — the book is mainly about his forlorn attempts to reclaim his lost status as even a "real" one. Suggestions of him being able to "turn" a lesbian, and there aren't many, are irony at Axler's expense. Pegeen is the potent one, the agent. Axler is on the wrong end of an asymmetric relationship, the cruel asymmetry of need, and the fantasy underpinning it is the one that, without ever being woken from his dream-like, ghost-like state, he allows himself to nurture: that, at this late stage, things might turn out all right. In the end, it's something like the inscrutability of people, the all-too-predictable unpredictability of people that, manifested in Pegeen, completes Axler's humbling.’
"Old age is not for old people. It’s like starring in a low budget horror film, saving the worst till last. Saul Bellow published in his mid-80s a charming but slight novel called Ravelstein — but nothing like the mighty longer novels. The great stylist John Updike’s ear went and he was reduced to writing [poor] sentences."The idea of not spotting clunking repetition is a terrifying indictment of failing powers. And Philip Roth lost the ability to breath life into his characters. I hope and expect to have a good last period. But there are things that science can tell us — we all face a shrinking vocabulary. I reach for the thesaurus more often than I used to."
It must be some way off, but another Amis seems set to eclipse his still living father?
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Andrew
December 16th, 2009 4:17pm Report this commentLouis Amis might well eclipse his father, but Martin Amis never eclipsed Kingsley. Even if you were to eliminate all the books Kingsley wrote before Martin became a novelist, and just compare their respective works whilst both writing for a living, Kingsley's are by far the more readable.
Give me Ending Up, Jake's Thing, Stanley and the Women, The Old Devils, The Folks That Live on the Hill and You Can't Do Both every time over Dead Babies, Money and the rest.
Jeremy
December 16th, 2009 5:30pm Report this commentThis is somewhat tangential to the thread, but did you know...? Did you know that Jonathan Miller directed a film adaptation of Kingsley Amis' comic novel "Take A Girl Like You" in 1970? The script was by George Melly. Although I think highly of Miller as a director, I've no idea what the film is like because I haven't seen it. And I'm afraid I ain't read the book, neither.
Fergus Pickering
December 21st, 2009 4:04am Report this commentOh Jeremy, DO read the book. It is, in my opinion, Amis's finest and shows why he deserved a knighthood and the Booker which he never got. And, unlike some bloody novels, it's nice and short.
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