Martin Amis' Money

Ouch. That was a slog.

I don't usually give up on novels--I probably should do it a little more--but this one was so very close. They say it's funny, but I can't say it worked for me.

The story is this: John Self has been a successful director of commercials for a London advertising firm; he's about to make his first commercial feature-length film with mostly American actors. Those actors, the producer, various film financiers appear. There's also the complications of his love life. Self is a large man of large appetites, booze, food, sex. He's got a mistress, but still spends a lot of time with prostitutes, has to audition actresses (we all know what that means, post-Weinstein) and lusts after friends' wives. Does the film get made? Does he marry his mistress? Such are the questions of the novel, though I can't say I particularly cared.

Which is kind of too bad. When I was halfway through the novel, the reason I picked it off my TBR pile in the first place, Martin Amis gave a talk at the library here and I went. He's a funny guy in person with amusing riffs about James Joyce (Amis doesn't like him) and insightful ones about Vladimir Nabokov (whom Amis does like.)

And the fact that Amis was funny in person got me to finish the novel but as I said, it was a slog.

So I was wondering why Amis was so highly regarded?--since it couldn't be my taste was at fault. It's possible that he's a funny guy in person distracted. Amis started off famous--he was notorious in England both for his lifestyle and for the fact that his father was a famous novelist. (Kingsley Amis for Lucky Jim among others.) And maybe that meant people paid more attention to him, knew his droll persona, reading his novels as if they were Martin Amis talking in person.

But Amis is a very literary writer, I'd say. More so than his father, who just lashes out, one of the original Angry Young Men. Martin wears his forebears on his sleeve: Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow. Criticism of his literary forebears is the topic of his latest book, The Rub Of Time, which I haven't read, but what he mostly talked about. Money reminded me a little of Nabokov; Martin Amis the character shows up in the novel to watch a fellow national destroy himself in America, much as Vladimir Nabokov does in Pnin. Pnin is a much more human book, though, the most human I find of Nabokov's; Money is simply savage satire, of mostly too obvious targets.

But Money is much more homage to Saul Bellow than Vladimir Nabokov. It's a long first person novel, and it's Bellow's spiky narrative style that informs the way John Self speaks to the reader, but it's just not Bellow. I have a troubled relationship, let's say, with Bellow; his handling of female characters is problematic. But as an "American, Chicago born," The Adventures of Augie March meant a lot to me at one point. But whatever one might think of Bellow, Amis' prose is not there. The opening of Money only points up Amis' relative weakness.

Then there's the book cover. I led with the one above that I found on the Internet. That looks like a book one might want to read. I can't really say why I bought my copy, which has the cover shown below, and which I couldn't find anywhere so the photo is my own. The Internet couldn't be bothered to preserve that. Penguin, what were you thinking?

Anyway, one less book on the TBR pile. I can't say much more.

Book Beginning: Ben Lerner's Leaving The Atocha Station

The first phase of my research involved waking up weekday mornings in a barely furnished attic apartment, the first apartment I'd looked at after arriving in Madrid, or letting myself be woken by the noise from La Plaza Santa Ana, failing to assimilate that noise fully into my dream, then putting on the rusty stovetop espresso machine and rolling a spliff while I waited for the coffee.

...is the beginning of Ben Lerner's Leaving The Atocha Station.

I heard some buzz about this when it came out a few years ago (2011) and mentally put it on my it might be interesting list. But I recently realized the Atocha station is the main Madrid train station (Vacation in Spain coming up. Yay!) I thought I'd try it.

Ben Lerner wrote a couple of books of poetry but this is his first novel. (There's now a second.) I haven't read anything of his before this. I'm not much beyond that sentence at the moment, but I suppose it sets the picture: impoverished student-y ex-pat life. It's a short novel, and it even has pictures, so I suppose I'll finish it soon. Anybody know this one?

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. Hola! Me llamo Reese. 

Amélie Nothomb's Pétronille

A couple of years ago, the movie Tokyo Fiancée played here at the Toronto International Film Festival and I went to see it. I think I'd heard of Amélie Nothomb before that--the film was based on one of her novels which may have been part of the motivation to see that movie in particular. I liked the movie so I thought I should read one of her books sometime.

Well, you know how that goes. It took a while.

I saw Pétronille at a local used book store that specializes in remaindered books, so I got it, but it didn't get read right away and it became part of the TBR pile. Then a couple of days ago that same bookstore had a different Nothomb available, Life Form, and I was going to get that one too, but I decided I should read the other first. (Wasn't that good of me?) So I did and I'm glad I did.

In Pétronille, a character named Amélie, a successful Belgian author now living in Paris (much like our author) decides she needs a friend she can drink champagne with. She meets Pétronille at a book signing. Pétronille is a fan of Amélie's work, but at that time is a graduate student doing research on Elizabethan drama. They seem to hit it off, but it takes one or two other cautious meetings before they become champagne-drinking buddies. Pétronille becomes a novelist in her own right.

Not a whole lot happens; this is not a plot-driven novel. But it is quite funny. The opening sentence gives a good idea of the tone. There's quite an amusing takedown of Vivienne Westwood, the British fashion designer from the punk era. The Amélie character is presented as socially reserved, even a bit diffident. At one point Pétronille suggests they use the informal tu instead of vous with each other; Amélie resists, even though, as Pétronille points out, they've slept in the same bed, and Pétronille has seen Amélie in her orange pajamas. Some of the humor comes from the tension between the diffidence of the Amélie character and the forthrightness of the telling of the story. I mean, she declares she's out to find a champagne-drinking buddy.

The novel takes a surreal turn at the end, the very last few pages. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but you do know that it's a novel.

Fun, and quite a quick read, only 120 pages. Now I'm hoping that pile of Life Form they had at the bookstore still has a copy or two left.

This is my first of Nothomb's novels. (Though it won't be the last.) Does anyone have any sense where this fits in? Is it an especially good one (or poor one)? Favorites?