by D. J. Taylor
‘Hey you!’ he found himself shouting. Shouting he found himself. ‘You there! Mart or whatever your fucking name is. Why are you always here?’
‘Did I say anything?’ the small guy wondered.
‘No, but it’s always the same isn’t it? Calliope, Esperanza, Lily, that midget Italian Count or whoever he is – we don’t really exist, do we? The only thing that really goes on in your books is you being really fucking clever.’
‘You know, Keith,’ Mart nodded, ‘you’re not as dim as I thought. Not at all. One day, you know – not soon, but one day – I’ll give you something you want. Not girls with big tits and unimaginable sexual appetites but something you really want. Know what it is?’
‘No,’ Keith found himself whispering brokenly. The birds – those pertinacious pigeons and trite thrushes – were trilling their avian aria. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Plausibility . . . Hey,’ Mart sang. ‘You’d better buzz over to the lawn now. This is a novel about the sexual revolution, right, and I hear Calliope’s just taken her bra off.’
And Keith – little Keith, thrice-blessed Keith – buzzed.
MARTIN AMIS: THE BIOGRAPHY
RICHARD BRADFORD
FROM THE INTRODUCTION
I am extremely grateful to Martin Amis, whose God-given genius should be instantly apparent to any lover of modern literature, for graciously allowing me to write this book. I should also like to thank his wife, the immensely stylish and intelligent Isabel Fonseca, author of several remarkable books herself, for her generous insistence that she should provide help with preparation of the work. I am especially indebted to Mr Amis’s legal team, with whom my own lawyers enjoyed a number of long and fruitful conversations, and whose many helpful suggestions I have made a point of including in the text. [Will this do? – R. B.]
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YEARS
The second son of a womanising, neurotic drunk, whose serial adulteries caused his first wife untold misery and whose negligent attitude to his children’s upbringing led him virtually to abandon them in their mid-teens, Martin remains unfailingly loyal to his father’s memory. ‘I had an idyllic childhood,’ he tersely informs me. ‘Dad always had time to spare for me, taught me everything I knew and was an infallible rock and support. Do I make myself clear?’ ‘Certainly you do, Mr Amis,’ I remarked, as I hurried to switch off the tape recorder.
ON HIS SUBJECT’S EMOTIONAL LIFE . . .
In the second week of January 1975, having reached a parting of the ways with his current girlfriend the Hon. Fruitilla Starborgling, elder daughter of Earl Twinch, to whom his second novel, Bum Farts, is charmingly dedicated, and pausing only for a brief dalliance with the fragrant Natalia Gorgon (plausibly identified by a remote acquaintance of Martin’s I met in the Groucho as ‘Smeggy’ in Yobs in Space) whose memoir Bastards Who Have Dumped Me later caused such a sensation, and a possible encounter with Miss Mandy Miggins, proprietress of the Fancy Rat Café, Westbourne Grove, Martin then set his cap at the Zuleika of her generation, Miss Anastasia Bargs. I am delighted to report that Martin’s legal team have no objection to a friend of Ms Bargs’s being quoted to the effect that: ‘Annie said she was devastated when he chucked her, but really, you know, he was so cool and gracious about it that in the end she was quite flattered. And then of course he put her in Cunning Stunts as . . . [continues].
ON THE CRISIS OF THE MID-1990S . . .
It is not for me to suggest that Martin’s abandonment of his first wife, Antonia Phillips, for another woman is strongly reminiscent of his father’s behaviour thirty years before, or that the parallels between the sexual behaviour of father and son are so striking that no prudent biographer could ignore them. No indeed: no topic could be of less interest to me. Yet by 1993 it was clear to informed observers that the marriage was on the rocks. The distinguished literary journalist John Walsh, who attended Amis’s Oxford college some years after he left it and once glimpsed the back of Ms Phillips’s head as she walked into the Ivy, recalled seeing them together at the Cheltenham Literary Festival: ‘You could tell it was all over. She had a Coke. He ordered a lemon juice. The body chemistry was way out.’
Unhappily, the split coincided with Amis’s decision to dispense with the services of his long-term literary agent, who by a cruel irony was married to his old friend Julian Snargs. Alas that the law of copyright does not allow me to quote from Snargs’s accusatory letter! But I am reliably informed by Mr Christopher Hitchens, without whose unbelievably tactless indiscretions this book could not have been written, that the exact words were: Mart you treacherous swine. I hope you rot in hell for this, you bastard. That’s the last time we ever play snooker.
CONCLUSION: IS HE A GREAT WRITER?
Well, it depends on what you mean by ‘great’ [continues for dozens of pages].
THE LIFE OF KINGSLEY AMIS
ZACHARY LEADER
. . . Opinions differed as to Amis’s precise emotional state at this time. Barry Refill, a lifelong friend from the Garrick Club, maintained that ‘He was a real gentleman to the last. I mean, if he’d had six gin-and-tonics he’d go on and drink a seventh if you bought it for him. That was the kind of man he was.’ A dinner with the novelist Julian Barnes, however, displayed this titanic literary figure in less flattering light. Amis arrived, to quote Barnes, ‘in a not terribly good mood’. Offered a glass of Château Mouton-Rothschild 1953 he flung the bottle on the floor with a shout of ‘This wine’s piss’ before asking his host, ‘I suppose you’re writing some fucking book aren’t you?’ The conversation then moved on to address the situation in apartheid-era South Africa. ‘Basically, we need to line all the niggers up against the wall and shoot them,’ Amis deposed before collapsing in a pile of vomit. Barnes admitted that the evening ‘really wasn’t what you might call a success’.
In a later conversation with an earlier biographer about whom I shall attempt to be scrupulously fair, Amis attempted to rationalise these pronouncements. ‘Basically we need to line all the niggers up against a wall and shoot them’ meant ‘I am afraid the prospect of Mr Mandela’s release is somewhat remote.’ ‘I suppose you’re writing some fucking book aren’t you?’ meant ‘I am looking forward very much to your new work.’ Amis also maintained that he threw the bottle of wine on the floor ‘in an attempt to disable the large number of green phosphorescent serpents I had seen writhing there.’
Much of this trauma is reflected in Women I Bloody Hate Them, which, while no less funny than its predecessor I Want A Shag, is a more challenging work. Several critics have detected an autobiographical element in this story of a serial adulterer with a drink problem who . . . [continues for thousands of pages].
NORTHANGER ABBEY: A SCREENPLAY
MARTIN AMIS
Scene: Bath, exterior, day. Wind ceaselessly crazes the frightening trees, etc. A carriage bowls friskily into view. Within, Miss Catherine Morland and friend, in torpid transit.
MISS M: (pertly adjusts bonnet): How do I look?
FRIEND: Babelocious.
MISS M: (inspects cleavage): Jesus! If this doesn’t drag the animal to the party I’ll freak. Period.
FRIEND: Tilney? He’s cool. But, like, insane. And the old guy – is he ever weird?
MISS M: Whatever. You like Britney Spears best, or Celine Dion?
(They amuse themselves playing whist or some other pretty period diversion. CUT TO Northanger Abbey. Bats privily prowl. Deer surreptitiously stalk, etc.)
GENERAL TILNEY: This chick Morland, is she pissing me off or what?
TILNEY: The fuck?
GENERAL TILNEY: There’s no bread. I made them run a computer check. Plus she reckons I offed your ma. Does that sound like a good deal?
TILNEY: You’re breaking my heart, Dad.
GENERAL TILNEY: You young guys got no respect.
(They arm wrestle playfully on carpet. Butler, housemaids etc. look raptly on. CUT TO Morland household, exterior, night. Ring at door.)
MISS M: This better be good, b
uster.
TILNEY (insinuatingly): Your pa home?
MISS M: Writing some asshole sermon is all. So . . . do I get to date you at the Prom or what?
TILNEY: Just as soon as I get out of rehab, hon.
MISS M: Fuckin’ A!
(They embrace as a file of cheerleaders marches behind. Profiles in all newspapers, Amis wins Oscar etc.)
POETRY CORNER
KILLING TIME
SIMON ARMITAGE
This is the kind of poem that people like to read these days, combining street-wise references with post-modern tricks
It’s the kind of thing that gets put on Channel Four with Christopher Eccleston my name is Simon, I’m thirty-six.
This is a poem about the Millennium, and by extension the whole meaning of existence, I’m dropping in as much stuff from the Guardian news pages as I can think of and you highbrows can keep your distance.
Meanwhile on the Thames, the people trying to hoist the BA London Eye are all shagged out,
This kind of thing is supposed to make poetry dead contemporary, but you know I have my doubts.
While on deck the waiters clear the muddied plates, while hoping that no one will fall in
With any luck this book will be warmly commended in next week’s Observer by Mr Tom Paulin.
Water laps against each prow. It’s the eve of the dawn, a millennium lately departed
It’s no good you thinking, ‘That Simon, he’ll stop now for sure’, cos I’ve only just started.
And finally, in a West Yorkshire village a poet delivers himself of his burden
I’ve an idea I’ve seen this kind of stuff somewhere before in – could it be – the Collected Works of W. H. Auden?
THE DEATH OF KING ARTHUR
SIMON ARMITAGE
You who are listeners and love lightly to learn
Of the practitioners of poetry and their awesome advances
Hither haply hurry, and hist to my tale of the travails of Simon,
And his search, amidst much that was passingly modish,
For a suitable subject. ‘Miss Oswald has done well’
Our bard ruminated, ‘with her rhapsodic Homeric re-stylings.
My own Sir Gawain was most suavely saluted and critically
Commended. Yes, history’s the thing, and King Arthur my
Lyrical lode-star.’ And with that he boldly began, his journey commencing,
In prudent preparation, with the quest for a style. ‘Malory won’t do’
He crisply concluded. ‘Too Greenery-yallery, quintessentially quaint.
No, I shall follow that poem in Lincoln Cathedral library,
Antique and alliterative, though Tennyson it ain’t. When these
Deeds were done he dubbed his knights and dealt out
Dukedoms in different lands. How does that sound? For the poet’s realm
Has many mansions, in this proud, post-modernist time.
And to the dismal dearth of scansion may be aptly added
The lamentable lack of rhyme. But never mind. They were fast
In fording to the fine coast of Normandy. You know, I think I’m
On to something here. Mistress Duffy wastes her words in adumbrating
Odes for textbooks; Sir Andrew Motion’s muse is mostly maladroit. At Sir
Geoffrey one looks listlessly askance. Yet hearken here to
Sir Simon, poesy pricked on the pin-point
Of his ersatz-Arthurian lance.
TON UP FOR WYSTAN!
(Lines in celebration of the centenary of the birth of W. H. Auden)
He buggered off in the dead of winter
The Nazis were in Poland, the Czechs had been smothered
Not quite the time for a poetic gesture
The country was at war; no one much bothered
Even the most fervent well-wisher would
Wonder why he’d flown the coop with Isherwood
Far from his agreeable boat-trip
The armies ran over the Maginot Line
The smoke rose, and the burned bodies were raked into particles
But his sojourn in the Big Apple was marked
By a number of magazine articles
Now he’s in every broadsheet in the country
And all that equivocal stuff about Spain is ‘the conscience of a nation’ –
Rather than the usual cry of self-preservation
The thoughts of a dead man, turned all transcendent
Make a nice 1500 words in the Independent
‘We must love one another and die.’
Sounds good, Uncle Wiz. Let’s give it a try.
Guild of poets, stifle sniggers
Wystan Auden’s reached three figures
Let the English vessel lie
Safe beneath Manhattan sky
On the far side of the Atlantic
Let the poet’s muse stay antic
Never mind absconding sods
Keep the free man from false Gods . . .
HUMAN CHAIN
SEAMUS HEANEY
AN IRISH POET FORESEES HIS DESTINY
(AFTER W. B. YEATS)
A grand auld life it is, to be sure
Being an Irish poet
Your subjects ready-made
Like the warm soda-bread on Mrs McCavity’s window-sill
Robbed by us Fenian boys on our dawn parade
And your critics – Muldoon and Toibin and the others –
Lined up in the Guardian Review, like the Catholic band of brothers
To offer their benedictions. No half measures in
Our world, are there spalpeens? Just solidarity. Like O’Grady’s bar
In downtown Ballymaclutch, a full pint for everyone,
The Guinness flowing pure like milk from the Virgin’s breast,
The least lyrical among us given his crutch. A grand auld
Life to be sure.
FONS ET ORIGO (CF. AENEID VII, 94, CONTINUED)
Ah, Derry, Derry, risen out of the bog
Forged in the raging furnace of Tir-na-Nog
Priest-blessed, nun-haunted, the Pope gazing down
From the scullery wall, my grandfather’s false teeth,
Marinading in Steradent, the goose-feather eiderdown
Bought that time in Roscommon, at the traveller’s fair
All swept aside by the summons to London,
And the boat from Rosslare.
GENEALOGY
Who is this coming up to Queen Square
Flint-eyed Hibernian peasant?
To join Wystan and Tom, Ez and the rest
Elegiac, but effervescent
All sweat-lustrous and bedewed, the elderflower
In the glare of the noon-day sun
No, you can’t write like that in London N1.
BALLYBUNION ECLOGUE
Those evenings when we’d just wait and watch
And fish, the rod wound back inch by inch on its spool,
Looking for the symbols that Irish poems are crammed with,
That metaphor that would clinch it, have the guy at the
TLS sit up on his stool. And see, as if by magic,
The otter’s head appear in the flow, dark among the midge-drifts, the river’s glue
The swell of old Ireland, its dead souls lost on the flood tide . . . [continues]
‘I’ll take the otter,’ I yelled. ‘What about you?’ Poor Paidraig, all
That was left (I’d previously had the beached trout and the silver stone
We’d found at the wayside too) was old Mr McGarrigle’s field of spring wheat,
He of the Gabolga, full of shadow, I grant you,
The shrike’s beak piercing the field mouse’s skull
But it just wouldn’t do.
HE REMEMBERS MULLHOLLANDSTOWN
Carpet-crawlers in convent lace, the old red trace of the earth tied
Up in grass knots, brass pots cast aside in the hedge’s loosestrife-striven
Shado
w. And the horse’s spavined forelock, swollen like
Church coffers at Christmas. Meltwater, foxbreath, shankscrimbler, a past
Interred in madeupwords. Snow spread across the dead pasture
Like a bridal train, and down in the snicket-sanctioned streamlet
Those otters (again).
FINE FELLERS, ALL OF THEM
In long trousers that stopped at mid-calf
We read our catechisms with Father O’Hoolahan, chased tennis balls
Our fathers farmed fields, made wills, played at shinty
Our mothers stayed home, talked and sewed, anchorites all.
Patrick O’Rourke’s at Ennis, in the hotel trade
Young Connor, in silk, prowls the courts
Coughlan made Maynooth too hold to him
I write poems – it’s a living, of sorts.
THE BOOK OF MY ENEMY: COLLECTED VERSE 1958–2003
CLIVE JAMES
A LETTER TO MR CLIVE JAMES, TO MARK THE PUBLICATION OF HIS COLLECTED VERSE
Dear Clive, I took your book up to the study
The better to appraise you next your peers
Martin, Craig Raine, Larkin – all those fuddy-duddies
That you’ve addressed your poems to for years
Such coy encomia might be thought romantic
A better word, alas, is ‘sycophantic’.
Your verse, of course, depends on incongruity
Those brainy thoughts hemmed in by metric bands
The reader may find only superfluity
A poet rarely sitting on his hands
Using the dreary plod of terza rima
To hymns his jaunts to Tokyo and Lima.
‘To Gore Vidal at 50’ – you’re fond of anniversaries