Backlisted - The Information by Martin Amis

Episode Date: March 21, 2016

Kill Your Friends author John Niven joins John, Andy & Mathew in the pod to discuss The information by Martin Amis, on the way answering the question 'if this book were a Britpop album, which Britpop album would it be?' This may or may not become a regular feature. There's also talk on how writers write, and the epoch defining moment when Andy met a punk rock legend. Timings: (may differ due to adverts)2'37 - The Devasting Boys by Elizabeth Taylor 6'37 - Daily Rituals by Mason Currey 13:06 - The Information by Martin Amis* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. When you're working out at Planet Fitness, it's a judgment-free zone, so you can really step up your workout. That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights.

There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness and July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. summer 1986 30 years ago i lived near croydon that's where i grew up and i've been to croydon i bought a couple of records and i've with a record that i the album that i bought was a copy

of fables of the reconstruction by rem i was walking back to my house down our long, very leafy suburban road. It was a really hot day. And in the distance, no one around in the distance, there's a man walking towards me dressed in black leather. I was thinking, that's what I need to get out of this weather. And I get closer. I said, blimey, that bloke looks like Joe Strummer. In our road.

And he gets in. It is Joe Strummer. I think, oh, my God, it's Joe Strummer. I think, oh my God, it's Joe Strummer in the street. I can't just pretend. What am I going to say? What am I going to say? And as he went past,

he went, all right, Joe. And he went, all right, mate. That was that. That was it. Our last history was made. I don't know why he was there. Surely you didn't go, what are you doing here? No, I should have done,

now I would do. In suburban Croydon. Come and have a cup of tea with my mum. No, I missed my chance. Man, that's a real time. Yeah. Hello and welcome to Backlisted. Today we're gathered in the library of our sponsors unbanned,

the publishers who bring authors and readers together to create great things to read. I'm John Mitchinson, runner-up of Corduroy Wearer of the Year 1987, Corduroy King of Cloths, Cloth of Kings. Hello everyone, I'm Andy Miller, I'm the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously, and also, I don't normally say this, but there's a reason for doing so, I'm also the author of the book in the 33 and a third series of books about albums, of a book about the kinks of the Village Green Preservation Society.

What an amazing coincidence. There's a reason why I mention that. Why is that? Guest, John Niven. Well, I am guest, John Niven, author of novels like Kill Your Friends, and also a novel called Music from Big Pink, which is my fourth novel, in 2005, four or five,

which was published in the same series as Andy's book. So we are label mates. Yeah, I should say this is our guest today is John Niven, who is here to talk about the information by Martin Amis. John, of course, known as a novelist. How many novels now? Six, seven novels. The latest being The Sunshine Cruise Company. And we're also joined, as usual, by the author and fundraiser, Matthew Clayton.

Hello, Matthew. Hello, everyone. We'll be talking about Martin Amis, as I said later, but I have to start, as always, with the question of all questions. Andy, what haven't you been reading this week? What haven't I been reading this week? I've been reading a book of short stories by the British writer Elizabeth Taylor, a book called The Devastating Boys.

And I'm going to say a little bit about that, but I'm not going to say loads about it because I'm hoping we're going to do Elizabeth Taylor on a future episode of the podcast. But this was a book of short stories that was published, I think, in the early 1970s. And I read one of Elizabeth Taylor's novels before, Angel

I just thought this was the most brilliant collection of short stories that I've read since Tigers Are Better Looking by Jean Rees. There's a story in there called, an amazing story called In and Out of the Houses which is about ten pages long where a little girl

during her school holidays goes from house to house in her village, inadvertently carrying the most terrible gossip between each house. Like sort of a virus. Yeah, in the course of the summer. And in the course of the summer, the village falls apart and turns in on itself. It's so beautifully done. What a great idea.

And there's a really horrible story called The Flypaper, which is like something from Tales of the Unexpected. And there's another amazing story called The Excursion to the Source. It's almost a novella. And it's a perfect collection of short stories because it has that thing.

Every story is different and yet each has a clear voice. They're all clearly written by the same author. And I've also just been reading, in comparison, The Devastating Boys. What a band name, that one. But I've also been reading a volume of John Cheever's

short stories called The Brigadier and the Golf Widow and I like the Elizabeth Taylor more. I mean, the Cheever stories are obviously brilliant. The thing with Cheever is, it strikes me, you have to buy into the voice. They're all written in a particular register. And as a result,

some are better than others and some are quite samey. Tortured gay wasp register. It's fine. Plenty of bourbon and surnames. Yeah. But the Elizabeth Taylor just said... That's a great memoir title, bourbon and surnames. Don't you think that short stories are a bit like sherry?

Every few years, people suggest that they're about to become really popular again. What, reinvent the city? And they're not, because they're not that good. I absolutely agree. I don't really like short stories. I've suggested a collection of short stories once to my publisher, and the reaction... I mean, you'd think I'd laid a log on the TV. I've also...

Did you write any? I did, actually. So, do you have a publisher for your short fiction? I've spoken like a publisher. Never call them short stories. Short fiction. Maybe we should talk. Funny you should mention that. I think short story

is a sort of... We ought to have a better word for what they are because... Nobody says, I've just published a long story. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like story is the kind of, story is the stuff. But also, what I've noticed with short stories, right, this is a thing that we do here on this podcast

that we should try not to do. So if you say you're reading a novel by somebody and it's the first novel that you've read of theirs, like I was reading Angel by Elizabeth Taylor, and while I was reading it, I tweeted, I said, I'm really enjoying this book. Someone will inevitably say to you, you really should read the short stories. Right, okay, right, okay, right.

They do that. So I was reading the short stories, and while I was reading the short stories, I was saying, oh, these short stories are great. Somebody tweeted me saying, you really should read the letters. So you get to the letters, and you go, we did this with Nancy Mitford, right? So I go, you've read the letters? Have you go, we did this with Nancy Mipford, right? You've read the letters.

Have you read the journals? It's like an endless series of Russian dolls. This is a very Amician kind of thing, isn't it? That great thing in information where he's talking about all the different streets, you know, how they kind of go down until you get too close. That's right. But nobody ever goes...

If I'd read Angel, no one ever would have the strength of character to say, oh, you're reading Angel? You've done it. That's it. That's her best book and the essence of her work.

This is all you need to read. Yeah, yeah. So, John, John, what have you been reading? I've been reading, I feel it's a bit of a cheat because it's so much fun. It's a book called

Daily Rituals by Mason Curry, who's a young american writer but he's just done that a really really simple thing but totally delicious how great minds make time find inspiration and get to work every literary festival you've ever been to this is all anyone wants to know so you know it's either do you write with a typewriter or a word processor but also describe your working day yeah yeah and of course it is endlessly fascinating and this book is just and it's not just writers it's painters it's musicians it's everybody i mean

there are some in here i thought i might just read one because we're going to do one of the forthcoming podcasts henry green the novelist but this has got to be the best working routine i've ever heard for none he was managing director of a company called Pontifex. OK. And it says, Green's reliance on the stability of a day job was no doubt helped by the fact that his actual duties were practically zero.

According to his biographer, Jeremy Tuglian, a typical day in the life of Henry York, managing director of Pontifex, looked something like this. He arrived at work at about 10am, was brought his gin and spent an hour or two pottering around his office or gossiping with the secretaries.

11.30, he left to spend the middle part of the working day at a nearby pub, refreshing himself with a couple of pints of beer before returning to gin. A colleague or two would eventually join him there and then they would talk about people at work or the bar regulars whose conversation Green would have been eavesdropping on while he was alone. When the managing director finally returned to his office, he repeated his morning routine and then, maybe,

wrote a page or two of his novel before catching the bus. Our mutual friend Tom Hodgkinson once went to interview Bruce Robinson. He was trying to fix up a date for him, and he rang up Bruce and said, how about next Tuesday? And Bruce said, I'll look in my diary. Sorry, Tom, I've had a look, and it says, Tuesday afternoon, a bottle of red wine and a wank. We were talking about JG Ballard last time, weren't we?

Ballard's routine was, because as you know, Ballard brought up the children on his own. On his own, yeah. So he would get the children ready for school. He would run them to the school. He'd come back. He'd pour himself

an enormous whiskey. He'd drink the whiskey for 20 minutes and then he'd write. I really understand that. As to draw the line. Do a similar thing. Then he'd sit back. Ballard had a huge scotch on the hour, every hour. understand that as to draw a line I think Bal had had

a huge scotch on the hour every hour that was his routine and he was actually asked in an interview when he said he finally

he said it got to a point he thought I'm not going to start drinking till 6 o'clock and the interviewer asked him was it hard putting that off

and he said hard it was like Stalingrad trying to not drink till 6pm after being used to hitting the

bottle. What's your routine, John? Sadly, it doesn't involve any reliance on

booze like that. It's really boring. I can only really write fiction in the morning,

and the earlier the better. If I can get it at 6.30, 7am, that's fantastic, but more usually it's like 8.30,

9, and then done by lunchtime really. I've got so much stuff on the screen right just now that my partner Nick comes out in the afternoons and we work on whatever script we're working on in the afternoon and then end of the day deal with emails and what not but really sort of

9 till 1 is kind of novel. I'm exactly the same, the earlier I can get to the desk the happier I am, so that I can be done by lunchtime. If you feel you somehow get a thousand wads before breakfast, you've kind of mugged the day, everything after that is grieving.

I mean, I used to be able to do the long, through the night stuff. I just fall asleep now and end up putting saliva on the desk. I also think that's some, you know, some bullshit, isn't it? That kind of, that almost feels to me like, look at me, fag hanging out of the mouth, tapping on the typewriter.

I think it can work when you're young, but Paul Schrader, who wrote Tax Driver famously, he would set up all night, out of his mind, and coke and whiskey. Cocaine, that is, not cocoa. And he'd write till five in the morning till he collapsed, and then he would revise Sober the next day. And he said out of the 12 or 14 pages he'd write till five in the morning till he collapsed and he said then he would revise sober the next day and he said out of the 12 or 14 pages he'd written he might get two

that were good but he said that sort of regime only works for a young man someday in their 20s because as you get into your 40s you really have to have an incredible amount of stamina to want to live that lifestyle of abuse So this book

routines is it daily richard sorry is it interviews or is it no no he literally is just gets a cut and paste job but it's just getting a lot a lot of these stories some of which are unintentionally like that one hilarious some of which are actually quite useful yeah i mean it does it honestly having read it the thing is getting up early does seem to be the consistent. I mean, there's a great one where Agatha Christie says, everybody says, when do you ever write? And she's great. She just said, well, I don't really know.

I sort of, I write in different rooms, but if I'm doing something, I just go like a dog with a bone and just disappear off and gnaw at it until I'm finished. There's a great, obviously, Kingsley Amis, which is punctuated again by whiskey. But I thought maybe I should say do you want to hear what Martin Amis' daily routine is? Oh, yes.

I've really got to resist doing my Amis impersonations, just in case. We should all. And he basically said that he doesn't have any squeamishness about writing, he told the Paris Review. Amis says he writes every weekday, driving himself to an office less than a mile from his London apartment.

He keeps business hours, but generally writes only for a small portion of the time everyone assumes I'm a systematic nose to the grindstone kind of person he said but to me it seems like a part time job really in that writing from 11 to 1 continuously is a very good day's work 11 to 1

11, 12, 1, that's two hours. Then you can read or play tennis or snooker. All very germane to what we're discussing next. Two hours. I think most writers would be very happy with two hours of concentrated work. But it's not wrong. I mean, I'll often sit,

the longest stretch I'll sit writing fiction for will be four or five hours. But, you know, of those four or five, it's probably really two is the way it all happens. Yeah, yeah. Who's that book by? it's Mason Carey it's published by Picador in the UK

but it's kind of it's fun it's really good fun and actually some of the painters are almost more interesting than the writers I found it most diverting and I'm sure

it'll reappear in future podcasts now it's commercials summer's here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats what do we mean by Now it's commercials. happily yes a day of sunshine no a box of fine wines yes uber eats can definitely get you that get almost almost anything delivered with uber eats order now alcohol and select markets product availability may vary by regency app for details discover more value than ever at loblaws like fresh promise produce is carefully selected and checked for freshness. And if it's not fresh, it's free. Yes, you heard that right.

From the crispest lettuce to the juiciest apples, Loblaws is committed to fresh, so you get the best fruits and veggies. Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. So the novel that our guest, John Niven, was keen that we, I think in all cases, revisit.

Have we all read it before? Yeah. Yeah. Was The Information by Martin Amis. John, can you say a bit about why? I know you're a big Amis fan. Yeah, yeah. As is known, I'm a huge fan. This book, it's the last part

of what's kind of your West London trilogy, if you will, with Money in 1984 and then London Fields in 1989 and this was published the information in 1995. So, to my mind, as the years go by, it's actually the best book of the three. I think Money and London Fields

get enormous plaudits and rightly so I think it's partly that it was a novel born into quite as is well known difficult circumstances he got a huge advance to at the time I think you'd remember better than I do Half a Million Half a Million for two

It's Half a Million for two 20 years ago he was famous for dental problems and he got his teeth fixed and it was a long gestation process and his wife of course it was a very tumultuous period in his life I read the novel

when it came out because I was already a fan but I guess I was only about 25 26 myself then and I loved it, I thought it was very funny but books are like that they're not inert things. They change for you over the years. Like wine, as your age and your relationship to them completely changes.

And to read it now in middle age, in my late 40s, is a completely different experience. We were saying earlier, weren't we? I was saying, I read this when it came out when I was like 27. Reading it in 2016, I've got 20 years more experience of both the book industry and myself. Yes.

Both of which have made me feel a bit bleaker about it. It is harsh, isn't it? It is so harsh. As we know, it's a novel really about literary envy. Well, actually, I'm going to stop you there. We have a tradition on Backlisted of reading out the blurb just to try and... Just to try and...

Exactly. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Normally we would also spend a bit of time giving you a potted biography of Martin Amis, but I don't believe anyone listening to this does. Martin Amis, my struggle. My mum might be sort of...

Who has this fellow? So, OK, this is the... Original first edition. Flap copy from the original first edition. 95. Controversially published by HarperCollins, he had been a Jonathan Cape author previously for all his books, and this was the story. He moved agents, went to Andrew Wiley,

and then Wiley did the auction, Cape lost, and he went to HarperCollins. And so here's the book, which they launched as a bestseller this is the description they gave to the public here we go there aren't many ways for one writer to hurt another even if the literary world were as hopelessly corrupt as some people like to think it is a writer cannot seriously damage a rival this is the unwelcome conclusion reached by Richard Tull, failed novelist, when he contemplates the agonising success

of his best friend and worst enemy, Gwyn Barry. A scathing review, a scurrilous profile, such things might hurt Gwyn Barry, but they wouldn't hurt him. So Richard Tull is obliged to look elsewhere, to the weapons of the outside world, seductions and succubi, hoaxes, mind games, frame-ups, sabotage, until at last Richard finds what he's looking for,

a true professional, someone who hurts people in exchange for cash. That's actually quite good, isn't it? It's a very good blurb. It's quite good, but it goes a bit straight after. There's a kind of final paragraph where it says, in the information, Martin Amis returns to the big picture of money in London fields. And I think within that one sentence,

you can sense the publisher's fear that it's not going to sell. Yeah, I agree. I just think that one sentence within that, you can read between the lines, incredible fear. There's also this really peculiar sentence following that that says, the book takes in the whole of society with the possible exception of the middle classes. So all of society is part from one third.

It's a very odd sentence. It is an odd sentence. It's something he said himself, didn't he? That his father's fiction dealt almost exclusively with the middle classes, whereas his tends to deal with people from the gutter or the upper classes. The kind of two worlds he inhabits.

But the Blurber, it's such a fabulously funny novel. Richards, as he says, he's a failed novelist. I love the sense where he works as a sort of book reviewer. He's forever lugging some thousand-page Robert Southie. They're all late 18th century. The works of Thomas the works of Thomas Tussert really mostly

forgotten mediocre writers unlamented 19th century and it's always some thousand page tome that he has to

review for 30 quid and you know his wife still calculates the following two book reviews a month short a paragraph

there's a brilliant line about a paragraph review of a thousand-page novel, which had to be in by four o'clock. And he works for a vanity publisher, Tantalus. And he's also the literary editor of something called The Little Review. Nobody has any idea how little it really is.

That's what I say. When he's in America, that's the line, isn't it? The Americans would have no idea of just how little the little review was. Finally, we should say that Richard Tull is the author of six novels, only three of them published. The first one is called A Forethought. The second one is called Dreams Don't Mean Anything. And the sixth one is called Dreams Don't Mean Anything.

And the sixth one is called Untitled. He also goes through saying he knows he's failing as a novelist. He says after Untitled, he knows there are prospective novels stacked in his drawers called Unfinished, Unattempted and Unimagined. It's so cruel on Richard's, you know, hope to ambition. The thing is, Richard is just a spectacularly awful character. I mean, he's just so... I'm kind of sympathetic to Richard. That's the genius of Amos, is he makes you sympathetic for this man who is plotting violence,

serious violence against his best friend. But he has no redeeming features. He hits his small child. But provoked by Gwyn Barry, I think you'll find. Going number nine in the bestseller list. Yeah, that's what triggers it. Because Gwyn Barry is a pathetic, fat Welsh wimp. Gwyn was his university friend.

Who he'd always lauded it over and had what she called the girlfriend, Gilda, the girlfriend, who I love. There's so many great details. He used to steal buns for her when he smuggled into her room at college and she liked marmalade. That's what she got. What happens is he becomes a hugely, hugely...

Gigantically successful. In a kind of Paolo Cello kind of, you know, alchemist kind of way. The book's... What's the first one called? Summertown, which is a... In a kind of Paolo Cello, alchemist kind of way. What's the first one called? Summertown. Do you know what I was thinking about this when I was on the way up here? I was thinking, I can think of contemporary examples, but I'm not sure I want to say them. He writes what Richard describes as tricks.

Pure tricks. That's one of the things that comes up pure Trex which for listeners who are of a certain generation Trex was commercially through 60s and 70s was large so you don't

you don't think you can buy Trex anymore to me it's always it's an amalgam of text and dreck yeah it's just this a worthless

kind of garbage it's a great word that means nothing but by some fluke of publishing and public taste it's enormous so Gwyn's had this colossal success and lives in a gigantic

house in Notting Hill whereas Richard's in a tiny apartment with a wife and two kids and is failing at everything he does and his hatred for Gwyn Richard had to see whether the experience of disappointment was going to make him bitter or better, and it made him bitter.

He was sorry there was nothing he could do about it. He wasn't up to better. Richard continued to review books. He was very good at book reviewing, and when he reviewed a book, it stayed reviewed. Otherwise, he was an ex-novelist, or not ex so much as Void, or Phantom,

the literary editor of The Little Magazine and a special director of the Tantalus Press. Now, I have to say in 1995 I found that terribly amusing. I find it funny now for a slightly different reason.

Yeah, life, it's a way of catching people up, doesn't it? The thing with Gwen is, I love the way it starts off, as you sort of mentioned in the intro, the torments he tries to inflict on Gwen are initially quite petty,

aren't they? For instance, he sends him a copy of the entire weekend edition of the Los Angeles Times, which is like, there's a suitcase-sized piece of newsprint with a little post on it saying, something to interest you here.

From John, from an anonymous... With no page reference. Knowing that Gwyn's ego is so rough, he will spend the entire weekend combing every single page. Which he does. But however, Richard suddenly suspects, what if there is a reference to that? So Richard ends up going through the entire thing himself,

cutting his fingers to pieces, having to then repackage it all pristinely. And then Gwen, of course, finds a reference to himself, which there is one in there that Richard's missed. So he has to then go back again. No, no, he goes to Gwen's house that's lying on the side, and he says, oh, are you reading the LED? He goes, yeah, a reference to me on it.

It's a copy of his first novel for sale, second-hand copy for sale. That's right, that's right. It's in the small ads, that's correct, that's right. We should also add that Richard Tull is also, in theory, working on a non-fiction book called The History of Increasing Humiliation, which becomes a running gag as well

of course his own, Richard's current novel, Dreams Don't Mean Anything is a book that's so crazily post-modern and terrible and difficult and possible narrative, it actually inflicts illness on anyone everybody who reads it untitled

nobody can get through except page 9 another one Nobody can get through except page nine. Blinding my dreams. Another one comes down with some terrible disease. He realises at one point all he really needed to do was to get Gwyn Barry to read his own novel.

He'd have given him a brain tumour and that would have been it. The comedy in Amos is jet black. There's a brilliant line here the comedy line there's a line where they play tennis a lot Richard and Gwyn

and Snooker said Richard pensively well we know one thing what's that? you're not going to get a profundity requital a profundity requital is an enormous American stipend Gwyn who was wrong flexed his forehead and said requital. Profundity requital is an enormous American stipend. It looms largely in the half of the book. Gwyn, who was wrong,

flexed his forehead and said, a million people can't be wrong. Richard, who was also wrong, said, a million people are always wrong. Let's play. And that's condensed into just a couple of lines in the middle

of this chapter. There's three or four comic set pieces in the novel that stay with me always. I want you to read the tiny bit, if that's okay. Yeah. It comes quite early in the book when Richard is taken to a lunch at which there are various publishing luminaries

and he's under the impression that Gwen's doing him a favour, that he's being considered for the editorship of a new magazine. And this is very funny, but it also makes a fantastic point about literature that I'm an enormous fan of. So they're lunching in some sort of swank Mayfair restaurant. The financier spoke about the kind of literary magazine he would like to be associated with, the kind of magazine he was prepared to be the financier of.

Not so much like magazine A, not so much like Magazine B, more like Magazine C, defunct, or Magazine D, published in New York. Quinn Barry was then asked about the kind of magazine he would like to be associated with, the kind of magazine that had high standards. That were the Captain of Industry, the Shadow Minister for Arts,

the female columnist and the male columnist. Rory Pontagionet, the reporter, was not consulted. Neither was the photographer, who was leaving anyway. Neither, depressingly, was Richard Tull, who was struggling to remain under the impression that he was being groomed for the editor's job. The only questions that came his way were about technical matters, print

runs, break-even junctures and the like. Would there be any point, the financier said he was saying, in doing any market research stuff? Richard said, what, reader profile stuff? He had no idea what to say. Age and sex, things like that. I thought we might press a questionnaire and

say students reading English at London, something of that kind, to see if they like high standards, Richard said. Targeting, said the male columnist, who was about 28 and experimentally bearded with a school dinner look about him. The column the male columnist, who was about 28 and experimentally bearded with a school dinner look about him. The column the male columnist wrote was sociopolitical. Come on, Richard said, this isn't America

where the magazine market is completely balkanised, where, you know, they have magazines for the twice-divorced South Malaccan scuba diver. Still, there are more predictable preferences, said the publisher. Women's magazines are read by women and men. There was a silence. To fill it, Richard said, has anyone ever really established whether men prefer to read men and whether women prefer to read women?

Oh, please, what is this, said the female columnist. We're not talking about motorbikes or knitting patterns. We're talking about literature, for God's sake. Richard said, is this without interest? Nabokov said he was frankly homosexual in his literary taste. I don't think men and women read or write in exactly the same way. They go at

it differently. And I suppose, the woman said, that there are racial differences too. Richard didn't answer. For a moment, he looked worryingly short-necked. He was, in fact, coping with a digestive matter. Or a moment he looked worryingly short-necked. He was in fact coping with the digestive matter. Or at least he was sitting tight

until the digestive matter resolved itself one way or the other. I can't believe I'm hearing this, the woman said. I thought we came here today to talk about art. What's the matter with you? Are you drunk? Richard turned his senses on her. The woman, gruff, sizeable, stalely handsome

and always barging through to her share of the truth Richard knew the type because literature knew the type like the smug boiler in the Pritchett story the Labour politician up north proud of her brusqueness and her good big bum The column the female columnist wrote wasn't specifically about being a woman but the photograph above it somehow needed to have long hair and make-up

for it all to hang together. The shadow minister for the arts said, isn't this what literature's meant to be about, transcending human difference? Here, here, said the female columnist. Me, I don't give a damn whether people are male, female, black, white, pink, puce or polka-dotted. And that's why you're no good, Richard said. Steady there, said Sebi, the financier.

Then he added, as if the very appellation refreshed him, Gwyn. Everyone turned to him in silence. Gwyn was staring at his coffee spoon with a fascinated frown. This is something Gwyn started doing to Richard, insane irritation. It's looking at an orange on his spoon as if he's seeing it for the first time. He thinks

it's a novelistic thing to do. Gwen replaced the spoon that saw it and looked up, his face clearing, his green eyes brightening. Gwen said very slowly, I find I never think in terms of men, in terms of women. I always think in terms of people. There was an immediate burble of approbation.

Gwen, it seemed, have douched the entire company in common sense and played humanity. Richard had to raise his voice, which meant that his cough kicked in, but he went ahead with his passionate speech. It was that little rapt pause before the word people. That was what did it.

A very low-level remark, if I may say so. Hey, Gwyn, you know what you remind me of? A quiz in a colour magazine, you know. Are you cut out to be a teacher? Would you rather teach A, history, B, geography, or C, children? Well, you don't get a choice about teaching children, but there is a choice and a difference between history and geography.

It must make you feel nice and young to say that being a man means nothing and being a woman means nothing and what matters is being a person how about being a spider gwen let's imagine you're a spider you're a spider and you've just had your first serious date and you're limping away from that now you're looking over your shoulder and there's your girlfriend eating one of your legs like it was a chicken drumstick what would you say say? I know, you'd say, I find I never think in terms of male spiders or in terms of female spiders. I always think in terms of spiders. Oh, Tomo, brilliant.

Come on, you have to say, utter genius. On form, I mean, there is probably no... I don't think there is a better comic writer in English on form. That's a very Amos thing to do in one of his books as well, is to set up these opposing figures, right? And in this book, it's Richard Tull and Gwynne Barry. And I was thinking about this, and I think the brilliance of this, reading it again,

is that it's not really a battle between an unsuccessful author and a successful one, although it is that. But it's that most authors think of themselves as Richard Tull and all other authors as Gwynne Barrow. It's probably a bit of that.

I think what's getting attacked there really is the notion of PC. This idea of we're all the same. And that doesn't really fly in literature. really though is the notion of PC this idea of you know we're all the same and everybody's you know and that doesn't really fly in literature because literature is about examining exploring difference this is what kind of Richard's rightly saying

and the idea of I think Amy said in the interview at the time the very admirable notion of political correctness is to press a sort of accelerator pedal and have us in a future where there's no racism and no sexism and no misogyny. All these things are in the past. However, it takes generations to get there.

And the idea that you can suddenly hit a button by outlawing certain language. I mean, later on, Richard refers to women as reeking of spinst. Spinst. Back to spinst. You can't say things like that. He says, why can't I say things like that? And Gwen says, because people will start avoiding you.

You can't say things like that in Gwynedd's, why can't I say things like that in Gwynedd's? Because people will start avoiding you. So Richard's kind of filter is certainly off a lot of the time. I loved coming back and reading it and found it very painful, very funny. But I also found that there were bits of it that, you know, I think the Steve Cousins subplot, much less good than I remember it,

maybe just because... Well, he'd done it as well. I remember thinking that at the time, and looking at it again now, Amos has played that character in previous novels several times, right? Yeah. It doesn't dent the book for me, but I know what you're saying. You feel it's the kind of character that Keith Talent plays in London Fields

because the Richard Gwen and the wives it's so it's a big book, it's a 500 page novel and it's written in Amos' I think it's his longest novel

I'm interested that you think of the three. Not having read Money for a long time and not having read London Fields for even longer, I have to say I enjoyed this way more than I was... I'd always thought it was the least good of the three, and I think you might be right now, I think, with the benefit of hindsight and a bit of life under one's belt. When we knew that John was going to come

and talk about the information and we were going to be reading the information, I was thinking, I haven't read an Amos recently. And I realised I hadn't actually read an Amos since Night Train in 97. I mean, I love Amos. So I've read like two or three in the last month just to catch up, really. I've read Experience, the memoir, and Cobra the Dread, and the last novel, The Zone of Interest.

They're all terrific. All three of them were terrific. And the thing that struck me about Amis, Amis takes a lot of flack. We know that, right? Some of it maybe justifies, some of it maybe not. But in the case of all those books you know Cobra the Dread was as a book problematic in some ways experience terrific memoir and yet wanders away from the point quite a lot zone of interest is it is it

should it be should he be writing novel another novel about holocaust is it appropriate none of them take into account the thing that's really clear in the information as well, which is when it comes to writing brilliant sentences, I mean, I can't think of another contemporary British writer who has quite the same facility with words and language and likes making hard sounds out of words. You know, the bit that you were just reading, John, exactly that. If you're remotely interested in narrative,

you know, how, I mean, the way he puts himself into the text. I mean, he is, you do feel you are in the hands of somebody who can sort of do it. He can do comedy. He can do, you know, he can do diversion into science. He can do, I mean, he's just, he is technically of do it, he can do comedy he can do diversion into science he can do, I mean he's just he is technically a pretty spectacular writer, I guess the thing

that people complain about with Amos is that whether you give a shit about any of the characters because he just writes a book and also whether he can do working class as well I mean Lionel Asbo, I love his books but Lionel Asbo is a terrible book I thought there were a couple of bits in that that made me bark with laughter. I think there was always going to be funny things

but it's a really... Lionel's explanation of 9-11 is just phrase. Yeah, but I couldn't read it. I think what he does is a prose stylist, I don't think he has an eco in his generation and he believes with Nabokov doesn't he that style is art, style is morality. So

to a degree I don't really care what he's writing about I buy that there's this brilliant quote from him you know when Yellow Dog came out Yellow Dog 2003 terrible reviews although it's one of only two of his books

that have ever been long listed for the Booker Prize that and Times Arab that and Times Arab but he gave this brilliant quote in response to why he had received such a drubbing for Yellow Dog. He said, quote,

No one wants to read a difficult literary novel or deal with a prose style which reminds them how thick they are. Go, Marty. But yeah, when faced with the fire, do I reach for the bucket of water or the can of petrol?

There's a push towards egalitarianism, making writing more chummy and interactive instead of a higher voice. And that's what I go to literature for. And in terms, even in Lionel Aspo, you know, it might misfire. He's still trying to find a way of representing that stuff

on a higher linguistic level. I just think of him in terms of... I mean, I don't mind Lionel Aspo. I prefer Lionel Aspo to any novel by Julian Barnes or Ian McKeown. Well, that's his real name. So when I think of Martin Amis, I think of those other two novelists. I think of them being part of a generation. Matthew Clayton's views do not represent those of everyone

around the table. I'd far prefer that he'd be writing something like Lionel Asbo than another Ian McEwan novel appeared. I think what's interesting here about Amis is I think all three of those guys are pretty good writers of English. I have to say I love Barnes.

I think Barnes is an amazing, as is actually Martin, a brilliant essayist. But there is something, there's just something about Amis. That's a fantastic quote, Andy, by the way. I must scribble that down. I just love that the smallest, it's that thing you feel there's a brilliant quote in here where he says, so I must scribble that down. But, I mean, I just love the smallest...

It's that thing you feel... There's a brilliant quote in here where he says... He's writing about Richard's Untitled, which feels a little bit autobiographical. He's saying he was trying to write genius novels like Joyce. Joyce was the best yet at genius novels. And he was a drag about half the time. Richard arguably was a drag all the time. If you had to settle on a one-word description of his stuff,

then you would almost certainly make do with unreadable. Untitled, for now, remained unread, but no-one had ever willingly finished its predecessors. Richard was too proud and too lazy, in a way, too clever and too nuts to write talent novels. For instance, the thought of getting a character out of the house and across town to somewhere else made him go vague with exhaustion. And I sometimes feel this about Amos.

It's like, oh, my God, it must be so exhausting. You know, every... Paragraph has to be brilliant. Every bit of everything that's happening is just... But don't you think, John, as well, that, like, the... You know what his dad said famously, of course. He said, you know, the thing about Martin's novels they they don't have enough sentences like they finished their drinks and left you know kingsley's complaint about money yeah it when martin himself appeals

in it he sent the book flying across the room breaking the rules buggering about with the reader drawing attention to himself don't you think john that this very I mean this is the thing this is one of the things that I think people who don't like Amos either don't like about him or don't guess about him you know

a lot of that stuff about Richard's awful books and the midlife pain that's in this book as well it seems really autobiographical to me

how do you not read it and see that that's coming from I think he was uniquely placed to write this, wasn't it? Because he's neither Richard Tull nor Gwen Barry. He's not a billion-selling punter of cracks

and he's not a failure. You could see how he could completely delineate each character brilliantly. He inhabits both their worlds brilliantly. And the point, so just to finish off on that point we were making there about what he thinks the novel is and what literature does, I think it's brilliantly said by Richard in an interview,

in a radio interview later in the book. The radio interviewer is asking, what's your book about? What's it saying? So he asks, what's your book trying to say? He says, it's not trying to say anything. It's saying it. It's saying itself for 400 pages. I couldn't put it any other way.

He's not coming to tell you some message or some big story to tell. It's style. In Richard's case, appalling, unreadable style. Matthew, we've been incredibly relevant so far. Is there something you could pull us away from

relevant with? Actually, it's quite difficult to attend to as you've already suggested everyone knows every single thing about his life you know i know more about martin amos than any other novelist probably so there's one thing you might not know which is and it's kind of pertinent to what we've been discussing which is do you know and i'm going to ask you andy do you know what novelist has a character reoc reoccurring character, in fact, called Amos Smallbone? Amos Smallpenis, in other words.

Ooh, is it A.S. Byatt? I wish it was. I wish it was. It's not. It's Peter James. Yeah, Peter James. Oh, Peter James. Oh, my gosh, yeah. So Peter James is a crime novelist. Brighton's Peter James Amos Smallbone

is a reoccurring gangster with a penis that's described as being like a stubby pencil is it and the reason for this is that Peter James once encountered Martin Amos at the Galaxy Book Awards and Peter James and Martin Amis had been at the same

Oxford Crammer together. So Peter James went up to Martin Amis and said Alright, small penis? Do you remember me? We're both here, I'm about to get an award, you're about to get an award. Do you remember we were at the same Crammer together? And Martin Amis said

I don't remember you, and you only remember me because I'm famous and they walked away. I find it hard to believe he said that. He's such a nice man. It's too neat in a way. That's very good. So just quickly, the second half of the novel, What I Love,

is when they go to America for a publicity tour for Gwen's new novel. Of course, Richard when they go to America for a publicity tour for Gwyn's new novel. Of course, Richard's going to profile him from a Sunday supplement. There's all constantly funny scenes where Gwyn's travelling first class and Richard's struck right at the back of economy. He gets summoned up to see Gwyn in his crimson barge.

It's just great. He's in a low-rent hotel room and Gwyn's got an entire suite at the floor, at the Excel suite. The humiliation for Richard. Richard's lugging around a Hessian sack with 25 copies of his own novel that he's trying to fly.

It's just humiliation. It's just wild. And this is all building up towards... Gwyn is in line for this thing called the Profundity Requital, which is basically a cross, I think, between the Nobel Prize. It involves an enormous cash stipend,

which the recipient gets every year for life. And so Richard's entire goal, his mission, is to stop Gwyn getting the Profundity Requital. So it turns out in each city in America they're visiting, there's one of the Profundity judges, who are known by Gwyn's PR team as Profundity 1, Profundity 2, Profundity 2, Profundity... They're going to be there. So what Richard's...

Richard's plan is complex and devious. He's arranged for reviews of all these people's books to be published in the Little Magazine for favourable reviews and again they have no idea how Little Magazine is, which he then lays on them to show them he's a good bloke and they love him and he then gains their acquaintance and he's already

found out, for instance instance that he's going to be meeting a hugely feminist critic who's one of the judges so he's basically going to paint Gwyn as to the right of sort of Paul Raymond or an absolute sex offender. So he basically is trying to stitch him up with each judge according to the judge's prejudices.

So one of the judges he meets in the section where he reads is Professor Mills who's a professor of jurisprudence who's a hugely learned and famously very liberal man who he gets talking to at a party and he knows he's one of the... Richard goes through the preliminaries of telling himself not to get carried away.

They're talking about the notion of capital punishment. Richard said, it's amazing how hidebound we are in England. Still the old ideas, deterrence, sequestration, there's a lot of talk, but no one will bring about any change. Even our most liberal public figures

say one thing, and Richard appeared to hesitate, as if considering the etiquette or equity of simply seizing on the nearest example. Well, take Gwen Barry. Thoroughly liberal in all his pronouncements, but deep down, he surprised me. In his writing, he

seems irreproachably liberal in such matters. Gwen, oh, you've no idea the kind of things he'll say in private. He actually favours a return to more public forms of punishment. As Mills leans backwards, Richard went for the formality of telling himself not to get carried away.

Yes, with paying spectators, retributive and exemplary, but with a vengeance, so to speak. Stocks and pillories, ceremonial scourgings, ducking stools, tarring and feathering, impalements and flayings. You see, Gwyn thinks the mob has had a poor deal in recent years. Public stonings, even lynchings.

You're an Irishman, Professor. You must have followed the case, the bomb in the shopping centre. Here's what Gwyn said. He said, Then, after a couple of months of that, where their arms and their legs and their cocks have all been ripped off, do excuse me, string

them up for the Ravens. Oh yes, that's friend Barry for you. They stood side by side, enjoying what Richard felt to be a just and wordless solidarity. However, earlier that winter, the case was still subdued.

Professor Mills had Christmas with his wife at their holiday home in Lake Taco. Forcing entry on Christmas Eve, a crew of nomad joy readers had then subjected the Millses to a 200-hour ordeal of abuse, battery, bondage and arson. The Professor

was of course aware that a personal experience, however dire, should only carry statistical weight in the settlement of one's intellectual positions but he was doing a lot of rethinking which he was going to have to do a lot of anyway because the many scores of texts he had studied and annotated

in preparation for his next book, a lifetime effort provisionally entitled The Lenient Hand, had been mockingly torched by the intruders, along with the rest of his workstation, and it seemed everything else he'd ever cared about. His wife, Marietta, still in deep therapy, hadn't uttered a word since New Year's Day. The professor has has of course

turned horrifically right wing and everything Richard says ends up teeing up giving Gwen the profundity quite so to speak but I don't know why

I find that quite I was the reason I'd chosen all of it was rereading it this summer on holiday in Italy and I was just sort of six o'clock

you know cocktails out and I was floating in the pool reading the book and Charlotte McGovern-Hanscom she said I feared for you. You were laughing so hard I thought you were going to drown. It's the way in the Parenza that a professionally

entitled The Lenient Hand had been mockingly torched. It's just so it's just such a perfectly weighted comic writing it did make me think John

that Straight White Male in particular feels like it might have kind of come out of some sort of relationship with this book well you know

I'd go further I'd say everything I write is in the shadow of Amos and you know that novel even though

because there's a great thing that Kennedy wins that prize at the Redbrick University which kind of has an element I'd forgotten

about the profundity I mean Street White Mail took a lot of the reviews and as you pointed out earlier Andy Martin Amis got such a hard ride

some of the reviewers of mine of Street White Mail took great delight in saying things like this is the best novel Martin Amis hasn't written for years and it made me

angry and embarrassed, actually, because you know, like, you don't think, you never think you're fit to stand in the shadow of your predecessors for your mind. You know, Amis said that, you know, Nabokov said Joyce's English is, my English is patball to Joyce's champion game. And I think

every writer feels that, but the ones they admire, you're not fit to re-ink their printer, if you will. I read this again, basically, and thought that this book was really underrated, and including by me. I think that I came off the back of it. Yeah, completely. But also, I was going to make the comparison, John,

that I was starting to think, OK, so this is like 95, this novel comes out in the middle of Britpop, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. Which Britpop album is this? And I in the middle of brit pop yeah yeah which brit pop album is this and i've worked it i'd swear it out it's it's pulps this is hardcore oh right it's like it's just like a record which has also got terrible reviews when it came out is actually terrific and right and stands up now really really well but it's also like there's something about

them both they're both a bit too long they're both kind of decadent they're quite difficult expensive and they're both chronicles of like failure and failure and self-loathing and they're both they're both made by people who've come off big hits yeah yeah but with things about quote unquote common people. Andy, you're on fire. But it's true. And then the same thing happens to pulp for a while, which happens to Amos, which is that they burn too bright. They become synonymous with a particular era. And then people want to kind of move away

and distance themselves from that era. That's very well thought out commentary there. And I wish I'd put that kind of pre- Okay, I wrote it down. I mean, what about the thing that always comes up with Amos is that we're all... It's a table of men. We're all enjoying it.

He doesn't work in the same way for women. I mean, I'm interested in... Matthew had a point about this. What the hell was that? Your girlfriend. My wife. So my wife is literally just my wife loves Martin Amis. Not your girlfriend.

Not my girlfriend, no. The anecdotal evidence. My wife also loves Martin Amis. She read Martin Amis I think when she was like 15, 16, 17 and I can see her then reading Martin Amis and absolutely loving it because it is,

for someone who's a kind of, you know, A-level English, slightly rebellious teenager, you know, a teenager with intellectual pretensions, she's never going to listen to this. You're describing me too, exactly, when I discovered it. That they would read it, and it's something about Martin Ames where he exists in that bit in between sort of high literature and popular fiction, isn't it?

And when you're that age, you really, I don't know. I remember reading London Fields when I was young and thinking, God, this is brilliant, you know. It's the thing that Richard Tull describes in the book, which is a cult author with a mass audience. Yeah. The thing that everybody wants. But I also think, though, it really, I mean, it's Notting Hill, isn't it?

It's Notting Hill. It's the Notting Hill I remember when I first moved to London. It didn't sell as well. A weird that everybody wants. But I also think, though, it really, I mean, it's Notting Hill, isn't it? It's Notting Hill. It's the Notting Hill I remember when I first moved to London. It didn't sell as well. A weird mixture of people. It didn't sell as well as they needed to sell. I seem to remember that it wasn't. It did okay, didn't it? You'd love to sell that quantity of books now.

But then again, the culture was, you know. Isn't it the end of Notting Hill? It's like, this is Notting Hill before it becomes Richard Curtis. This is right at the last moment. I moved from there. I moved to Notting Hill in 1995, the year the novel came out. Did you? I lived there for two years,

sort of when I first started working at London Records. So I'd just moved from Glasgow, and my friend owned a house and I was renting a room. And, you know, it was still... You could go down the Portobello Road and that pub the Warwick Castle was still an awful cesspit and it's all gone now

it's long gone there isn't a single place like that left even I remember the Errol Percy up Ladbroke Grove for a long time was the last

bastion of scum and even that's now sort of pan fried trout and fucking frosted sylvan young gastropub so funnily enough

my Charlotte owns a flat in Hackney and over there it now reminds me incredibly of Notting Hill 20 years ago

there's still a lot of rough estates and proper sky sports boozers carpeted floor England flag up you know but surrounded

by flat whites and sort of designer you know dream palaces and pretty soon you're not given another 10 years that'll all be gone too

you know as will everywhere in London be sort of levelled into flat whitedom. You know, I think Amos is like Welbeck. I think there is a gender split in how people receive what those writers do. But I also think if you find it funny, then you're probably going to let other stuff go and it won't bother you as much, even if it should bother you, right?

And there's this brilliant quote from Amos in Experience. How do the humourless raise children? How does it get done? How does the stuff get done? But Amos also, Amos like with style, style is morality. He also says in Experience, and this is really central

to understanding what he's about. If you don't have that sense of humour, he thinks you're missing an essential intellectual component. His criticism of Jeremy Corbyn, which of course made loads of headlines, was he's got no sense of humour. If he doesn't have a sense of humour, how can you expect him to have empathy? If he doesn't have empathy, how can you expect him to do all these other things you need him to do?

And I think when you read Amos, he's so bright and his view of the world is so subtle, so complex, so nuanced. The war against cliche, you know, the whole of his sense of himself as a writer is not being able to be boiled down into small soundbites. And it is that extraordinary sense of vertigo-inducing, you know, when you're reading an Amos novel. Just very quickly,

I'm glad you mentioned The War Against Clichy. It's a fabulous collection of his criticism and there's one in particular in that which was his review of Hannibal, the Thomas Harris novel.

He was a huge fan of Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal, as anyone who's read them all know, completely loses the plot. But at the time it came out,

it was hailed as a contender for the Pulitzer. It was hailed as literature. And so Amos brilliantly takes it apart. And he quotes from, I think, a New York Times review that says, you know, this is an absolutely sensational novel. It contains not a single dead or ugly sentence. And Amos says, it's a genre novel.

So, of course, it contains dead and ugly sentences. Unless you feel the breath of life in Tommaso Took the Lid Off the Cooler or Bob Snead broke the silence. So as it would say in the information, it's time to stop saying hi. And stop saying bye.

He's a pro. John. That's it for Backlisted this week. For another episode, thanks to John Niven. Thank you very much for having us, guys. To Matthew. And, of course, again, to our sponsors, Unbound. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, at BacklistedPod, on Facebook, BacklistedPodcast,

and on the Unbound site at unbound.co.uk, forward slash backlisted. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with another show in a fortnight. See you next time, everyone. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts,

you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.