Times Arrow Got him

[Hot Pepsi]

one would hope.

Not if it turns people into self-important pricks whose main goal in life is to be invited to be on panels on TV and at conferences.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I don't think anyone has shared this very short broken bottle boy piece:

Something Amis

Martin Amis was an interesting arsehole. Boring arseholes now won't shut up about him.

[San Bernardhinault]

Good stuff, that.

What you mustn’t do is be even remotely persuaded by the nostalgia-drunk, star fucker talking heads on TV and radio today pretending that nothing interesting has happened since 1995. Their glory days are locked in amber but new ones are here and others are coming soon.

I think this should be stuck on massive banners everywhere. And with a rolling date on it, too. 1995 has advanced from 1985 a decade ago, but the sentiment remains. It's so easy to wallow in nostalgia for things that happened when we were young and thrusting and to think that nothing worthwhile has happened since because we interact with it differently now we're not young and thrusting.

[Felicity, I guess so]

I found Success and Rachel Papers interesting when I got them out of Wolverhampton libraries in the 80s. The latter was a very convincing portrayal of misogyny...

London Fields, on the other hand, did darts (and class) the way the quotes above do football and I finished it determined to never read the snobby wanker again.

[imp]

There's a fine parody of Amis in the literary section of the outgoing Private Eye (no. 1599). I was a real disciple when I discovered his books in the library at Bielefeld University, aged 20 - I read them all in the space of a few days (he'd had five novels out at the time), when I should have been reading Frisch, Grass and Kafka. His style was refreshing, brash and funny, and felt anarchic and honest compared with what was considered to be 'good literature' at the time. Can't pretend otherwise - I loved him, and can't remember how many people I recommended Money too, raving as I did so.

I read Time's Arrow when it came out and remember thinking he'd carried off the backwards narrative pretty well. At the same time, it was the last novel of his that I read (or was it the one where he depicts the rivalry between himself and Julian Barnes, which was actually pretty funny, but slagged off by the literati? The Information, I think). I still have Einstein's Monsters somewhere, unread. I liked his non-fiction writing in general too. It was always interesting, always accessible. I felt a bit of a punch to the gut when I saw that he'd died. That's just me being sorry for me, though - thinking, shit, the up-and-coming young novelists are now already at the age where they're dying.

[ad hoc]

So, this evening after the news we left the TV on and they're playing this terrible Anthony Quinn film called High Wind in Jamaica in which Quinn and a band of pirates accidentally capture a group of children (trust me the details aren't important), but there among them is a teenage Martin Amis. That was a bit of a surprise.

[ad hoc]

They don't make films like that any more. Starts off like some kind of light hearted Zorba the pirate meets the railway children and ends up as bleak as fuck

[San Bernardhinault]

Perhaps this isn't the most important question here, but how did you recognise Teenage Martin Amis?

[ad hoc]

Well the name popped up in the credits at the start and I thought to myself "presumably not that Martin Amis". Then when he came on it was obviously actually that Martin Amis. (and then I looked it up online to confirm)

[ad hoc]

He's kind of unmissable

[Gangster Octopus]

I've come across that on one of the more obscure Freeview channels.

[Benjm]

That's a great picture. The only thing that to improve it would be if he was smoking a roll-up.

[Gangster Octopus]

The film's just started on Talking Pictures.