The Death of Martin Amis

 Martin Amis, enfant terrible, described as the literary "Mick Jagger" has died at the age of 73. 

A shock - he seems too young (and only four years older than me).

I've commented on him in passing in two posts hitherto (see labels), in which I noted that although I had read some of his non-fiction, I had never read any of his novels.  This situation has not changed.  Now I think it never will.  If reading a serious novel is a dialogue with the author, there is no need for this dialogue now. (I'm not including entertainment novels in this generalisation, and most novels I read are for entertainment only).

So, goodbye, Martin.  Golden, good-looking boy, famous son of a famous father, acclaimed and praised voice of an era.

"Golden girls and boys all must

As chimney sweepers come to dust"  (Shakespeare, Cymbeline).  

I've realised that this is why I find planting trees more important (see previous post).  They will outlive me. (And most writing other than Jane Austen and Shakespeare).

You can measure an oak tree's circumference with a tape measure and refer to an app to see how old the tree is.  This one is approximately 350 years old.

100 Good Things About Growing Old, # 34 - I stop throwing out books

I've realised it doesn't matter if I don't continue to clear out my books and I don't get rid of any more of them.

 At first, I took photographs of the piles I was about to take to the charity shop, in case I missed them, or wanted to remind myself of why I was chucking them out. The pile above was one of my very early disposals, and I have never missed any of them.

 Similarly, this second pile of disposals has never been missed.

The Martin Amis dual biography, with his father Kingsley, did make me pause a little, hence it got its own picture, centre stage.  However, I have never thought of it since disposal.  I can't even remember which charity shop I took it to. There is more to say on this subject.

I had, initially, been taking them to my nearest charity shop, which I can walk to.  After a few trips, I noticed that none of my books were actually on the shelves. I enquired about this, and was told that, unless the books were in pristine condition, and particularly if paperbacks, as new. they would not be sold in this charity's network of shops.  What would happen to them, I asked, aghast.  If of vintage interest (I did not bother to find out what qualified as vintage, being so disgusted with what followed), they would go to the vintage branch shop. Everything else would be sent to poor foreign countries that need books, or be pulped.  That was my last visit to this charity, and henceforth I have favoured Oxfam, which takes anything and is grateful.  I have seen my books on their shelves, and they put their books in order properly.

This is what my downstairs bookcase looked like before operations commenced.  It's still pretty much the same.  Some books have gone upstairs  - that brown one, third from right on middle shelf, is a case in point.  It is a biography of Lord Mountbatten. I read about a third of it, lost interest, but thought I might come back to it later, so it has gone from immediately opposite my desk to upstairs in the spare bedroom.  However, others have replaced it, so the shelf is still double stacked.  I am proud to own copies of historical biographies of Edward I, Edward II, Edward III and Edward V.  These are all now in the gap shown above.  I volunteer at a historical property which was built in the reign of Edward I, and occupied by the same family through the reigns of Edward II and III.  Edward V is not part of this collection, and I intend at some point to donate this book to the Richard III visitors' centre in Leicester, but as yet I have not felt ready to let it go.

Above, this is what my upstairs bookcase in the spare bedroom looks like.  It contains four sets of shelves like these, all floor to ceiling, all double stacked.

I have given some away to charity shops. The above biography is beautifully written, and I read and enjoyed it, but knew I would never need it again because I can't be bothered to actually read any novels by Trollope.  I find them too long and boring.  I might have persevered in my youth, when how to occupy the long hours of the day seemed a problem.  Now that I am not even working, but no day seems long enough for all I want to achieve in it, life is too short for Trollope.

Here are the three novels which I gave away with the biography, all completely unread, and never regretted.

However, after several months of sorting and disposing, I realised I was becoming rather sad and unhappy.  Nothing else having changed in my life, I came to the conclusion that it was because I had chucked out enough, and should stop.  In fact, I concluded that I do not NEED to chuck out any more books.  I was scraping on a sore nerve by trying to find more books that I could do without.

I've got rid of all the ones which were completely painless, and the next tranches which I thought to get rid of were causing me pain, and making me feel regretful in anticipation.  Enough is enough.

This afternoon, I took back to the upstairs bookshelves three armfuls of books which I had brought downstairs ready to give away, but had found I couldn't get as far as doing so.  I already feel much better.  It's sort of the opposite of a purge. 

If anything, what has been purged is the guilt about owning so many books, and the accompanying thought that I should reduce my collection. I feel a calm sense of satisfaction.

Martin Amis, "The Rub of Time"

A Collection of Essays written between 1986 and 2016

I confess to never having read a novel by Martin Amis.

I did read (possibly) a couple of novels by his father, Kingsley Amis, in my extreme youth (before the age of 24), but I didn't enjoy the masculine tone, or the misogyny, and stopped after "Lucky Jim", and (possibly) "Take a Girl Like You".  I followed the progress of the senior author, via newspaper reports, until the publication of "The Old Devils".  This marked, on reflection, the emergence, within my reading persona, of the habit of taking from the reviews of a much talked-of new novel sufficient information to decide that it would be a waste of time to read the novel itself.

I did like Elizabeth Jane Howard, Kingsley's second wife. I've read almost all her novels.  From her own autobiography, I sensed that Kingsley was an unlikeable man, and after I dipped into a double biography of both Kingsley and Martin Amis, this was confirmed.  However, the latter book included some sharply incisive quotes from the work of both father and son, which whetted my appetite.  This led me to order some books from libraries, to find out more about the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from bite-size chunks of the authors'  output.  No need or desire existed to read even one novel by either, but each seemed in his own way to have put a finger on the pulse of his times.

I'm still waiting for a copy of Zachary Leader's (leading) biography of Kingsley, but a different county library has provided me with Martin's "Experience" and "The Rub of Time".   "Experience" is almost unreadable due to the author's habit (it's almost like he has just undergone colonic irrigation, and can't wait until arrival at a place where voiding would be appropriate) to thrust very lengthy footnotes onto almost every page, intended to illuminate - or perhaps cast a smokescreen of small grit over - the labouring brain of the reader.

"The Rub of Time", however, was easy and rewarding to read.  It was like being handed a potted history of much of what I missed over the last 30 years. This loss, due to the combined demands of working and parenting, resulted in my having little or no time or energy to read beyond the book reviews in the Sunday papers.

The essays confirmed that I don't need to bother seeking out any novels by either Vladimir Nabakov or Philip Roth (who died yesterday).  I've learned all I need to know.

On Philip Larkin,  I remain torn.  He was a much-loved poet of my schooldays, but I never read his novels.  Martin Amis often refers to him, in both the books I've mentioned here, largely because of his childhood memories of Larkin's visits to the family home.  Larkin was a friend and contemporary of Kingsley.   Martin hasn't succeeded in encouraging me to read Larkin again, but he does provide a good summary of the poet's 35 year relationship with a woman called Monica Jones.  I was aware of this (from reading the Sunday Times book reviews over the years) and aware that the affair reflected very badly on Larkin, but knew no details.  Martin's essay, reprinted from The Guardian, (2010) provides all the detail one could desire, without the effort of reading any full-length book.  The essay can be read in full here, and reading it gives a scintillating glimpse of the full Martin Amis range: wit, verbal dexterity, self-confidence, and simultaneous grasp of both the detail and the whole picture.

Here's part of a quotation from Larkin's "Letters to Monica" which Martin helpfully singles out as "the most memorable letter in the book".  Thanks, Martin, it saves me the bother of going through them all.   This letter endorses advice I have been given myself. The full quote can be read in the Guardian article linked above.

"It's simply that in my view you would do much better to revise, drastically, the amount you say and the intensity with which you say it . . .I do want to urge you, with all love & kindness, to think about how much you say & how you say it. "  

Yup, and I say that to myself frequently as well.

 I will look out for more by Mr Amis junior.  In newspapers, of course.