This novel hasn’t aged well. The metafictional elements are hackneyed and gauche and the reader is not allowed to feel anything for the character whose portrait opens the narrative. He’s a murderer and his name is Keith Talent. He’s got no class, so: typical Amis anti-hero.
He is a conman and a spiv (he likes playing darts) but this facet of his makeup is not the worst thing. The worst thing is the twee nonsense Amis serves up as postmodern. It’s layered on so thick you cannot miss it for an instant, and it overwhelms the story so that you can see nothing else. There is nothing to hold onto apart from Amis’ picture of himself as the famous writer. It’s nauseating and I read less than two chapters of this book.
A passing reference to the US – Talent had gone there at one time by plane – is all part of the commonplace, at the time the book was published, that the UK was being swamped by American culture. Amis needn’t have bothered complaining; if this book were the only evidence, you’d have to deduce that there was no life left in British literature.
He is a conman and a spiv (he likes playing darts) but this facet of his makeup is not the worst thing. The worst thing is the twee nonsense Amis serves up as postmodern. It’s layered on so thick you cannot miss it for an instant, and it overwhelms the story so that you can see nothing else. There is nothing to hold onto apart from Amis’ picture of himself as the famous writer. It’s nauseating and I read less than two chapters of this book.
A passing reference to the US – Talent had gone there at one time by plane – is all part of the commonplace, at the time the book was published, that the UK was being swamped by American culture. Amis needn’t have bothered complaining; if this book were the only evidence, you’d have to deduce that there was no life left in British literature.
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