Current Reading: Martin Amis' Money

 

Martin Amis is a remarkable writer, although he certainly does not appeal to every literate person. And yet. there is a certain charm, at least for me, in his novel Money. The plot is about a Brit who comes to New York to write a screenplay, based on Amis experiences working on the, now, largely and deservedly forgotten, movie Saturn 3.

For me, one the great things about Amis' novel is the language. Let me quote from Veronica Geng's 1985 review in the Times:

One theme of ''Money'' is rich and impoverished language. And some of its least promising word games end up making the most beautiful patterns: ''Fielding Goodney was already in attendance at the Dimmesdale room when I strolled into the Carraway a little after six. Erect among the misangled chairs, he stood with his back to me in the depths of this grotto of glass, two limp fingers raised in a gesture of warning or stipulation. . . . 'Just wash the ice with it,' I heard him say. 'None in the glass, all right? Just wash it.' '' Much later: ''With money, double-dazzle New York is a crystal conservatory. Take money away, and you're naked and shielding your Johnson in a cataract of breaking glass.''

As another example of language worth noticing, let me quote from a section of Money I read today:

I replaced the receiver and stared at my lap. On it lay a ccellophaned wallet of Guyland press handouts -- this was where I'd scribbled his number. Running my eye down the page I saw that Lorne had, in his time, on screen interpreted the roles of Ghengis Kan, Al Capone, Marco Polo, Huckleberry Finn, Charlemagne, Paul Revere, Erasmus, Wyatt Earp, Voltaire, Sky Masterson, Einstein, Jack Kennedy, Rembrandt, Babe Ruth, Oliver Cromwell, Amerigo Vespucci, Zorro, Darwin, Sitting Bull, Freud, Napoleon, Spiderman, Macbeth, Melville, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Methuselah, Mozart, Merlin, Marx, Mars, Moses and Jesus Christ. I didn't have the lowdown on every last one of these guys but presumably they were all bigshots. Perhaps, then, it wasn't so surprising that Lorne had one or two funny ideas about himself (p. 107).

If you look at this section and say, hey this is just a list, then I would offer this thought. One should always be open to the linguistic and poetic value of the list. Related to this, consider some examples from Seir Shonagon's Pillow Book:

Elegant Things

A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat.
Duck eggs.
Shaved ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl.
A rosary of rock crystal.
Wistaria blossoms. Plum blossoms covered with snow.
A pretty child eating strawberries.

Things That Should Be Large

Priests. Fruit. Houses. Provision bags. Inksticks for inkstones.
Men’s eyes: when they are too narrow, they look feminine. On the other hand, if they were as large as metal bowls, I should find them rather frightening.
Round braziers. Winter cherries. Pine trees. The petals of yellow roses.
Horses as well as oxen should be large

Things That Should Be Short

A piece of thread when one wants to sew something in a hurry.
A lamp stand.
The hair of a woman of the lower classes should be neat and short.
The speech of a young girl.

(Translation Ivan Morris – The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon – Penguin Classics)