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Octavia LOL(Money). Oddly, it was R who suggested I read London Fields, and he kept asking me if I was enjoying it about every second paragraph.
Veep: I do enjoy his characterisations, it's true. It's the 'clever clever' plot construction that gets on my tits. I may also have scuppered the experience by stopping in the middle and reading 20,000 Streets Under the Sky, which was both brilliant and totally different, and I've lost the thread.
quote:Originally posted by sam: I thought London Fields was OK. Not the most brilliant of books but not that bad either.
I don't know what standard you can be holding literature to that pegs this novel as 'OK' and 'not that bad'. I mean, I kind of see where people are coming from when they get turned off by a perceived misogyny in the writing, or find him a bit arch occasionally, but I can't think of any modern novel that's electrified me with it's use of language to the same extent as London Fields. It's so fresh and alive with invention that it gives you energy when you read it; the way the writing is so free of cliche, the level of commitment involved in making every sentence perfectly pitched and tightly sprung. And it's so, so funny. There's no book - aside from perhaps Money - which has made me laugh out loud as much as London Fields. From the first description of one of the main characters ("Keith Talent didn't look like a murderer. He looked like a murderer's dog"), to the character of Marmaduke, who - at just a year old - TMO's Ben described as 'one of the greatest villains in literature', it's absolutely fucking hilarious. I can't see how anyone who enjoys TMO at its filthiest and funniest can fail to find these two books funny.
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I see that London Fields is so wide open to criticism that the best retort that Louche can manage is a joke about Thorn wanking. Perhaps it is this originality she feels is missing from the novel.
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quote:Originally posted by sam: I thought London Fields was OK. Not the most brilliant of books but not that bad either.
I don't know what standard you can be holding literature to that pegs this novel as 'OK' and 'not that bad'.
It was a while back that I read it so I can only give you the overall impression it left me. I would love to discuss it properly because I enjoy talking about books, but I would have to re-read it.
I do feel as herbs does about his language, even though I also admire it as you are right about its intelligence, so maybe, if I am having trouble engaging with his characters, that's why I enjoyed his non-fiction much more.
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quote:thorn I see that London Fields is so wide open to criticism that the best retort that Louche can manage is a joke about Thorn wanking. Perhaps it is this originality she feels is missing from the novel.
Lol.
If we're just like saying for the record whether or not we liked London Fields then, for the record, I thought it was brilliant. I know Louche's Thorntavia at home sketch is a fiction but it's interesting that Herbs was steered towards the book by her man. And it's mostly the men who are queuing up to defend Amis from these thick sluts.
Using huge generalizations, as men often do, do the male of the species get on better with the kind of preening, self-congratulatory brilliance and macho word fucking that Amis goes in for? And would VP have East End Benny in a no rules, bare chested, bare-knuckled, blood-and-teeth brawl in a wet pub car park?
quote:Originally posted by jonesy999: Using huge generalizations, as men often do, do the male of the species get on better with the kind of preening, self-congratulatory brilliance and macho word fucking that Amis goes in for? And would VP have East End Benny in a no rules, bare chested, bare-knuckled, blood-and-teeth brawl in a wet pub car park?
I dunno, man. These kinds of generalisations never really work for me - it was VP and Octavia who convinced me to give the guy a go in the first place, after I'd assumed that he only ever got famous off his dad's name. Octavia even really rates the shitty stuff like The Rachel Papers and Success, which I really didn't enjoy. Zadie Smith also rates him, and admits to being hugely influenced. So I don't think it comes down to being a boy thing or a girl thing.
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
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Concerned readers will no doubt be glad to hear that I've just ordered London Fields and Money for the total princely sum of £3.24, courtesy of a couple of Amazon's second-hand tat merchants.
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
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You could have bought my copies off of Green Metropolis. Posts: 5776
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
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What's/where's Green Metropolis?
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I even quite liked The Information. But only because I listened to it on Radio 4 and it was read by Bill Nighy (before he was, like, everywhere). When I read the book a few years later, I was quite disappointed with it.
I liked his memoirs thing (Amis's not Nighy's), was it Experience? I was surprised that he was able to turn me from outright hatred for the teenage Amis into almost liking the man as an adult and then feeling quite emotional when he got to the Fred West stuff. And I came to the book preloaded with HATE 2.0, determined to despise its author.
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Hmmm... whenever I read his journalism or hear him on the radio, see him on the telly, I always think "Christ! What a cock!" But he's undoubtedly a great literary stylist and a funny fucker, too.
quote:Originally posted by sam: The British literary world seems a bit too closed in and smug to me.
Before you ask I get this impression from the same reviewers; same authors endorsing each others books; same people at all the parties and festivals and discursive TV programmes; same sameness rammed onto the 3 for 2 shelves. It seems so circular.
[:bitterfailedthron:]You'll find no argument from me there.[/:bitterfailedthron:]
I pretty much agree with you there. The whole thing's really tired and self conscious and serious and kind of enervated. There's a sense of try hard literatti about the circus that's kind of a turn off, but I suppose all 'scenes' have that feeling about them - that you're either a part of it or you're not, and the people who are in on it kind of carry that feeling of smug elitism. You get it when a music scene kicks off, or cinema or BritComedy troupes or whatever.
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
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sam oh ye of faint heart, you edited. Never edit, says Pan! except for crappy typos.
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quote:Originally posted by Nathan Bleak: but I suppose all 'scenes' have that feeling about them - that you're either a part of it or you're not, and the people who are in on it kind of carry that feeling of smug elitism. You get it when a music scene kicks off, or cinema or BritComedy troupes or whatever.
I think it is because we are such a small country.
I hate that as a reader trying to find out good, meaty modern literature through the media, because where else can I find this out, that I keep coming up against the same crowd crowing all the time.
I do feel for new writers because there appears to be either only an in-crowd to burst into or a sort of fashion-led criteria for novels defined by what is assumed to make for immediate mass appeal and mass turnover; an appeal and turnover massaged by those damn booksellers' 3 for 2 tables.
One fashion that seems ubiquitous and ever increasing is the pushing of a novel because it is a new author's first novel, as if that in itself gives it a freshness that can never be repeated. It seems a bit of a feat to get a second novel printed as publishers rush onto the next 'new' first novel.
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quote:Originally posted by sam: I believe what I said, but I thought I sounded like some pretentious idiot.
You've got to sound like some pretentious idiot on here sometimes, though. Be warned by one who been hooked on the edits, it's a slippery slope, Sam. You start off thinking hey I sounded like some pretentious idiot there, best's edit, then you think hmmm, sound a bit aggressive there, best edit; a bit stupid, best edit....suddenly you only exist as a little cross...like a cut price Jesus.
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What the fuck is going on with ralph. Is everyone being down on ralph because he's disappeared or has ralph disappeared because everyone is down on him? Or am I getting confused? I know he's on the meds but...can I have a ralph summary please.
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quote:Originally posted by jonesy999: What the fuck is going on with ralph. Is everyone being down on ralph because he's disappeared or has ralph disappeared because everyone is down on him? Or am I getting confused? I know he's on the meds but...can I have a ralph summary please.
I wasn't meaning to sound down on him. I would expect him to find my comment amusing. Sorry ralph if you read it and you didnt.
I like ralph. I miss ralph and I want to know where he is.
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Bit of an elaborate alternative persona though wasn't it Halle? I had my suspicions when you kept going on about having a beard. Rang all sorts of alarm bells that did.
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I like the fact that she got upset when no-one believed it was her. I mean, that's why I've never told you lot I'm actually Leslie Crowther; you just wouldn't swallow it.
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quote:Originally posted by sam: a sort of fashion-led criteria for novels defined by what is assumed to make for immediate mass appeal and mass turnover; an appeal and turnover massaged by those damn booksellers' 3 for 2 tables.
Yeah, I think that's definitely the case. Like Hollywood with sci-fi or superheros, one film suggests that a genre is profitable and the studios shovels more of the same onto the production line.
The thing that makes it really absurd, is that it's not even a case of the industry following market forces. Amazon gets something like 40% of its book sales from the titles that you find stocked in Waterstones etc - the bestsellers. The other 60% is from books that you can't really source anywhere else. In other words people actually want to read a bigger variety of stuff, but the opportunity isn't there. It's just easier to follow established trends and plug away with established authors. I think that's where the 'First Book!' comes into it. I don't think the first novel actually makes that much money, but I think it's used as a barometer of the potential to set an author up as a franchise.
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quote:Originally posted by sam: a sort of fashion-led criteria for novels defined by what is assumed to make for immediate mass appeal and mass turnover; an appeal and turnover massaged by those damn booksellers' 3 for 2 tables.
Yeah, I think that's definitely the case. Like Hollywood with sci-fi or superheros, one film suggests that a genre is profitable and the studios shovels more of the same onto the production line.
The thing that makes it really absurd, is that it's not even a case of the industry following market forces. Amazon gets something like 40% of its book sales from the titles that you find stocked in Waterstones etc - the bestsellers. The other 60% is from books that you can't really source anywhere else. In other words people actually want to read a bigger variety of stuff, but the opportunity isn't there. It's just easier to follow established trends and plug away with established authors. I think that's where the 'First Book!' comes into it. I don't think the first novel actually makes that much money, but I think it's used as a barometer of the potential to set an author up as a franchise.
I totally agree and hadn't thought that about the new book thing, but it makes sense. The business about wanting to read a bigger variety is so true of me personally that it feels it has to be true of more readers too. I hadn't known about the Amazon statistics.
It is so damn frustrating. You as a writer and I as a reader have found this to be so, and it enrages me that we can't shift the way books are marketed and writers picked in spite of it really , or supposedly, being about us.
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