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Friday, October 26, 2007

Yesterday: V.S. Naipaul

posted by on October 26 at 10:20 AM

Today: Martin Amis.

AMIS533.jpg

Amis claimed in a recent essay that militant Islamism requires a new word to describe it: ‘horrorism’. The Independent put the following reader’s question to Amis in a recent ‘You ask the questions’ feature: ‘The phrase “horrorism”, which you invented to describe 9/11, is unintentionally hilarious. Have you got any more?’ ‘Yes, I have’, Amis replied. ‘Here’s a good one (though I can hardly claim it as my own): the phrase is “fuck off”.’

And so to a debate at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London last Thursday (1), where Amis staged a virtuoso jam session loosely based around the rhythm of ‘you can all fuck off’. Sitting in Cinema 1, legs crossed, with a glass of white wine, Amis managed to be both laconic and scathing. Frosty about the temples, his thinning hair whipped up from his wide forehead in a backward variation of the Charlton comb-over, he puffed through roll-ups, winding up the back row with his eased-up, fag-honed tones. The room was rammed full of the notepads of media London and earnest liberals weeping at the death of the author who used to be so left-wing.

Amis, Hitchens, Rushdie, McEwan—what is this illness they suffer from? An illness caused by an event, 9/11. Can it be named? Can it be cured? The 9/11 sickness eats the brain like a goat eats grass.

RSS icon Comments

1

Something tells me you and Terry Eagleton would get along great, Charles.

Posted by Gabriel | October 26, 2007 9:53 AM
2

Womenopause.

Posted by DaiBando | October 26, 2007 10:02 AM
3

Wow, DID they actually refer to Time's Arrow (1992) as a "recent experiment"? I would take that whole piece with a grain of salt.

Posted by Levislade | October 26, 2007 10:28 AM
4

Fuck Terry Eagleton. Seriously, fuck him and fuck anyone else who describes himself as a Marxist. The ideologies derived from Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and others have killed far more people than fascism ever managed to. Making them more repulsive than fascism is their claim that shedding this blood was necessary to build a better world. Anyone in 2007 who describes himself as a Marxist should be treated with the same withering contempt as anyone describing himself as a fascist or a Nazi.


Posted by wile_e_quixote | October 26, 2007 11:09 AM
5

Maybe you should ask Dan that question.

Posted by wf | October 26, 2007 11:16 AM
6

i'm still digesting this one: "...he puffed through roll-ups, winding up the back row with his eased-up, fag-honed tones."

them britishers sure gots fancy terms for smoking!

Posted by maxsolomon | October 26, 2007 11:26 AM
7

In the UK there were also the 07/07 attacks on the London Subways, it's not merely 9/11. Yes, god forbid some people from casting off a horrid relic of an ideology (marxism, maoism, whatever) and realizing that their are larger threats to civilization than an gender/ethnic studies department getting reduced funding. I agree with the above commentator, anyone who still brandishes the label of "marxist" should be equated with anyone still calling themselves a "facist."

Posted by aarons | October 26, 2007 11:26 AM
8

In Hitchens' case I think his former liberal cred coupled with his willingness to shill for the neocon position with rhetoric that resonates with liberals ("they're coming for our freedoms!" essentially) plus his native irascibility make him a natural pundit, which seems to be paying him well. He sounds very sure of himself and very British and that makes for good TV.

The reasons for Rushdie's current position on radical Islam seem pretty obvious.

For the others? Maybe grouchy-old-man disease? Maybe the tendency for yesterday's radicals to become today's entrenched establishment? People with mortgages and alimony tend to become more conservative.

Posted by flamingbanjo | October 26, 2007 11:27 AM
9

I know what a comb-over is, but what is a Charlton comb-over?

Posted by inkweary | October 26, 2007 12:03 PM
10

The issue here seems to be that these writers need to up-mod their wardrobe a bit; they need to go from "frumpy-stale" to "frumpy-chic".

It's time to lose the whole padded elbow thing, it's played out and carries too much historical baggage, & it's as cliché as cargo pants on trustifarians. Their shoes should have a restrained pizzaz, utilitarian with a touch of flair. Earth toned ties are tried and true, but can be boring, add a platinum clip/cufflink set for an elegant twist. Throw on a nice belt, maybe opt for a pocketwatch.

No more will the masses think you're some mumbly old fart, but relevant again and lookin' good for revolution.

Posted by gucci clad marxist | October 26, 2007 12:38 PM
11

Rushdie has been railing against radical Islam since well before 9/11, and, as #8 notes, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out why. There's also a fundamental difference between Rushdie, and Hitchens and Amis. Rushdie is actually sympathetic to moderal Muslims and doesn't try to demonize all of Islam.

Posted by keshmeshi | October 26, 2007 1:09 PM
12
Posted by Kiru Banzai | October 26, 2007 11:05 PM
13

Martin Amis needs to spend some time posting hot snapshots of the United Bitches of Benetton to the Time Out London blog, maybe drop a little Foucault, a little Nabokov. Then he'd be a writer worth considering.

Posted by croydonfacelift | October 27, 2007 11:20 PM

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