Money

Money
by Martin Amis
read: 2018
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

Much of Money is a hedonistic spiral like The Ginger Man, but Martin Amis also puts a metafictional spin on things. Amis himself (or a fictionalized version) appears in the novel. Towards the end, Amis (the character) relays a bit of wisdom:

... I'd like to return to the motivation question. It seems to me it's an idea taken from art, not from life, not from twentieth-century life. Nowadays motivation comes from inside the head, not from outside. It's neurotic, in other words. And remember that some people, these golden mythomaniacs, these handsome liars—they're like artists, some of them.

This mirrors a conversation protagonist John Self had with Doris Arthur, another writer, earlier in the novel, when he pooh-poohed her when she asked about the motivation of one of the characters. The characters in the movie Self is directing have uncertain motives, but the motivations of the characters in the novel Money are just as inscrutable. That stands out most in the case of producer Fielding Goodney, but Selina, Martina, Doris, Martin, and John himself act in capricious and random ways constantly. Is that how life is? Most of us would probably like to think not, but there's quite a bit of truth in the quotation above.

Lucky Jim

Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
read: 2014
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

Humor has a hard time holding up over even a decade or two, much less the 60 years since Lucky Jim was written, but it's easy to imagine the events of the novel in a half-hour sitcom. In one scene, Jim wakes up at his boss' house, hung over, to find that in his sleep he has damaged the sheet, blanket, bedside table, and rug with a lit cigarette. But in classic sitcom fashion, he tries to cover up the damage rather than fess up to what he's done. It's the sort of madcap situation that's just as funny today as it was in the 1950's.

Amis' prose adds to the humor. When a paper Jim writes is accepted by an academic magazine, he concludes, "Perhaps the article had had some merit after all. No, that was going too far." This dry British wit and deep cynicism pervades the novel. The humor also helps the reader understand the class struggles that undercut the novel. It's not always easy to relate to British social politics, but it's easy to side with Jim against the rich, pompous, useless blowhards that make up his world, and to take joy in him undermining them with pranks and other small measures of revenge.