Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Amis: just a magazine writer?
The Telegraph’s report on Blair’s valedictory “vanity” tour through Africa is curious. It reports a “writer” and photographers are shadowing the PM’s journey for American Men's Vogue. Surely the paper knows the writer is no less than Martin Amis. To me this is the equivalent of, say, Dickens chronicling the young Victoria’s reign - perhaps when Peel first refused to form a government - in the Palace itself. Has the stock of Amis fils so fallen in recent times that he’s now just some anonymous magazine writer? More probably the journalists who comprise the Telegraph’s foreign staff don’t know who Amis is. Read his Money. It defined Thatcher’s ‘80s like no other novel.
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Interestingly, the Daily Mail are well aware of his identity - see www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=458496&in_page_id=1770 – but they seem to believe that he is travelling under the auspices of Men's Vogue, not American Vogue. Perhaps Madame's crystal ball fogged at that moment?
Thanks, I have corrected. The Men's was obscured by the fog ...
Maybe it's all just a really meta way of celebrating that Thatcher's 80s are out of Vogue...
Thatcher never went out of vogue, she just changed sex.
Martin is one of the finest writers of his generation - probably THE finest only these league table comparative competitive judgments are so silly. I have been re-reading his complete oevre. It is fireworks in English prose, fizzing with brilliance, full of ideas..many of us did our best work when young and have not improved with age. I know I did and have not. But if you take the text as existing outside of chronological time, then all Ma`s books exist in their brilliance NOW. Doesn`t matter when he wrote them. They are there to be read today. Some better than others, as is true of us all, but nothing worthless, all enriching.
And no, he didn`t pay me to say this even if I did know him when he was 14.
and -she adds wearily - still having to sign myself here as blogger refuses to know me.
SUSAN HILL
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