The Death of Heroes?

[steepholm]

Sebastian Faulks first caused irritation on my friends list when he told Mariella Frostrup the other day that the hero was dead in modern fiction – at least, in “mainstream books”. In “genre fiction", he admitted, it might be otherwise - but clearly that doesn't form part of the real story of literature.

This interview was preparatory to his new TV series on fiction, in the first of which he annoyed poliphilo by implying that only the two World Wars had been sufficient to make the rose-tinted contact lenses of hero-worship drop from the eyes of writers.

An inauspicious start, then. But Faulks is canny enough to know that one sure-fire way to make yourself look good is to put yourself in the same room as Martin Amis. Amis did not disappoint:

People ask me if I’ve ever thought of writing a children’s book, I say, if I had a serious brain injury, I might well write a children’s book, but otherwise…The idea of being conscious of who you’re directing the story to, is anathema to me, because in my view fiction is freelib[?], and any restraints on that are intolerable.

It would be idle to deny that Amis is being snotty about children’s books here – and this has duly irritated a number of my friends in the trade, as well it might. However, his main point is that he makes it a principle never to take the interests, tastes, knowledge, etc of his readership into account. By the same token, he would presumably deny that he has ever written a book for adults, either, or for any other group. The fact that all his books seem particularly suited to adult tastes (and, more specifically, to the tastes of adults like Martin Amis) simply reflects that he writes for himself – and, so far from regretting this as a limitation in his imaginative or empathetic range, he has made it into a point of artistic dogma. It is easy to recognize in this position a version of the New Critical doctrines so popular when Amis was a student some forty years ago - doctrines that are themselves an echo of the Romantic vision of the poet as one whose genius wells and swells in the foetid solitude of his garret, indifferent to the taste of the outside world (though large advances are always welcome, thank you). The chance to take a side-swipe at Haroun and the Sea of Stories was probably just a bonus.

At this point the camera cut to Sebastian Faulks for a reaction shot, and it’s not clear whether there’s an edit before Amis’s next speech, which is specifically about his novel Money and the fact that its boorish anti-hero, John Self, speaks with an eloquence that someone like him couldn’t realistically have mastered:

I was writing about subconscious thoughts. Nothing he could have written down himself. The odd thing about the book is that he’s an ignorant brute, and yet I did not and would never, never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write at.

The effect of splicing these two quotations is to make it sound as if Amis is describing children’s books as being in a “lower register” – and probably he thinks they are. But in fact he is again primarily discussing and justifying his own stylistic limitations, self-imposed or otherwise. For Amis to write in the register of an ignorant brute, as Dickens and Shakespeare have been known to do, would be to lower himself to their level. Instead, he solves the problem of Money’s lack of realism by the device of introducing himself as a character and revealing that John Self is but a textual figment. One may see this as a radical postmodern move, subverting the very nature of the mimetic contract, etc. etc.; or else as a face-saving, jury-rig solution to Amis’s technical inability to make Self both believable and interesting. Personally I’d plump for option two, but either way it says more about Martin Amis than about the possibilities of heroic fiction.

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with an author writing for himself, so long as he regards the discovery that other people enjoy reading it as a pleasant bonus. If they treat following their own inner compulsions as a kind of moral imperative, then they ought to acknowledge that (to use your examples) Dickens and Shakespeare had an inner compulsion to write for a larger audience.

As for writing for children, Amis ought to read what many thoughtful children's authors have had to say about their profession. It doesn't mean writing down to them. In Amis's case, he's probably against it because the publishers and schools would dislike the grotty effluvia he fills his fiction with.

[gillo]

I have never read anything by Amis Minor, since I read so much stuff for the lower orders, like DWJ, Dickens, Bujold, Shakespeare, Pratchett and their ilk.

You do not inspire me to rectify this omission.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

He writes for himself--that pegs exactly why I've found his writing so very boring, in spite of his (much better than mine) prose skillz.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Pullman, of course, also writes for himself.

[sovay]

I do not think it is mutually exclusive to write for oneself and to write children's books and books for adults and books in all sorts of different registers and voices (including the one that embarrasses you every time interviewers bring it up, because apparently the self it was written for was an idiot in love); it doesn't make the art morally purer, but I do like the results it produces. That doesn't seem to stop Amis from talking about it in a way that puts my hackles up, though.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I do not think it is mutually exclusive to write for oneself and to write children's books and books for adults and books in all sorts of different registers and voices.

Agreed. Amis's problem seems to be that he thinks it is.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I always though Martin Amis was a dick-head. Now I know he is :)

Make that "thought"

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to agree totally! I don't like Amis Senior either. I read one book by him many years ago and that was enough. Well, more than enough actually, but in those days I still felt an obligation to finish any book I started.

But Martin!

[marushka1.livejournal.com]

I didn't see it, don't particularly want to see it and am not encouraged to see it by what I've heard. The Open Book interview was bad enough. I don't know what he said about Haroun but I think it's Rushdie's best novel. And think, at least the world is spared an Amis children;'s book!

Re: But Martin!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh, he didn't mention Haroun by name, I should make clear; but when he said he wouldn't write a children's book I think he probably had Rushdie in mind, as a fellow Booker-ish author. To compare himself to the rest of us would have been infra dig.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

A nice piece of lit crit there, deconstructing the motives of Amis!

Heroes

[(Anonymous)]

I saw that programme and while Faulks had a point (there are fewer heroes, it seems, in modern literary fiction) there are plenty of examples that argue against that line. David Mitchell, in particular, has some stonking heroes in his books. Jacob De Zoet, for one, and also the enigmatic Sonmi who pervades Cloud Atlas like a truly mythic heroine/hero.

[beag-beran.livejournal.com]

I thought Faulks' whole argument fell down when he excluded all novels except the sort he likes to read - he could have had a really interesting discussion about who the hero of The Lord of the Rings is (Sam!) or Bridget Jones as a modern heroine - if Becky Sharp counts, Bridget certainly does. But no, he's only interested in 'literary fiction', a genre apparently entirely defined by intellectual snobbery. I couldn't work out if he agreed with Amis or not, it was hard to tell. I'll be intrigued to see how he justifies talking about Gormenghast while ignoring all other fantasy though.