Taking Sides: Martin 'n' Kingsley

'He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider- crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not so much as looking at things did: he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross- country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.' Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis

Martin called his dad "the laureate of the hangover". Yes.

it reminded me of one of those awful ex football hooligan books that used to be so popular, by john king @the football factory'. that is shit too.

Had a part-time job once, working at Kingsley's literary agent's office. We used to have to pop over to Primrose Hill and take the old duffer his fan mail. He was loveable curmudgeon, of course.

I think he is classic. I've not read his books since I was 13 - 15, but at the time it was an eye opening, re: concepts in the books. Admittedly, it could have gotten old, but I loved London Fields, Times Arrow, Money, Rachel Papers....

And umm...

I thought John King was very good. Not shite. He brought the world of soccer hooligans to bright focus, you got to experience a different world with John King, and that's what a good book (for me) does.

I laughed outloud many times reading The Information, a funny synopsis of the literary scene. The hack v. popular writer. It was very funny.

He is an excellent journalist. Much like the writer of "A Bright Shining Lie"...

Anyone read Martin's memoirs?

John King. Sexist asshole - FACT. There is a long story involving me, John King and Alan Warner (ace) where the punchline is John King: Sexist Asshole. Not to mention patronising git; he's not a la terrasse when his publisher's about, that's all I'm saying. Football Factory was uhhh, OK *when it came out* but now reads like not-fresh attempt to take Richard Allen upmarket. Twuntybaws, as Irvine Welsh might say.

Alan Warner - he's a delightful writer! The Sopranos was fantastic and underrated. I love his characters, he reminds, in the Sopranos as John Irving, writing an ensemble book, like that. Sophie read all of my Alan Warners and she was impressed by the way that he was able to write female characters. I have to run whatever I do by Sophie and Kelly cause it's so bloody hard to write a convincing female character (if you are male). I have much respect for him not continuing in the same line with Movern Callar...and starting fresh wtih The Sopranos. He seems to be very influenced by Ondatjee in the first two books.

Also Morvern soon to be a major motion piccie directed by Lynne Ramsay who did Ratcatcher. Mmm, goodie.

I'm presently addicted to Denis Johnson and E. Annie Proulx. I have to recommend the shipping news to everyone. Denis Johnson is an influence on my writing. My friend Karen constantly recommends new writers. I gave her my copy of The War Zone cause she loved the movie, but apparently she told me the movie outdid the book, not as black and white.....which was interesting.

The Rat Catcher was brilliant, a bit short on story, but beautiful to look at. She was a photographer, was she not?

Denis Johnson/Annie Proulx: haven't read either. This is going to sound shallow but I have never, ever liked anything which comes in one of those covers featuring a large pine forest (and the Proulx interviews I've seen are so, so weird). I always feel like hanging these books from strings on the rearview of my mother's car. PineFresh!

Well the consensus among *my* female friends was that it was obviously written by a man as no woman would ever put her knickers on the kettle to warm up.

You have to read The Shipping News, I know what you are saying, about "inefresh" books, but it's so redeeming, The Shipping News, I can't explain it (I write, I can criticize or compel) but suffice to say, I would rate The Shipping News with To Kill A Mockingbird....

The characters, redeem themselves and somehow, after reading it, you are convinced, that the world is a good and fine place to live in.

ARrggghh...Read the book!

Denis Johnson, hmmm...Karen and I have arguments about him, she enjoys his poetry (which is excellent, so many people stating they are poet, without realizing it's so difficult) and does not enjoy his novels. We argue about Already Dead....which, honestly, directly influenced me, after reading it, it energized me. Surreal Tomes about a small south western california town. News of the World, is excellent...the only book I had qualms with was ....from a dead man.

Kelly, differs, preferring Proulx over Johnson. But she is a Jerry Kosinski/Hubert Selby Jr. fan (I can appreciate and read all of those books, but dammit, I know it's good, but I have to take a bath after reading Selby. He is almost christian in his warnings...of good v. evil. Especially the biblical quotations heading each chapter of Last Exit To Brooklyn (reads like Dante's Inferno). Kosinksi, he's a maschoist for writing.

Have you read Dennis Cooper? That's something Karen and I agree on, pop culture opportunistic burroughs trash.

I read Night Train twice (it took me a few hours the first time, I burn through books....arrgghh...can't help it), cause I thought that I didnt get it. Just got to the end, and went WTF???????

Reread it and after buying that book, must say, I lost interest in Martin Amis.

Buy an ashtray ho ho.

I think he is genius when he goes dada. Truly interesting character..

Man, the way I smoke, I think I need more ashtrays, as I am a lazy smoker. Hey! The pop can is right there and the ashtray is across the room....Hey! I can make a make shift ashtray out of the empty cigarette pack and finish reading L.A. Confidential (last night)...

It's introduced me to some very brilliant people.

45 was brilliant Tom. Bill Drummond is a personal hero of mine.

There are arguments, back and forth, but I would rather read Bill Drummond's book, fuck, I think it was called Bad...instead of some Spin writer....who makes a living out of being gay.

It's hard, you could defend that type of writing, but it's so easy to do it. Reading someone like Johnson or Proulx, you sense a mastery of words.

I can string together old school manic street preacher writings, very easily....but to become a master. V. hard.

What do I know! My favourite trash novels are Candy and Valley of the Dolls.

Recently, I had an opportunity to publish a short story. The magazine loves it, but I declined to let them have it (it was a struggle).

Because what I did, I found a diary of schizophrenic, and I reconstructed the story directly from excerpts from that mad book.

But in the book that I am writing, I am using the diary again as the basis for one character.

Is this morally correct?

It's an interesting dilemma, but the diary is, as it stands, very fascinating.

(PS. This is true, should I take out the excerpts, or use them???)

Fuck that was a struggle...but in the book, it fits the one character so well...I could not make up the character as realistically as it is done in the diary.

The short story was for a very local magazine. If I was found out...I would be treated very harshly.

As it stands, some people say that I should use it for the book, because

a. It's brilliant. b. More than likely, I will get the book published independantly and said person will never find out.

Fuck that was a struggle...but in the book, it fits the one character so well...I could not make up the character as realistically as it is done in the diary.

The short story was for a very local magazine. If I was found out...I would be treated very harshly.

As it stands, some people say that I should use it for the book, because

a. It's brilliant. b. More than likely, I will get the book published independantly and said person will never find out.

But it's art, is it not??? If I were to use the thoughts, and turn it into art, then it's worth it.

Fuck, I dunno....

I mean, at the same time, I have used emails and bits of letters to buld my one character, it springboarding the character to life.

Dennis Cooper: acksherly a good friend of mine for 10 years or so. When I first read him, nobody was doing that kind of thing in novels and I still like him as a writer.

Disco Biscuits/2000/Shenanigans all ed. Sarah Champion, ex-Manchester music writer who now lives in Thailand (but owns the house in Hebden Bridge Ted Hughes was born in - not that she knew when she bought it). She actually helped me to get deal for my own anthology thing 'cos I hooked her up with loads of those writers (Blincoe and Warner - I'm thanked properly) and is cool.

I wouldn't personally worry too much about using a 'found' diary as character background etc. As someone whose late bipolar grandmother is busy mutating into a mute post-stroke person for fictional purposes - everyone in my nutso family has given me carte blanche to tell the story, because I'm the one who can write - there's a bigger ethical dilemma involved in *not* making good fiction about such a person, if you have the chance. Guess it's about art first, everything else next.

Oh and as you are Canadian...Michael Turner?!?

I know, I have given myself carte blance with the book, to write about my own life and ex-girlfriend Sarah (a fascinating figure, makes a fascinating character)....

The thing, I find, in using my own background, is exactly how to use it, so it's black comedy genius and not Oprah Winfrey feel my pain, writing...

I went to my much hated grandmother's funeral for my own funeral scene, using word for bitter word of her children.

But I get stuck on what John Irving said about writing about your life, being dangerous subject matter and not really writing.

Oh back and forth, back and forth I go.

Second question, have you ever been blocked from writing and how long?

I went through eight months of writing unintelligenble garbage and then it came flowing out, hundreds and hundreds of pages in weeks. During down times, usually it's cause my life is overwhelming me with events and i have to digest and calm and clear head space.

Or I have written a storm and the inspiration hadnt hit.

Does that happen to any of the writers out there?

It's a bugger, isnt it?

1. Write a really good short story for an anthology that the Times raves about.

2. Editor you respect offers you opportunity to do your own book of short stories, and needs five to make the commission. Major publisher, potential for Very Good Advance.

3. You get so exhausted writing articles (on enjoyable subjects, but nevertheless...) when it's time to write stories all you can do is this thing I like to call 'constructing' and others call 'skiving'.

I'll get my A int G shortly, I know, but AAAGH. I'm known for waiting weeks for a story to drop and then writing it out in a single draft in about a day if it's 5000 words.

1. Write three hundred pages of very exciting material. Where you start *dreaming* about what happens in your book. Where you think taking a few weeks off from the book to gain perspective and realize that you have run out of fresh exciting ideas. When you read the entire ernest hemingway run and realize that you are doing a bad parody of his writing.

2. Get married and sort out a strong relationship (ie. energy focused lsewhere)

3. Hahahhaha...when you go onto a message board and everyone tells you how crap you are!!!

But when it comes, it comes....fresh and flowing. Writing is very odd!!!!!

Writing articles does that for me as well, I find myself not sticking to original discipline and end up focusing on other things.

When I met an author whose work I highly respect, said that he really enjoyed my writing. Called me a genius.

I did not write for three weeks after that.

Loads of .. fuck, I'm not really talented. Fuck, he was just feeding me lines. Fuck, he did not really read it. Fuck, why did he say that? Fuck, I'm a big waste of time. Fuck, I'll never get this finished. Fuck, do I even want to finish it? Fuck, why did he do that to me? Fuck, I meet an inspiration and now I'm blocked. Fuck, just write anything. Fuck, that was garbage. Fuck, who am I kidding, I'm a hack. Fuck, I'll just go and abuse Mark S. for inspiration. Fuck, that was a waste of time.

Hahahhaha...

True!

That inspired so good stuff. Ha! I'll get them, I'll show them.

Lasped catholic writing blues...

Then it was all garbage, cause I was not writing, showing passion, just writing for the sake of writing...

Fuck, I spend too much time on this board!

I have no capacity for moral thinking when it comes to using my own family as reference material. I am using my father's suicide note in the book, strictly, because I find it powerful and provocative.

Isnt that odd?

But a stranger? I'm in a moral dilemma.

I just posted this on ILB where who knows who will read it. So:

I am reading The Old Devils. I wish here to draw attention to just one thing about it. KA, I believe, used to call women 'females'. OK - women are females. It's perhaps symptomatic, but it's not the most offensive word you could use. And if a character in one of his novels uses it, or thinks with it too, then OK - he's allowed a character who thinks like him, surely.

But in this novel it feels like *every* male character, or several of them at any rate, use this word for women, in thought and speech. Well, are they all of the same generation? Maybe that explains it? Not really, cos the son of one of them, aged about 30, also uses it - 'will there be any females at this party aged under 150?', etc.

That seems to me not good enough. It's not so much that the original term is offensive, but that the overuse of it suggests an incredibly slack, lazy, tired, desperate failure of characterization and language.

(KA vs MA = 'Females' vs 'Chicks' ??)

'Females' vs 'Chicks' ??)

bitterness VS irony

i love how suzy namedrops sir kingsley AND dennis cooper upthread, "together again for the first time!"

awesome.

start a thread, i dare ya

about what?

Yes, Suzy was definitely telling it like it had been.

M Coleman, your point sounds fair, but then on reflection, aren't they BOTH BOTH bitter AND ironic? Maybe a bit more bitterness in KA, a deal more irony in MA.

bitter & ironic like a good gin 'n tonic

Fuck off - in fact fuck off A LOT.

Not you, MC - I'm just trying to get into the G&T KA spirit. What a wordsmith.

Just finished The Old Devils. Not sure why critics considered it a "comeback" since it boasts the same hilarities and longeurs as the previous ones.

i'll take a random paragraph of 'lucky jim' over anything i've read by martin amis.

MARTIN's best book is Experience.

Excellent intro to Kingsley's The King's English:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/27/martin-amis-father-english-language-kingsley