The Information [Hardcover]

Martin Amis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 1995

Martin Amis is at his savage best in this magnificent novel of literary envy. In The Information, the best-selling author of London Fields and Time's Arrow has written a totally mesmerizing and thoroughly entertaining novel that puts all of his extraordinary talents on display. "I've always thought of Martin Amis as the literary Mick Jagger of my generation."--Christopher Buckley, Washington Times.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Amis's new novel caused a considerable stir in Britain when the author left his longtime agent and publisher and entered a frantic auction process that left him with little financial gain and a lot of adverse publicity. It is, however, no reflection on the quality of the book, which is a flawed but often brilliantly funny creation built on a surefire idea: an author who can do nothing right, whose best friend and old college chum can do nothing wrong. Richard Tull has written three experimental novels, each more obscure and unreadable than the last (the last, in fact, despairingly called simply Untitled, causes instant migraines and eyestrain among all?including Tull's new agent?who attempt to read it). Gwyn Barry, on the other hand, has scored international bestsellerdom with a simple-minded, relentlessly upbeat fable about an ideal world; the publishing industry has thrown itself at his feet. Tull, who makes ends meet by relentless reviewing of hefty biographies of nobodies, and by moonlighting at a vanity publisher, wants nothing more in life than to right the balance. He undertakes to write a profile of Gwyn, which he intends to load with spleen, tries to introduce him to a manic teenage nympho, concocts a plagiarism plot and even gets in touch with the inimitable Scozzy, whose specialty is hurting people, only to have the plan backfire on himself in a cinema lavatory. Still Gwyn's artistic and commercial star continues to soar (though even his aristocratic wife concedes "He can't write for toffee"). The Information is endlessly inventive, full of dazzling riffs on language, on popular culture (a book tour in America is a small comic masterpiece in itself). But it has ambitions considerably beyond being just tough-mindedly delectable comedy. Amis keeps giving his tale shots of (sometimes quite literal) cosmic significance, and his writing is sometimes too intense for the intended blackly comic tone. In the midst of his facile biliousness are passages of baffled tenderness, about children and animals, that throw the book quite off balance. Despite its unevenness, however, it is blisteringly readable, throws off constant sparks of rueful recognition for anyone in the book business?and, its comic essence extracted, would make a marvelously funny movie. First serial to the New Yorker; BOMC and QPB alternates; $150 limited edition; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Richard Tull, a fortyish book reviewer and failed novelist, is driven to distraction by the effortless and unmerited success of fellow Oxonian Gwyn Barry. While Barry's simpleminded novels become overnight best sellers, Tull's dense experimental manuscripts send a succession of literary agents to the hospital with migraine. Tull finally decides it's payback time, and this novel chronicles his slapstick attempts to annihilate his friend. Amis pads the narrative with irrelevant and sometimes erroneous scientific data, presumably to justify the book's title. (In one astronomical digression, he gives the speed of light as 186,000 miles per hour.) In general, however, this is a wonderfully cantankerous send-up of the British literary scene, similar to David Lodge's satire on academia, Small World (1984). Although the book has been greeted as a roman a clef in Great Britain, no special knowledge is required to enjoy its comedy. Recommended for most fiction collections.
-?Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 374 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1st edition (April 25, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517585162
• ISBN-13: 978-0517585160
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,421,790 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a masterpiece, but a lot better than most bestsellers., February 17, 2003

By 

A. van Gelderen "Anna van Gelderen" (the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Information (Paperback)

Be warned: this book is not everybody's cup of tea. An appreciation of black, irreverent humour is absolutely essential if you want to enjoy this novel and it is no wonder that a lot of people find it infuriating and outrageous. Everybody does seem to agree, however, that it is very well-written.

First of all let me tell you what the book is about. Protagonist Richard Tull is a pretentious, but sensationally unsuccesful novelist - plus a chainsmoker and an alcholic with a harrowing midlife crisis. His novels are so unreadable that nobody makes it past page 10 without developing at least one mysterious ailment. So when the bland, improbably inoffensive novels of his dim friend Gwyn hit the bestseller lists and Gwyn gets the celebrity, wealth and trophy wife that go with beststellerdom something snaps in Richard. He now has only one goal left in life: [getting even with] up Gwyn". Contemplating the several ways he can go about doing this, Richard runs into Steve, a {morally challenged}, sadistic drugdealer and as it happens not only his only fan but also the only reader able to make it past the first dozen or so pages. Of course this is a set-up for disaster, but of the comic not the tragic kind.

So, all this sounds like fun. And it is, several passages are downright laugh-out-loud funny, especially if you read them in context...

But the book is also dark and pessimistic. The London that provides most of its background is a crowded city full of filth and violence. Neither Richard nor Gwyn is likeable. The publishing world is a scream. And human is life is nothing, absolutely nothing from a cosmic point of view, as the author keeps pointing out. The low-life characters such as Steve, 13 and Darko are unconvincing and superfluous. But is the book depressing? Not to me; the exuberant wit, the great writing and the incisive original thinking save it from itself. Not a masterpiece, not even the best Amis ("Money" is better), but definitely a great deal more worthwhile than most bestsellers.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and Infuriating (But Read It Anyway), September 10, 2002

By 

C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Information (Paperback)

The name Martin Amis seemed to be everywhere in the nineties and I felt grossly uninitiated for not having read him. I can now say I have, having completed THE INFORMATION, and I now understand why he is simultaneously reputed to be brilliant and infuriating.

THE INFORMATION is the story of a failed novelist who had published promisingly early on, who is not ready to admit his later work is unreadable, preferring to view himself as the victim of a frivolous culture that is embracing the frivolous (his take) fiction his best friend is producing. He decides, as he turns forty, to take the best friend down, beginning with mind games, then descending into darker tricks, especially as he hooks up with a hood, a menacer-for-hire. Along the way, his friend's synthetic star just keeps rising and his keeps sinking.

Why this is brilliant: 1) Amis plays the ladder of comedy for all its rungs and worth. It's nice to see the classic bones underneath. 2) It is witty throughout and laugh out loud funny in places. 3) The satiric picture of the publishing world on both sides of the Atlantic is scathing. 4) Amis is enviably literate, spurting well-placed allusions everywhere. 5) More about classic bones: he revisits the complicated relationship of author, voice, and narrator in creative fiction and experiments in occasional scenes where he steps before the reader as himself and makes connections to bigger themes. 6) He does a touching though unsentimental job of portraying children.

Why this is infuriating: 1) Few of his characters are sympathetic (but then few in Vanity Fair were, either). 2) Amis is enviably literate: when he does the riff on Little Dorritt, you want to just throw in the towel, you can't compete, you might as well live in a cave. 3) There is a slight unevenness in momentum across the book, perhaps intentional, perhaps the result of writing this work across several years. 4) There are scenes, as there are in Tom Wolfe's novels, where you want to say, OK, I know what you can do, you've done that, get on with it.

The best thing about this book: it's alive! It's not solemn, hands-at-its-side, perfunctory literary fiction. If it is messy in places, so be it.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Actually traumatizing., September 9, 2001

By 

"renton_bagges" (Planet Yeah!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Information (Paperback)

Hey, reviewer below, what the hell are you smoking? "Joycean?" Look, Bub, Joyce's writing is a celebration and affirmation of life, even at its most disheartening. By contrast, this novel is simply the most heartless, dispiriting, joyless, anti-human bit of fiction I have ever made the permanently scarring mistake of reading, and is all the more horrifying and soul-destroying for being extremely well-written. I am nauseated to be a member of the same species as the characters so convincingly portrayed in this book, and the author who would willingly inflict this upon the literate world.

Every character in this book is immensely pathetic and sad, and intensely dislikeable at the same time. Unfortunatley, they are also quite believable, and it is the credibility and the very banality of their motivations and actions that make this the most horrifying book I have ever read. I can't be bothered to provide examples, as I would have to willfully re-experience parts of the book to do so. Yes, kids, this is horror fiction, and you will be kept up at night if you make the mistake or subjecting yourself to it. I can think of no work that better exemplifies the phrase "the banality of evil."

It puzzles me to no end to try to come up with an explanation as to why someone would want to write something this bleak, this mildly/intensely revolting, and to have other people subjected to this misery. There is nothing to be gained from this book - no insight, no redemption, no catharsis, no knowlede - nothing but a disgust for humanity, all-inclusive. I now even regret reading Amis's Time's Arrow, which I liked quite a bit, as it lead me to giving this book a go. I am close to regretting learning to read in the first place.