Customer Reviews

The Information

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

In terms of maturity, "The Information" is more developed than either "Money" or "London Fields." This is not to say that it is necessarily a much better novel. Just like saying "The Last Tycoon" is better than "The Great Gatsby" or "Tender is the Night." It is labored in parts,... and difficult perhaps for non-artists to grasp.

A knowledge and background in literary-cultural criticism and book reviewing is helpful. Amis uses terminology and chains of thought which may not be immediately recognizable to some readers. His protagonist's professional (=personal) angst arises from the critical notion that a bestselling author has a responsibility proportionate with her/his influence & status as a public figure. This standard could just well apply to film producers, directors & screenwriters; newspaper and magazine publishers, editors & columnists; tv and radio talk show hosts; politicians; judges; college administrators, etc.

F.R. Leavis, one of the influential founders of modern literary criticism, famously said that although we can't (objectively) judge literature, we are capable of judging life and for the practical purposes of discussion, they can be treated synonymously. This standard applies even to the science fiction & science fantasy genre of creative writing. So, the critic has broad license to venture out and comment on a wide array of issues; one who is wise and discerning can mold opinion now and again.

My hope is that Amis writes a sequel. Like a modern Don Quixote, Richard Tull is more sympathetic than Richard III (I hope!) and deserves to be expanded upon. What happens to him and 'The Little Magazine' in the new century, assuming Sebby didn't get to him.

Leave English to the English. No North American could possibly produce such a rich, red wine novel: smoky, dark, giddiness-inducing.

But the subject is so perverse!

Richard Tull is an Oxford-educated former novelist with delusions of publishing. His life is an unmitigated horror show. After a very modest and ever-dwindling success with his first novels, his next three do not even find publishers.

For the narrator of "The Information", ulcer-burning envy sizzles and pops between every clack of fingers on keyboard. According to Amis's vision, every writer secretly regards every other as a talentless, undeserving moron. Every writer robs every other of recognition, fame, money, status, immortality, and sex. In short, every writer is robbed by every other of nothing less than undifferentiated, pre-Oedipal love from the entire universe.

What makes writing such a torturous profession? The sheer sedentary inactivity? The need to put perfect words to every sensation, no matter how miserable or otherwise fleeting?

Richard's miserable income as a professional book reviewer (reviewing Other People's Books) has him "receiving a solicitor's letter from his own solicitor" while "being summarily fired, through the post, by his own literary agent." With belly-flopping bathos, even Richard's vacuum cleaner fails him, leaving his study lined with symbolic dust.

Richard drinks to forget that he drinks to forget why he drinks, and then he drinks more because he forgets that he is already drunk. When he isn't drinking, he chain-smokes and takes unfashionable drugs he can't afford. At age forty, his face has irretrievably collapsed. His marriage threatens to follow.

Imagine Richard's outrage when his "oldest and stupidest friend", Gwyn Barry, has his second vacuous novel enter the best-seller list. Gwyn is toothy, frisky, and dazzlingly insensitive. Gwyn's novels are soon translated into dozens of languages, while he earns massive critical endorsement, celebrity and money.

Richard wants to knock Gwyn's literary ice-cream cone out of his hand and into the dirt. Richard wants to hurt Gwyn very badly indeed. After Richard's first attempt to reach out and wound someone goes awry, he decides to hire a professional to make Gwyn's life unliveable. Will Richard succeed? Has Richard ever succeeded at anything?

As Richard learns, jealousy begets jealousy. When someone has it going on, they usually really have it going on. With professional success comes money, then social cachet, then sexual desirability. This means virtually complete satisfaction on every level that really counts at the end of the day. Good times all around, keep the change, etc. In an earlier novel, "Success", Amis coins the perfect term for this kind of spiraling upward-mobility: "socio-sexual self-betterment".

Amis also bravely uncovers the latent attraction between Richard and Gwyn; only Eros could fuel the fear behind their cracklingly catastrophic, passionately paranoid interactions. In choosing a nemesis to adorn with taboos and phobias, Richard performs an act as loaded and personal as choosing a mate.

MIT kids graduate with a profound sense that the world is and should be a meritocracy. There is always then that horrible moment when they are forced to confront the fact that the best things in life go to the ass-kissers and incompetents with big PR budgets. This book is for them. It is about Richard Tull, a brilliant writer of modern fiction. His books are so great that that they are not only unreadable but actually make readers too ill to finish. He starves while watching his friend Gwyn Barry make millions writing tripe with a sentimental appeal.

I truly enjoyed this sad and funny book, which explores the interaction between two old Oxford friends -- Richard Tull, a failed and impotent cult writer, and Gwyn Barry, a best-selling author of mindless utopian trash. Further, Amis does a great job in the last section of the book, when the perspective shifts from Tull's futility to Barry's cruelty. This entire section was a surprise but also, on reflection, character-driven inevitability. It's super work.

Even so, does anyone else feel that Amis writes a tad long? In the middle of "The Information" I found myself pushing ahead, fearful that I might lose interest and not finish. Then, I found myself stopping to reread great bits from Amis that I had rushed over. Here's one: "Belladonna was a punk. That is to say, she had gone at herself as if to obliterate the natural gifts. Her mascara she wore like a burglar's eye-mask; her lipstick was approximate and sanguinary, her black hair spiked and looped and asymmetrical, like the pruned trees outside the window. Punk was physical democracy. And it said: let's all be ugly together."

Two good descriptive words for Amis are brilliant and exasperating. But do we really need so much of the character Scozzy?

I enjoyed reading this book in spite of the fact that I had no idea what was going on. I read the book convinced, by the excellent prose, that the book was somewhat serious -- and not an outright comedy. The main character Richard Tull sounds eerily similar to many academes that I have run across on college campuses and in life, especially writing department academes. However, I am not from London or its writing scene; thus am I suppose to know what is going on? I found Amis' prose amazing, a writers' writer, you might say. Beautiful descriptions and eloquent settings and sentence structure, I was in awe of his ability to write; incredible is all I can say. However, I was lost many times throughout this book; and only when reflecting on the plot and the characters would it strike me that it was actually quite funny e.g. A 'book' no one can read without spurting blood or getting a serious disease, the rawboned jealousy hidden behind a tense smile, the bald well-read psycho-path, the hilarious driving instructions, etc... Regardless, it is a strange book, with strange diversions into the mixed up astronomy and bizarre trains of thought that come out of nowhere; almost nowhere, in that they are their own chapters.

It is essentially a beautifully written bad book. Many of the sub-plots are distracting and ill-conceived. For example, the sub-plot with the psycho and his girlfriend (?) is confusing and holistically the plot crawls along at an odd pace, from light comedy, to slow and introspective, to somewhat philosophical. I am reminded that writers should never write about writers. They make for usually boring books that are thinly-veiled jibes at contemporaries; or long pointless meanderings about the character or soul of an author and the pain of creation. Yet, it is an oddly compelling book that has stuck with me and has impacted me like a far better book.

Generally, I liked the book. But, I am not sure I get it? As satire or comedy it is written in a tone that reads more serious and circumspect; but as a straight novel it is overly ironical and surreal. Whatever it is, it was wonderful to read for the sheer enjoyment of the prose. Amis is obviously, I've only read this one book of his, an excellent writer, maybe too good. He jumps from Joycean, to straight comedy, to a meditation on envy and revenge, scientific ruminations, all nestled in the plot of a writer envious of his friend's success. Yet the ending is rather abrupt and surprisingly cruel and un-redemptive, thus the confusion with the style mixing with plot propagation. For some reason I was reminded of Michael Chabon's, "Wonder Boys". I liked this book and in retrospect found it funny. Amis writes like a virtuoso, who gets carried away with his own brilliance at the cost of the book.

Richard Tull knows exactly who his nemesis is: it's his best friend, Gwyn Barry. Richard is a broken man, his middle-aged body ravaged by enthusiastic smoking, relentless drinking, and a variety of minor, but terrifying, maladies, which he chooses to interpret as signs of his impending death. He's a book reviewer by trade, but a failed writer at heart, his recent, intolerable novels never having attained the modest success of his first, incomprehensible one. And, worryingly, he's impotent. By contrast, Gwyn is maddeningly successful, despite his utter lack of talent: his dreadful hippie-utopia epic Amelior is eating the bestseller lists alive, and Gwyn has more interviews and photo shoots and public appearances than he can handle. If that weren't enough, Gwyn also has a blonde, aristocratic bombshell of a wife - Lady Demeter - to whom he publicly, and nauseatingly, professes his extreme devotion.

Clearly, Gwyn deserves to die. But Richard would rather make his nemesis suffer. Bringing his mighty, booze-pickled wreck of a brain to bear on the problem, Richard resolves to destroy Gwyn - but slowly. It starts small, with anonymous pranks, but swiftly escalates into the illegal and possibly fatal. By a curious twist of fate, Richard finds himself accompanying Gwyn on the American leg of his publicity tour, ostensibly to write a feature about the great man himself from the perspective of the long-time friend. At the same time, Richard hopes to boost sales of his latest novel, Untitled, reluctantly completed in response to his wife's urgent demands for income. A bloated monstrosity that strikes down anyone foolish enough to try reading it, Untitled is an utter disaster. It appears that things can get no worse for Richard Tull; but as he himself would assure you, that's never the case. If it weren't so damned funny, it would be tragic.

Amis writes with self-assured cleverness and wit, every sentence packed with a double entendre or punning metaphor; like a manic, brilliant professor, he expects you to keep up, and doesn't pause so you can scribble down notes. The third-person-limited point of view, exploring Richard's thoughts, hums with the electric tension and savagely self-deprecating wit of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. There are also moments when a first-person narrator (presumably the author) breaks in, offering insights and tangential observations; at times, these little asides are breathtakingly beautiful, especially when their clarity and directness are juxtaposed with Richard's snide, bitterly ironic grousing.

Clearly, Amis adores language, and delights in playing with words; unfortunately, this also gives rise to the book's greatest flaw, a misguided and confusing subplot involving two jive-talking hoodlums known as Crash and 13. Intermediate to advanced Anglophiles will be able to slog through the inverted syntax and colorful street slang, but those not familiar with British English may find themselves at a loss; in any case, the difficult vernacular is no help in deciphering an already confusing plot thread. Crash and 13 are mainly there as plot-forwarding devices and unwitting comic relief, and seem glumly resigned to their role. Though some attempt is made to develop Crash as a character, he never fully resolves, and 13 remains hardly more than a thumbnail sketch of a young black thug.

Overall, The Information is an impressively witty and intelligent read, a sort of fiendishly complicated, novel-length joke about the notoriously narcissistic self-absorption of the artist. Which, of course, means that Amis is also poking fun at himself. A worthy novel! Another quick book pick is THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez. I enjoyed both books greatly -- and so will you, I'm sure!

In terms of maturity, "The Information" is a more mature work than either "Money" or "London Fields." This is not to say that it is necessarily a better novel. Just like saying "The Last Tycoon" is better than "The Great Gatsby" or "Tender is the Night." It is tedious in parts,... and difficult to understand for non-artists. My only hope is that Amis writes a sequel to this book. Richard Tull is more sympathetic than Richard III (I hope!) and deserves to be expanded upon. What happens to Richard and 'The Little Magazine' in the new century, assuming Selby didn't get to him.