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A review by bryce_is_a_librarian
El roce del tiempo by Martin Amis
4.0
Martin Amis is smarter than you. His intelligence has undeniably always been one of the great charges of his prose. Yet he is not impervious. This is the key to understanding his work, beneath the caustic burn of his sentences and the undeniable glow of his intellect, he is not invulnerable. There is none of the imperiousness of his long time friend and foil Christopher Hitchens. To read the hideous slow motion apocalypse of London Fields, or the thought experiment of Time's Arrow, or his near physical disgust when writing about nuclear weapons is to read the work of someone who is just as bewildered, vulnerable and lost here in existence as you are.
He's just able to articulate this discomfort better than just about anyone on the planet. A talent fully on display in his latest nonfiction collection, The Rub Of Time.
Scorn is not usually an attractive trait but it has always been one of Amis's great weapons. His blades are as familiar, specialized and well tended as a veteran chef's knives, the venomous understatement, ("If you've ever wondered, what it's like, being a young and avaricious teetotal German-American philistine on the make in Manhattan, then your curiosity will be quenched by The Art Of The Deal.") the withering reversal and mimic, the judo like redirection of his opponent's own force. Amis one of the few authors who makes snobbery enjoyable. You sense not pearl clutching horror when you read a rural American town described with the passage, "signs saying SNOWBLOWER SALE and MASONIC TEMPLE, past the fuming hulks of vague industrial shapes in the misty distance," but a kind of gremlin glee.
Yet for all his dark power Amis doesn't (and never has) lacked heart. No author could ask for a fiercer, more dedicated champion, even if much of Rub sees him reexamining old idols. His intellect is not solely capable of disdain (and would hardly be worth anything if it were), but of brilliant insight, consider the almost offhand observation that Larkin is not a "poet's poet," but a, "novelist's poet," and suddenly, sharply never be able to read that poet the same way again.
The Rub Of Time, collectively, seems an opportunity to clarify and reiterate. This is seen in the topics of the essays, which must be said cover familiar ground to those who have read any of his previous collections. But most clearly in the postscripts, something Amis never allowed himself in earlier collections of essays, in which Amis allows himself the luxury of second thoughts. The Rub Of Time, is not merely the fear of mortality that so drove Larkin, Amis himself in works like Experience and so many of the other artists under examination here. But the rubbing off of rough edges, the mellowing that Amis as a dedicated family man has undergone for the last decade (not that many of his critics who still insist on treating him as an enfant terrible at seventy seem to have noticed).
As a collection The Rub Of Time is strong, if not vital. His literary criticism is as ever sympathetic but incisive. Particularly the pieces which reevaluate his idol Nabakov's legacy and troublesome motifs. His political commentary is sharp as ever. There are a few pieces that seem to have been included here as mere housekeeping. This lack of urgency can be found in Q&A sessions with The Independent, a piece on the death of Princess Diana, a bit about playing in a poker tournament and perhaps most conspicuously a long, laudatory profile of John Travolta, which is bafflingly upgraded to the subtitle of the book, something that might have made sense when the piece was published in the mid nineties, but just seems perverse in 2018 when Travolta is collaborating with such top shelf directors as Fred Durst.
Still, even with the sense of completist housekeeping The Rub Of Time, holds much for Amis's fans. The titular Rub has perhaps mellowed him but it hasn't dulled his skills so much as a wit. Anyone writing off Amis at this point is doing so out of habit or pique and at much detriment to themselves.
He's just able to articulate this discomfort better than just about anyone on the planet. A talent fully on display in his latest nonfiction collection, The Rub Of Time.
Scorn is not usually an attractive trait but it has always been one of Amis's great weapons. His blades are as familiar, specialized and well tended as a veteran chef's knives, the venomous understatement, ("If you've ever wondered, what it's like, being a young and avaricious teetotal German-American philistine on the make in Manhattan, then your curiosity will be quenched by The Art Of The Deal.") the withering reversal and mimic, the judo like redirection of his opponent's own force. Amis one of the few authors who makes snobbery enjoyable. You sense not pearl clutching horror when you read a rural American town described with the passage, "signs saying SNOWBLOWER SALE and MASONIC TEMPLE, past the fuming hulks of vague industrial shapes in the misty distance," but a kind of gremlin glee.
Yet for all his dark power Amis doesn't (and never has) lacked heart. No author could ask for a fiercer, more dedicated champion, even if much of Rub sees him reexamining old idols. His intellect is not solely capable of disdain (and would hardly be worth anything if it were), but of brilliant insight, consider the almost offhand observation that Larkin is not a "poet's poet," but a, "novelist's poet," and suddenly, sharply never be able to read that poet the same way again.
The Rub Of Time, collectively, seems an opportunity to clarify and reiterate. This is seen in the topics of the essays, which must be said cover familiar ground to those who have read any of his previous collections. But most clearly in the postscripts, something Amis never allowed himself in earlier collections of essays, in which Amis allows himself the luxury of second thoughts. The Rub Of Time, is not merely the fear of mortality that so drove Larkin, Amis himself in works like Experience and so many of the other artists under examination here. But the rubbing off of rough edges, the mellowing that Amis as a dedicated family man has undergone for the last decade (not that many of his critics who still insist on treating him as an enfant terrible at seventy seem to have noticed).
As a collection The Rub Of Time is strong, if not vital. His literary criticism is as ever sympathetic but incisive. Particularly the pieces which reevaluate his idol Nabakov's legacy and troublesome motifs. His political commentary is sharp as ever. There are a few pieces that seem to have been included here as mere housekeeping. This lack of urgency can be found in Q&A sessions with The Independent, a piece on the death of Princess Diana, a bit about playing in a poker tournament and perhaps most conspicuously a long, laudatory profile of John Travolta, which is bafflingly upgraded to the subtitle of the book, something that might have made sense when the piece was published in the mid nineties, but just seems perverse in 2018 when Travolta is collaborating with such top shelf directors as Fred Durst.
Still, even with the sense of completist housekeeping The Rub Of Time, holds much for Amis's fans. The titular Rub has perhaps mellowed him but it hasn't dulled his skills so much as a wit. Anyone writing off Amis at this point is doing so out of habit or pique and at much detriment to themselves.