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Ian Brown: Thank you very much, thank you for coming. It's very nice to see so many
people here but hardly unpredictable. This evening I have the very great pleasure of
introducing one of the most important British writers of the 20th century and I would say,
so far, the 21st Century as well, Martin Amis. I'm sure he's no stranger to you. He was born
in Swansea, South Wales in 1949 to Hilary Bardwell and her husband, the English writer,
Kingsley Amis. Martin is alleged to have read nothing but comic books until his stepmother,
Elizabeth Jane Howard, also a novelist, lent him some Jane Austen, which must have worked
because he went up to Oxford which he followed with his first job at the Times Literary Supplement.
By 27, he was the literary editor of the New Statesman. He has been widely followed and
read and discussed and excoriated and defended and despised, admired, and otherwise talked
about ever since. He has a talent for controversy as well as for literature and, for all his
many readers and many accolades has been referred to as "Britain's most hated writer".
[laughter]
IB: He recently caused a smack-up which I think which is what they call it in Britain
or smack-down as well call it here, in the English press by saying, he wouldn't write
a children's book unless he'd had a brain injury. [laughter] And that rather upset several
children's books, book writers. He published his first novel, "The Rachel Papers" in 1973
at the age of 24. It won the Somerset Maugham Award. He has since published 12 others, including,
among others, the widely admired novels, "Money", "London Fields", "Time's Arrow", "The Information",
"House of Meetings", "The Pregnant Widow".
IB: He is additionally the author of two collections of stories and six works of non-fiction including
"The Second Plane", "Koba the Dread", "The War Against Cliche" which is one of my favourites,
as well as a spectacular memoir, "Experience", in which he describes, among other things,
his complicated and very moving relationship with his famous father. His latest book, the
very funny novel he is here to discuss among other subjects I suspect this evening, has
the title, "Lionel Asbo: State of England".
IB: It is a story about a sociopathically violent, ***-obsessed, pitbull wielding criminal
yob, and unsuccessful criminal, and a debt collector who suddenly wins 139 million pounds
in the National Lottery with, I must say, gripping consequences. Mr. Amis moved to Brooklyn,
New Jersey last year with his second wife, Isabel Fonseca, herself a novelist, and their
two children. He has another daughter by a previous marriage. Ladies and gentlemen, will
you give a warm Toronto greeting, and I know that is not a contradiction as is sometimes
believed, given our reputation, to Martin Amis.
[applause]
Martin Amis: Well, it's always a great pleasure to be among the second happiest people on
earth [laughter] in the most envied library system on earth, so...
[applause]
IB: And I think, is it the busiest library system in the world? Yes, the busiest library
system. Anyway, it's very nice to see you again. Welcome, congratulations on the new
book.
MA: Thank you.
IB: A fantastic cover. Looks like The Daily Mail, I think, or The Sun.
MA: This is the English cover which...
IB: So, that pretty much says it all right there, doesn't it? Just before we begin, I
just wanted to quickly ask you, having spent 40 years as fodder for the gossip pages of
the English media, have they forgiven you for moving to Brooklyn?
MA: No, nor are they likely to. It's best if you're a British writer to have nothing
to do with America because they're raring to go on that question. It was interesting
because as I was leaving and we were leaving for purely family reasons and, in my case,
because my friend, Christopher Hitchens, at that point, looked as though he might have
many more years to live and that did not happen. But at every opportunity, I said it has nothing
to do with any disaffection for England, any disappointment, dissatisfaction with England.
And I said that again and again, boring ad nauseum, and the press was sort of, "So, he's
off to England, and stay there. Yeah." And it's because it... Anti-Americanism is not
unknown in this country and is rife in Europe. But perhaps it's most intense in England where
the politicians, by the way, are all Atlanticists and believe that our British destiny lies
with the Americas, but the people or the press, let's say, have never forgiven America for
becoming the world hegemon after the Second World War and displacing us.
IB: Well, I wanna get to that quickly. And Martin's gonna read about halfway through
and then he'll come back and we'll talk some more. But I mentioned that move and I know
you've often said, frequently said, you did it for personal reasons, but it has been coupled
by some reviewers with "Lionel Asbo: The State of Britain". You, yourself have called this
book, and I'm quoting without my glasses so I might misquote you, which we're doing a
lot these days at The Globe and Mail. We've got a... [laughter] Somebody else got this
quote. I just wanna make that clear. [laughter] You have called this book, "A metaphor that
perfectly captures the state of Britain's moral decrepitude." You've said it's a book
about the "decline of my country and the rage caused by that decline."
MA: The second bit of that is true. The first bit isn't.
IB: You're certain that it's not true?
MA: No, no. I wouldn't... No.
[laughter]
IB: Well, tell me about that decline and what it looks like, at least as represented by
this character.
MA: Well, I would steer away from any suggestion that this is a diagnosis of England's ills
or an analysis of its... Etcetera. It's my take on what England is like, but that's what
I'm most interested in, is the characters and the situations. That's a sort of tacked
on subtitle, in a way. But whenever you have to think about England and its place in the
world, what else can you say? That it is characterized by decline, a very dramatic decline. It's
sort of not polite to say this in England, but it's a full-time job looking the other
way.
[laughter]
MA: And I don't mean everything's falling apart. I mean historically, even during the
Second World War, FDR and Stalin, those meetings of the Big Three, they were meetings of the
Big Two. Those two actors were already snickering behind their hands at Churchill, because England
didn't weigh anything anymore. It was... As a world power, everyone knew it was over,
and it then had to divest itself of empire, leaving various ticking bombs all over the
Middle East and Central Asia in a hurry and settled into second echelon status, which
it did with... The end of empire was a terrible scurry for the exit.
MA: And in the subcontinent alone, there were a million deaths caused by partition and the
problem of Iraq and Israel, all this had been bequeathed to the world. The pious chant at
that time from England was, "We will be Greece to America's Rome." And they've realized how
little their voice matters, except in one instance when George W. Bush was about to
go into Iraq, and by the way, isn't it obvious that the reason for that war was re-election?
Karl Rove said to him quietly one day, "Do you want to be re-elected or not?" No American
president who's prosecuting a war has ever been kicked out of office. Anyway, Tony Blair
suddenly assumed huge proportions around that time, early 2003. It took me a while to realize
why he was being pushed into the limelight so much is that George W. Bush needed someone
to say, to approve of the Iraq war in an English accent.
[laughter]
MA: And having done that, he was pushed once more to the side. But I would say, this is
of great moment now how England has coped with its decline, and it's not a bad lesson
on how to do it without much... With a fairly realistic sense that this is really happening
and has happened. Whereas America, which is scheduled to be overtaken by the Chinese economy
in 2045, so the American century will have been an exact century, 1945-2045. I don't
see them doing it quite so stiff upper lip, won't apply to America. It'll be a whimper
of illusion and flailing, I imagine.
MA: It's not clear if America is going to decline at that rate. It's very hard to measure.
And I would risk oblique here by saying that most historians agree that it's been... American
dominance has been a force for good. No wars between the great powers. Great suffering
in the third world, but... In proxy war. But the gravitational example of America has meant
that the number of democracies in the world has gone up by, from 30 to about 120 in this
period. The model is, it's liberal democracy, and it won't be that when China is prepotent.
IB: So, sitting as you were, I guess, in London, seeing what was going on in the city about
you, does the rage... You say that that decline has caused, how does that rage result in a
guy like... Like who is Lionel? He seems to be obsessed with money and criminality and
***, and that's pretty legit.
MA: Well, he says every now and then, he says things like, "A once proud nation... " He's
aware of decline. It's very hard to detect and track this anger and disappointment, in
the old sense. Disappointment used to mean not not getting what you want, but having
something you've already got taken away from you. But it must be at the heart of England's
curve because it's so dramatic, from a quarter of the globe being our property to a struggling
post-imperial time. And I think it comes out... Human beings don't like disappointment in
that old sense and we all have to go though it. You rise, as all empires do, and then
you decline. And the form it takes in the citizenry is, again, very hard to identify.
But it becomes... It seems to me that it becomes... What happens is that you, since your voice
no longer matters in the world, you become obsessed by superficiality, and surfaces and
triviality. And that's what's happened in England, literally. It sort of stares you
in the face.
IB: So, like a lottery winner, it's unearned?
MA: Yeah. There's a great population of people in Britain and elsewhere, here, as well, who
are famous merely for being famous and it rests on no achievement or even pretended
achievement. I think a lottery winner has to be high up in that hierarchy.
IB: I heard that Threnody, Threnody is the assumed name of a glamour model who becomes
his girl, is based on a real person?
MA: No, she's... The person people think she's based on is Katie Price or Jordan, the model
and prolific biographer. I read about nine volumes of her autobiography just for a sort
of general background. [laughter] But, no, my character, Threnody, is a poetess as well
as a topless model.
[laughter]
IB: She also has a line of underwear, does she not?
MA: Yes.
IB: Called...
MA: "Self-esteem".
IB: "Self-esteem", yeah.
[laughter]
MA: But she's pathetic because she's a wannabe Jordan. And I discuss this with my sons. I
said... She wants to be another character who flits around in the book. And I said,
"I gotta name her after a river." And I was very attracted to calling her "Volga". [laughter]
But thought that would be a bit too easy. So she's called "Danube' and Threnody is a
wannabe Danube.
IB: Yes, she hates...
MA: Noble dream...
IB: Does Lionel like being rich?
MA: It's not clear, is it?
IB: No. He doesn't have a titanium card. He has an...
MA: Yttrium card.
IB: An Yttrium card, and his handmade shoes cost 20,000 pounds a piece, and that kind
of thing.
MA: Yeah, he likes all that. And there's a terrible scene where he gets his... He's got
five brothers, called John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Stuart. [laughter] Stuart Sutcliffe,
the forgotten Beatle. And they're all penniless with shattered wives and rioting children,
and he gathers them at the most expensive hotel in London. This is his first day out
of prison. He's in prison when he wins the lottery. And he sort of says teasingly to
them, "I spent 10 grand today on, guess what?" And they said, "What?" "Socks", he says. And
then, they go out to the garden after dinner and Lionel says, "I'm gonna take care of your
number one worry." "I know you're all tense, lads", he says. He's the youngest, but they're
all terrified of him. And he says, "What's that? What's that little itch that wakes you
up at night, that sort of thing that keeps you from sleeping? The worry that never goes
away?" And he said, "Begins with an M." "Muh, muh, I can't say it", he says to them. And
they're speechless with greed and fear and he says, "Mum." [laughter] "Our Mum. I'm gonna
take care of our Mum." And... [laughter] So, it gives him the chance to be meaner than
he was before.
IB: Yeah. The book does begin with Des, who is 15, having an affair with his grandmother
in... [laughter] In the distant.
MA: Yeah, that, it's not ideal, this arrangement. [laughter] He's writing to an agony aunt.
The book begins "I'm having an affair with an older woman. She is a lady of some sophistication
and makes a pleasant change from etcetera, etcetera, but there's one problem and one
problem only; she's my Gram!" But Des is, in fact, the nicest character I've ever created
by quite a long way.
IB: I think that is true.
MA: I think it is true, and I construct his story so that you forgive him for that. And
he does, that's when he's 15, but we next see him when he's 18 and that's all over.
IB: Youthful folly.
MA: Yeah.
IB: Sleeping with your grandmother.
MA: Can always... And she's only, by the way, she's only 24 years older than he is.
IB: She's a GILF, right?
MA: Yeah.
[laughter]
IB: We won't go into that now. I wanna ask you one more question before you read. You
are a, as I'm reminded every time I look back over your work, which I do with great pleasure
frequently, a very prolific writer. I know you'd deny this, but despite the fact that
you write your first drafts, at least of your novels, in long-hand...
MA: Yeah.
IB: Still?
MA: Yes. It's a bit superstitious maybe, but I feel that the flow, there's something, it's
like the flow of your blood and I only use a Bic, a ballpoint, as you're only a man,
that's all you need.
[laughter]
MA: But I do feel that it has to be that way the first time around and then on the computer,
which seems to have been invented by a novelist, it's almost sinister how it answers to a novelist's
needs. I still think, "You mean, I can just insert a paragraph between these paragraphs
without re-typing five pages?" which is how it used to be. And then I revise. But I don't
like writing something straight down on a computer. You have to have that first draft
in long-hand, and also... There's something that the computer can do, if you're very patient,
but you don't automatically do it, which is, you keep the evidence of your original crossings-out,
so you'll come to an adjective and reject one, and put in another and very often, the
first one was right, and that's all still there on your long-hand draft.
IB: Right.