The last time Martin Amis caused literary ripples on this side of the Atlantic, he was the offended party in a plagiarism scandal. That was in 1980 when a young American writer named Jacob Epstein confessed that he had not sufficiently "originalized" whole passages from Amis' first novel, The Rachel Papers, before incorporating them into his own fictional debut, Wild Oats. Now the son of British Novelist Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim, One Fat Englishman) is back with a splash. Money: A Suicide Note is one of those infrequent novels that should divide readers into admirers and detractors, with little room for neutrality. The book even comes with a bit of extraliterary irony. While his father's novel Stanley and the Women has been shunned by U.S. publishers for being insensitive to females, Son Martin, 35, smuggles in a cast of stereotypical gold diggers and playgirls under the guise of a morality tale.
In fact, Amis is quite the scold. His Rabelaisian comic gift cuts savagely at the patchwork of relativism and materialism that passes for modern social fabric. The novel's loutish hero, John Self, is a grotesque victim of life in the fast lane: "I hate people with degrees, O-levels, eleven-pluses, Iowa Tests, shorthand diplomas," says Self. "And you hate me, don't you. Yes you do. Because I'm the new kind, the kind who has money but can never use it for anything but ugliness."
Self's financial transactions make the phrase "filthy lucre" seem quaint. He spends in a slack-jawed trance usually associated with pornography. Wads of currency go for hogsheads of alcohol and composts of fast food. His car, an overpriced Fiasco, is nearly as costly to keep as Selina Street, a sexual acrobat and shakedown artist whose faked orgasms excite Self more than the real thing.
The source of this blubbery oaf's X-rated capital is the London advertising business. But Self, first encountered drunk and disorderly in a New York City cab, is branching out into American moviemaking. This is a realm of invisible money, transparent friendship and deals as insubstantial as holograms. In Manhattan and Los Angeles, he is called Slick by people with names like Nub Forkner, Herrick Shnexnayder and Fielding Goodney, who communicates in the language of Upper Vulgaria: "Date-raped, Slick. Out on a date, you know? Remember. In fact it's an interesting distinction. With a regular rape, lust plays no part in it. It's all about power, self-assertion, violence . . . But with a date-rape, lust features."
Self, son of a Pimlico barkeep, is always a step behind his Yank associates. He doesn't have their slippery finish; he doesn't live on the sharp end, which means always flying first class and riding in stretch limos known as Autocrats. Slick's library consists of about 13 titles: Home Tax Guide, Treasure Island, The Usurers, Timon of Athens, Consortium, Our Mutual Friend, Buy Buy Buy, Silas Marner, Success!, The Pardoner's Tale, Confessions of a Bailiff, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and The Amethyst Inheritance. When a woman refuses him until he has read Animal Farm, he makes a surprising discovery: "The big thing about reading and all that is--you have to be in a fit state for it. Calm. Not picked on. You have to be able to hear your own thoughts, without interference."