(2 of 2)
His new novel opens with the promise of another of Amis' feats of controlled chaos. The plot develops with the right balance of malice and merriment. At the age of 40, struggling novelist Richard Tull understands that he will never make it as a writer. His cerebral fiction no longer gets points for degree of difficulty. He reviews books for pittances, his wife earns more than he does, his children distract him, and he is impotent.
In contrast, Tull's friend Gwyn Barry, duller and less gifted, makes millions with two politically correct, feel-good novels. Tull, feeling only jealousy and hatred, attempts to wreck Barry's career and his posh life. The attempts backfire, however, providing a source for Amis' sardonic humor-his elaborate facade for intellectual disdain and largely unearned cynicism.
Illusion, of course, is art's essence. But by the time he gets halfway through his new novel, Amis is providing mostly distraction. The comedy becomes shtiky, with a few exceptions--like the drunken theater critic who nearly completes the first word of his review before falling unconscious onto his keyboard. The word is "Chehko." But the setups grow progressively slacker, and Amis relies too heavily on old tricks: low comedy courtesy of London's petty-criminal class, Postmodern interjections from the author, and profundity cast as scientific metaphors. By now the literary uses of entropy are threadbare even for Amis.
Perhaps this letdown might have been avoided had Amis included more than one of the seven deadly sins. Pride has possibilities. Then again, envy is not an insignificant emotion-not even in a book review. If not as envious as the caricatured Tull, a critic is still the sort who thinks faster when standing on someone else's feet than when standing on his own.
--With reporting by Elizabeth Bland/New York