The Martin Amis Problem

When literary-minded fellows of my generation get together and discuss the modern novel, the conversation tends to turn to Martin Amis. The most extravagantly gifted of novelists when we were in 6th form, university etc, he wrote in The Rachel Papers to Money a series of matchless comic novels. His prose was on a par with Nabokov's. Then something fell away.

I think it's maybe that in his later books he tried to address the great issues of life and death, and I for one wasn't convinced, for example, by all the stuff about lying awake at nights worrying about nuclear war.

The initiate I talk about in the intro to my book once said to me that in the past art and literature was guided by secret schools, but that this no longer seemed to be the case.

Esoteric philosophy is the greatest, richest tradition of thinking about the meaning of life and the other ultimate questions. It was very influential on the earlier generation of Bellow, Salinger, Updike, Golding and Lessing - for the most part the influence of Rudolf Steiner - which is why their work opens up onto vast dimensions of thought.

I think Martin Amis may be a militant secularist like his friend Hitchens.

Comments

[Stef]

Whilst I appreciate what your colleague said, I think I disagree. Just about every book I seem to be reading at the moment deals with big ideas - or should that be Big Ideas - in a way that hints that the status quo is about to be undermined. And I'm not including your book in this comment by the way!!! There's The Dreaming Void by Peter F Hamilton, The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas, and The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by GW Dahlquist, just to name the last three... all ostensibly science fiction/fantasy/literary fiction, and yet there's that odd little something about them...

Of course, I could be bonkers and not have realised yet, but you know what I mean. I've had to move onto Jackie Collins briefly to give my brain time to calm down.

[jonathan black]

I haven't read any of those. Which would you recommend to start?

[Stef]

I would start with the End of Mr Y since it's closer to some of the themes that you deal with, in particular the nature of thought, consciousness, religion and heaven. Although the ending is a bit weak.

[Al]

I visited the Rosicrucian's last night, and it was a pleasant experience. I mentioned that in the past, mystery schools often had "commerce with disembodied spirits" (credit to Mark Booth for that line) and I wondered if this occurred for Initiates in this Rosicrucian Chapter? I was told it's not uncommon for someone who's doing their exercises to have a visitation, but I got the feeling it typically happens for them as dream visitation more so than a waking one.

[jonathanblack]

Thanks, Al. (Glad I found it. I'm still learning how to navigate my round this site.) Was it an interesting building? I seem to remember beeing insomniac and in the small hours seeing a documentary that had a feature on the Rossicrucian building on Ashdown Forest. If I remember aright, it had a spectacular undergound initiation chamber in the Egyptian style.

When i was recently given a tour of Grand Central Lodge in Londom, I asked if there were any such there - and was told no.