Yellow Dog

I read the opening chapter in the Guardian and won't be buying the book. The reader is asked to be interested in the mental ramblings of an actor called "Xan Meo" (surprisingly reminiscent of Zadie Smith's "Alex Li-Tandem" in "The Autograph Man"), who is the typical middle-class prat who has fcuked up his life and his marriage and deserves the beating up that Amis, despite not being very good at describing fights, provides for him: "But there is another actor on our stage. But I go to Hollywood but I go to hospital. A man (for it is he, it is he, it is always he), a sinner, shitter, eater, breather, coming up fast on him from behind." I found the extract hard to read, I must say. d.beswetherick.

I put off reading the Guardian excerpt on Saturday because . . . well, I don't know. I wanted to wait until I got a copy of the book - because it's an event book to be sure. A new Amis. It's an event book, even though I wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I think Money is okay and London Fields but almost everything else - I can pretty much take or leave. I liked his enormous collected reviews The War Against Cliche but I thought Experience was flabby and ego-driven. And yet for all that - I will read Yellow Dog. Everything I've heard about it makes it sound horrible but - I'm still going to read it. I'm a prisoner, a prisoner I tell you!

The Guardian site is running the YELLOW DOG digested read (see below). The digested version of the digested read (bear with me!) reads: Yellow Doggybollox . . . Anyway Digested Read: "I'm off out, me," he shouted to Russia. Xan Meo looked up to see clouds like trails of spermatozoa. "Oh God," he groaned. "I've been dumped in an ideological 1980s fictional cul-de-sac." He strolled round Camden, thinking how far he'd come; his dad the villain, his first wife, the kids, the movie career and now Lucozade, his novel. He ordered a Dickhead from the barman. "You named him," said Mal, clubbing Xan to the ground. * * * * * "Why have I got such a ridiculous name?" groaned Clint Smoker. "Because I say so," snapped Mart. "So this means I'm a tabloid hack with a small cock and no girlfriend who will end up in Porn Valley and have bugger all to do with the story." "Yep," said Mart. "But who said anything about a story?" * * * * * King Henry IX turned to his manservant. "What's all this about blekmail, Bugger?" "We've been sent a video of Princess Victoria having lesbian sex." "Oh dear," he eructed liverishly. "Bring me my little Chinese courtesan, He Zhezun." * * * * * "I'm goin to fuckin do him." The accident had turned Xan into something of a satyr. "I've got to @!#$ you. Now," he said to Russia. * * * * * As Flight 101 Heavy fought through turbulence, Royce Traynor's coffin broke loose and crashed into the container of hazardous chemicals. "What the @!#$'s going on?" said Captain Macmanaman. "Who cares?" said the flight engineer. "We're just here as some kind of metaphor to get on the Booker shortlist." * * * * * Joseph Andrews started talking. "You know, as kids, Mick Meo and me were at each other's froats. I done him then he'd do me then we'd both do bird and ven do each other again." * * * * * "Your career's finished here, Xan," said his agent. "Go to the US and do some porno." Hatefuck. Sidefuck. Cockout. Pornotown was a place where Mart's sexual neologisms could shine. "So Joseph Andrews had me done cos I called someone Joseph Andrews in Lucozade?" "S'right," said Mal. "Hasn't he read any Henry Fielding? I'll do him." "But he's an old man now." * * * * * "I'd never blackmail your highness that video of the princess and He Zhezun was only insurance I'm a royalist all I effer wanted was to spend me last days back in Britain." Joseph Andrews paused the tape to gather his breath. * * * * * "I'm ready to live happily ever after now," twittered Xan. "That's a ridiculous ending," yawned Russia. "Well I'm bored and I've run out of ideas," said Mart. "You said it," everyone agreed.

I hope whoever wrote that is getting well paid. I mean, it's not just witty but he obviously read the book. By the way, Peter, congrats on doing Bookslut, my favourite literary blog. d.beswetherick.

I should say "he or she obviously read the book". Obviously.

Thanks! The Book Slut has big shoes to fill (and I'm not sure I fill them) but it's a lot of fun trying . . .

Just been sent a copy of the 'Dog to review . . . The missus read half of the first page and said that is a book I would never ever want to read - furthermore, it's an opening paragraph that would put me off reading anything by Martin Amis ever again . . . That's some opening paragraph . . .

This is the para in question . . . But I go to Hollywood but I go to hospital, but you are first but you are last, but he is tall but she is small, but you stay up but you go down, but we are rich but we are poor, but they find peace but they find . . . I don't think it's as bad as all that . . .

If you have faith in Amis' abilities, as I do just after reading 'The Rachel Papers', the style is either a) demonstrative of the immense amount of faith in his readers' ability to cope with difficult writing in order to get to the bejewelled heart of his work, or b) deliberately contemptuous of the kind of people who just think books are made for their entertainment and pleasure!

I think by the end of the first chapter, that paragraph makes more sense. I had 'But I go to Hollywood, but I go to hospital' rattling round in my head for days. What it does, more than anything, I think is set out from the very off that you are meant to read Amis in general, and this novel in particular, as though he were reading it aloud. (If the whole book followed that paragraph's style, it would do your head in, but it is just to get you off and running) There were bits of it I absolutely loved, and bits that were utterly, utterly redundant. He delivers the hard-man and the seedy journalist brilliantly, the royal family and hangers on pretty dreadfully, and I am afraid I have to agree with the Guardian summary, the whole plane-crash thing is obviously there for some sort of metaphor, but it doesn't actually serve any purpose in the book at all. And of course, he doesn't pull all of it together at the end at all; it is disjointed and at least one of the three main strands peters out, one is exposed as being entirely there for a debate about the relevance of the monarchy and class and the third, well by the time you unravel Xan, you stopped liking him many chapters earlier. (But I have to say, I liked it, despite its flaws. Anyone that can write dialogue like "You oughta take a pill called Pride son, you ought to take a pill called Pride" is worth a read. Joseph Andrews, clearly modelled on Mad Frankie Fraser, dictating his life story is fantastic. An awful, awful man, rendered very well. ) As a novel, it fails, but as a book with some brilliant moments in it (and what the hell, you can say that about every single McEwan book and pretty much most films these days) it does the trick.

I read some of it in the Guardian and the guy is in love with words and I'm quite envious. No idea if it works as a novel but his writing's like treacle.

I've been for a long while in love with the idea of a novel that's more of a book with brilliant moments in - a collage perhaps. That's what I liked about 'The God of Small Things' in fact - there's a plot, but it's made up of brilliant moments. I'm kinda fed up with the novel for its own sake, as a long, long story that only satisfies if you read the whole thing. And if some of the old statistics are to be believed (where bookbuying is concerned,) so are significant numbers of the British public.

Hen - you should read Matthew McIntosh's Well - that calls itself a novel but is ostensibly a collection of geographically linked mini fictions . . .

I think that was the concept of "The Princess Bride" - at least, the way Goldman tells it - to tell a story where you skip out all the dull bits between sequences by the device of it being a story told to a child who just says "Get on with the good stuff". I don't really like Ben Elton's writing, but he said something very good once, "Sometimes it can take me twelve pages just to get my character out of the bloody door" and there's some truth in that.