Is the landscape of Suicide Girls changing? It feels like it has because it was certainly easy to book author Martin Amis, the man that many people have called fictions angriest writer. I read dozens of interviews with him and if he is fictions angriest writer then I am Suicide Girls angriest journalist. Wait thats a bad example.
The label post punk has been applied to many authors but never to Amis. Thats because he was writing his scathing satirical fiction before punk existed. but if anyone deserves that label it would be him. He has dissected his own life, his familys life, the porn film industry and written novels about an advertising man who stumbles through London and Manhattan, eating, fucking, drinking, drugging and smoking too much and buying too much sex in Money and Times Arrow which is about a doctor with a past as medical experimenter under Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz.
His latest book is Yellow Dog and is about Xan Meo who is vengefully assaulted in the garden of a London pub, he suffers head injury, and personality change. We are introduced to the inverted worlds of the yellow journalist, Clint Smoker; the high priest of hardmen, Joseph Andrews; and the porno tycoon, Cora Susan.
Hes 54 years and what he has to say would appeal to anyone including an 18 year old Suicide Girl.
Buy the novel Yellow Dog here.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I heard youve been having some traveling issues.
Martin Amis: Nothing unusual. I got on the plane in Boston and it was a very bumpy ride down to New York. It was a hurricane but I made it.
DRE: Yellow Dog has not been out too long and already its caused controversy in Britain. What is it this time?
MA: [laughs] It was a really weird display of pure hostility. Ive had personal stuff before but this is just an attack on the book. Seven or eight critics told me to crawl away and die. Its a murderous and unprecedented turn. Its fundamentally unserious in an odd way too. Its sort of becoming a tradition that the young bloods feel brave and like to go to the mat with me. This is all predicated on the idea that I deserve it and that I can take it.
DRE: Are they making it up out of nothing?
MA: Some of it is. Some of it is just so wild. The whole thing is not very rational or pleasant. Its chilly and white-lipped.
DRE: I know you like to push buttons but it doesnt seem like you did that this time. Is it just an all out assault?
MA: Yes it is. It isnt unanimous but piece after piece came out saying All we can do now is pity him. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am not the most rewarded or award winning novelist in England but Im the most imitated. There comes a time when youre imitating someone and you try to cut free. Then you signal this by a display of aggression.
DRE: I talk to many authors and many first time authors as well. The veteran authors often say that they reach a point where the books are no longer autobiography. Youve been doing this for over thirty years. But Yellow Dog feels somehow more autobiographical that your other recent books.
MA: No I dont feel that. In fact I think what I will do next is something autobiographical. I mean there are little things like domestic things having to do with Xan Meo and his daughters, songs and his wife. The fact that he had been married before. That all corresponds with me. I admit that when you are writing about children you have to model them on your own because you are not going to get anywhere dreaming up a child. Children arent universal figures; they are very particular to their homes and their parents. So I used some real life there. But I havent been hit over the head, Im not a king, Im not a tabloid journalist or an airplane pilot. I think it is only a tiny fraction of the book that can be called autobiographical.
DRE: So the next book might be another straight autobiography?
MA: No autobiographical fiction. God knows Ive only written one page of it so it might go off in an unexpected direction. But I havent written autobiographical fiction since my first novel because when youre in your early 20s thats all youve got. I feel that Ive left myself alone a long time so something is probably built up.
DRE: Is it like you no longer have to mine your own life? Maybe youve been writing fiction for so long its time to go back to writing about your life.
MA: I mean you dont really decide. You just get the prompting and you obey. I think its fair to say that I am one of the least autobiographical writers around. I can think of many writers who are strongly autobiographical. In fact it was about the evolution of the novel. The great phase of autobiographical fiction was the 70s, the 80s. The confessional mode in novels and poetry as well. But Im going to have a try at it.
DRE: A lot of critics throw around the word Dickensian. But Yellow Dog has created such a world of unique characters that Dickensian may be the only word that fits. Was he someone you thought about in the writing of this novel?
MA: Well hes in my head. I dont think Ive read any Dickens for ten years. But I did read him a great deal when I was young. His rhythms and comic exaggerations are certainly part of my sensibility.
DRE: I finished Yellow Dog a few weeks ago and some of the events in it remind me of what just happened with the Paris Hilton tape.
MA: What is that?
DRE: Paris Hilton is the daughter of the Hilton hotel dynasty and a tape was just released of her having sex. Yellow Dog is about looking at the obscene things in life and the preoccupation with celebrity.
MA: Yes and its also coincided with another royal scandal. It does seem very contemporary and I meant it to. I also meant it to be post-September 11th type atmosphere.
DRE: Why those conscious decisions?
MA: I started this novel some years ago and put it aside to write the two volumes of memoirs. I resumed writing it just around September 11th. It seemed odd and very futile to be writing at all but especially to be writing a comic novel at that moment. But I felt that your fighting spirit keeps going and I thought that it will still be a comic novel. It will be slightly tipped on axis by the strange feeling I had after September 11th. The tipped view that the world isnt the same anymore. But I think militant Islam is an attack on civilization and reason also on humor, comedy and laughter. So it seemed right to press on and write the comic novel in this environment after September 11th.
DRE: If Islam kept itself in its own bubble and didnt overlap onto the world would you still feel it was less encroaching on your life?
MA: Of course. I dont mind what people do at home or even what they do in church, much. But I think its time that civilized people got more impatient with religion in general and not just Islam.
DRE: Do you have a problem with the way the US went into Iraq?
MA: Well I wrote a piece sort of against the war before it happened. I said that I think America is behaving like someone still in shock. After such you wouldnt expect a historical event for them to behave completely rationally and America hasnt. Now that they have gone in, I desperately want it to work. I want them to find weapons of mass destruction. The trouble with the whole effort seems to be its lack of legitimacy and thats why its encountering so much resistance. Because everyone senses that America went to war on false or confused premises but there is no escape now. It will have to be the long haul.
DRE: So President Bush used America as more of a blunt object than a scalpel?
MA: Yeah. He needed an Arab enemy and Iraq was the obvious place to go and when I say needed I meant emotionally needed. The very momentum of American power needed it.
DRE: When writing about sex and sexuality in today's world is it nearly impossible to escape being prescient? Some of the things in the book even hearken to what just happened with Michael Jackson being arrested.
MA: Yeah I know. I think its a solemn duty of the novelist, maybe not to be performed every time, but you should be writing about the near future. Preparing the ground for what is coming next. Not looking at your crystal ball exactly but feeling the onset of what is currently happening. It gets slightly more difficult to do because not only do things happen faster but they seem to get weirder and weirder.
DRE: Once it gets to Michael Jackson thats the plateau for weirdness.
MA: Yes it is [laughs].
DRE: I feel like Ive been to that bar you describe in London. The one that serves the cocktails called Blowjob and Dickhead. It doesnt seem like you needed much exaggeration there.
MA: Well no but thats my style, to exaggerate. Its become a habit. But you dont need to exaggerate much satire is pushed out by reality. There is nowhere further to take it.
DRE: Are you having trouble finding ways to exaggerate real life?
MA: Yes I am. Quite a lot of that newspaper stuff where [in Yellow Dog] he says keep your bog roll handy for masturbation and all that. That was all in that paper; its called The Daily Sport out of London. The Daily Sport is almost as bad as the one in my book. I used to read to get the feeling of it. I felt The Daily Sport could go no further. Theyve reached the kind of end zone. Satire could only keep up with them but cant get ahead of them.
DRE: I did read that you read quite a bit of science fiction as a young man.
MA: Yes I used to review science fiction up until my late twenties. I would read batches of it every month.
DRE: Has modern science fiction become insignificant and unimportant?
MA: Or redundant. I havent read any for twenty years. But you can always leap way into the future. There are a million possible futures. So they were never tied to the present.
DRE: You've had a lot of insane situations happen to you in your life. Have you assimilated them?
MA: Well people say whatever doesnt kill you makes you stronger. I say whatever doesnt kill, kills you later. But I dont think there is anything a psychiatrist would say I havent dealt with or that Im in denial about.
DRE: How do you deal with them? Do you deal with them in your work or in ways that as a journalist I cant find out?
MA: [laughs] No you work in your solitude. I count sitting in my study reading or picking my nose as a days work. Being alone is half the work and thats where you think through these things without always knowing thats what your doing.
DRE: A lot of people learn to be a father from their own father. After you wrote about your father did your relationship with your family changed?
MA: No I dont think it did. Philip Roth once said that when a writer is born into a family thats the end of that family. But I was very determined that wouldnt happen. I didnt cause any family trouble when I wrote that book or I hope I didnt. I disagree with Philip Roth. I think there is another way.
DRE: Are any of your kids writing to possible ruin your family?
MA: Not yet no. My grown up daughter is in TV documentaries and my boys are just coming up, finishing school and about to go to university. Its a bit early for them and of course my little girls are just little girls. But it wouldnt surprise me if all five of them turned into writers. Theyre all good with words.
DRE: How did this discovery of a long lost daughter happen?
MA: I had an affair with a married woman when I was in my twenties and it was fairly obvious that I was the father of this girl. Then when she was 17 or 18 she found out, was very upset about and then the man who she thought was her father, who I knew, wrote to me about it. I met her and weve had a relationship for the last ten years. She is definitely sort of part of my family now.
DRE: Did you ever think it was a strange coincidence that all these mad things happen to a writer who writes about such situations?
MA: Flaubert said that a writer should be dull and conventional in his life so he could be savage and original in his work. I always thought it was a good idea that nothing too much should happen to you. But you dont choose the direction of your life. Maybe a bit too much has happened to me but it hasnt stopped me from writing.
DRE: Do you believe in destiny or fate?
MA: No I dont believe in anything. Im sort of anti-belief. But you have to believe in certain emphases in your life. Its my fate at least in England. Theres nothing I could do about it. I think a lot of it was determined by having a writer for a father. I think people were very generous when I first showed up, they didnt hold it against me. Now, perhaps without even knowing it, they are holding it against me. Up until now its just been an evening ride and now Ive taken over the firm.
DRE: When I read about how your first marriage broke up and then it ruined a good friendship. Do you ever think, damn thats one more thing I could be attacked about?
MA: Im pretty sterile about it. If it didnt happen then they would think up other things and find new things or invent new things. If the will is there, theyll find a way and the will is there.
DRE: Back in the 1980s you said that if you and your father had switched birthdays "there's a good chance that I would have written his novels and he would have written mine." Do you still believe that?
MA: Yes I think weve got a lot in common but we just grew up under a different ethos. If he had grown up under mine then something very like that would have happened. Were both very much of our time.
DRE: I know that he thought you looking into the bedroom and bathroom was in poor taste. Would that have changed for him?
MA: I dont know. He said sex was a dead end in fiction. Theres something in it because the second you start writing about sex youve become not a universal figure which a writer shouldnt try to be. Youre left with your own little quirks. But I dont try to write about sex as DH Lawrence or John Updike would. I do keep my distance even though I do go in there. I would adjust the rule as follows; good sex is a dead end in fiction. but all kinds of bad sex, failed sex is fair game.
DRE: I did read where you were playing with a journalist and he didnt know what a facial was. At the time you said masturbation and pornography hadnt gotten hip yet. What about now?
MA: Its certainly looks as though its edging into the mainstream. But I dont see how it can unless we think masturbation is hip. I dont think it is really. It will never be cool to jerk off.
DRE: Is that the Catholics fault?
MA: No its the nature of the activity. Its not you at your most glorious and you dont want people to pull up a chair.
DRE: It ceases to be masturbation when someone else is there.
MA: I guess. But youre never more alone than when you are doing that. Its not very dignified. Above all its not something you can do in front of someone else.
DRE: Is writing like a masturbation you show to the world?
MA: No its not a wank its a suck [laughs]. Thats the difference. Something is being achieved its not just a little physical habit. You come out with something at the end of it which cant be said of masturbation.
DRE: After the $20,000 of dental work which removed your upper teeth. Do you feel like a horse now when journalists ask to see your dentures?
MA: It doesnt happen as much as it used to. I dont know what they will be wanting to look at next.
DRE: I remember the great article you wrote about your visit to the porno movie set. At the time you wrote that there is this incredible emphasis on anal sex in the industry and you werent sure why. Have you come to any conclusions since then?
MA: No except that the guys like it. I think being against pornography is a bit like killing the messenger. Its there because men want it to be there. Men want it to be there because its in their nature. The excuse given for mens emphasis on anal sex is that with anal her personality comes out, thats how [Buttman] John Stagliano put it. What that means is that shes groaning and snarling. Thats the state many men may like to have. I think he meant that they couldnt fake it and they could fake when its vaginal. Something more animal, i.e. pain, comes out when its anal.
DRE: I did see this porno movie with this girl in it who looked just like she came off the boat from Korea. She was faking until the guy put it up her ass. Her eyes almost bugged out of her head and it became real.
MA: Yeah thats what theyre after. Reality sells.
DRE: Where are you living now?
MA: In London.
DRE: Do you have a place in America?
MA I have in-laws in America so we do have places to stay here in New York in East Hampton on the road to Sag Harbor.
DRE: Sag Harbor is beautiful but if you make a wrong turn you end up in the water.
When you interviewed John Updike you said "The literary interview won't tell you what a writer is like. Far more compellingly to some, it will tell you what a writer is like to interview. Is that the writer creating a persona?
MA: Yes you have to a bit because its part of your professional routine. Youre on and performing in a low key way. There are inhibitions and barriers involved that you have to erect. You cant bare your soul and your wounds in a routine way.
DRE: Thats what journalists would like to have.
MA: Absolutely. They would like you to have a nervous breakdown mid-interview or a fatal heart attack.
DRE: Someone called you fiction's angriest writer circa 1990. Are you less angry now?
MA: It never felt like anger because anger blinds you. You have to see things clearly and you have to rub them up against your heart and soul.
DRE: Have you ever encountered the Goth subculture?
MA: The daughters of some of my friends used to be into that look. Thats all the pale face right?
DRE: Yes.
MA: My six year old did the Goth look for Halloween.
DRE: Do you find that look attractive? Not on your friends daughters of course.
MA: No far from it. You spend enough time thinking about death as it is without having it across the table staring at you.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG username: AndersWolleck
The label post punk has been applied to many authors but never to Amis. Thats because he was writing his scathing satirical fiction before punk existed. but if anyone deserves that label it would be him. He has dissected his own life, his familys life, the porn film industry and written novels about an advertising man who stumbles through London and Manhattan, eating, fucking, drinking, drugging and smoking too much and buying too much sex in Money and Times Arrow which is about a doctor with a past as medical experimenter under Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz.
His latest book is Yellow Dog and is about Xan Meo who is vengefully assaulted in the garden of a London pub, he suffers head injury, and personality change. We are introduced to the inverted worlds of the yellow journalist, Clint Smoker; the high priest of hardmen, Joseph Andrews; and the porno tycoon, Cora Susan.
Hes 54 years and what he has to say would appeal to anyone including an 18 year old Suicide Girl.
Buy the novel Yellow Dog here.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I heard youve been having some traveling issues.
Martin Amis: Nothing unusual. I got on the plane in Boston and it was a very bumpy ride down to New York. It was a hurricane but I made it.
DRE: Yellow Dog has not been out too long and already its caused controversy in Britain. What is it this time?
MA: [laughs] It was a really weird display of pure hostility. Ive had personal stuff before but this is just an attack on the book. Seven or eight critics told me to crawl away and die. Its a murderous and unprecedented turn. Its fundamentally unserious in an odd way too. Its sort of becoming a tradition that the young bloods feel brave and like to go to the mat with me. This is all predicated on the idea that I deserve it and that I can take it.
DRE: Are they making it up out of nothing?
MA: Some of it is. Some of it is just so wild. The whole thing is not very rational or pleasant. Its chilly and white-lipped.
DRE: I know you like to push buttons but it doesnt seem like you did that this time. Is it just an all out assault?
MA: Yes it is. It isnt unanimous but piece after piece came out saying All we can do now is pity him. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am not the most rewarded or award winning novelist in England but Im the most imitated. There comes a time when youre imitating someone and you try to cut free. Then you signal this by a display of aggression.
DRE: I talk to many authors and many first time authors as well. The veteran authors often say that they reach a point where the books are no longer autobiography. Youve been doing this for over thirty years. But Yellow Dog feels somehow more autobiographical that your other recent books.
MA: No I dont feel that. In fact I think what I will do next is something autobiographical. I mean there are little things like domestic things having to do with Xan Meo and his daughters, songs and his wife. The fact that he had been married before. That all corresponds with me. I admit that when you are writing about children you have to model them on your own because you are not going to get anywhere dreaming up a child. Children arent universal figures; they are very particular to their homes and their parents. So I used some real life there. But I havent been hit over the head, Im not a king, Im not a tabloid journalist or an airplane pilot. I think it is only a tiny fraction of the book that can be called autobiographical.
DRE: So the next book might be another straight autobiography?
MA: No autobiographical fiction. God knows Ive only written one page of it so it might go off in an unexpected direction. But I havent written autobiographical fiction since my first novel because when youre in your early 20s thats all youve got. I feel that Ive left myself alone a long time so something is probably built up.
DRE: Is it like you no longer have to mine your own life? Maybe youve been writing fiction for so long its time to go back to writing about your life.
MA: I mean you dont really decide. You just get the prompting and you obey. I think its fair to say that I am one of the least autobiographical writers around. I can think of many writers who are strongly autobiographical. In fact it was about the evolution of the novel. The great phase of autobiographical fiction was the 70s, the 80s. The confessional mode in novels and poetry as well. But Im going to have a try at it.
DRE: A lot of critics throw around the word Dickensian. But Yellow Dog has created such a world of unique characters that Dickensian may be the only word that fits. Was he someone you thought about in the writing of this novel?
MA: Well hes in my head. I dont think Ive read any Dickens for ten years. But I did read him a great deal when I was young. His rhythms and comic exaggerations are certainly part of my sensibility.
DRE: I finished Yellow Dog a few weeks ago and some of the events in it remind me of what just happened with the Paris Hilton tape.
MA: What is that?
DRE: Paris Hilton is the daughter of the Hilton hotel dynasty and a tape was just released of her having sex. Yellow Dog is about looking at the obscene things in life and the preoccupation with celebrity.
MA: Yes and its also coincided with another royal scandal. It does seem very contemporary and I meant it to. I also meant it to be post-September 11th type atmosphere.
DRE: Why those conscious decisions?
MA: I started this novel some years ago and put it aside to write the two volumes of memoirs. I resumed writing it just around September 11th. It seemed odd and very futile to be writing at all but especially to be writing a comic novel at that moment. But I felt that your fighting spirit keeps going and I thought that it will still be a comic novel. It will be slightly tipped on axis by the strange feeling I had after September 11th. The tipped view that the world isnt the same anymore. But I think militant Islam is an attack on civilization and reason also on humor, comedy and laughter. So it seemed right to press on and write the comic novel in this environment after September 11th.
DRE: If Islam kept itself in its own bubble and didnt overlap onto the world would you still feel it was less encroaching on your life?
MA: Of course. I dont mind what people do at home or even what they do in church, much. But I think its time that civilized people got more impatient with religion in general and not just Islam.
DRE: Do you have a problem with the way the US went into Iraq?
MA: Well I wrote a piece sort of against the war before it happened. I said that I think America is behaving like someone still in shock. After such you wouldnt expect a historical event for them to behave completely rationally and America hasnt. Now that they have gone in, I desperately want it to work. I want them to find weapons of mass destruction. The trouble with the whole effort seems to be its lack of legitimacy and thats why its encountering so much resistance. Because everyone senses that America went to war on false or confused premises but there is no escape now. It will have to be the long haul.
DRE: So President Bush used America as more of a blunt object than a scalpel?
MA: Yeah. He needed an Arab enemy and Iraq was the obvious place to go and when I say needed I meant emotionally needed. The very momentum of American power needed it.
DRE: When writing about sex and sexuality in today's world is it nearly impossible to escape being prescient? Some of the things in the book even hearken to what just happened with Michael Jackson being arrested.
MA: Yeah I know. I think its a solemn duty of the novelist, maybe not to be performed every time, but you should be writing about the near future. Preparing the ground for what is coming next. Not looking at your crystal ball exactly but feeling the onset of what is currently happening. It gets slightly more difficult to do because not only do things happen faster but they seem to get weirder and weirder.
DRE: Once it gets to Michael Jackson thats the plateau for weirdness.
MA: Yes it is [laughs].
DRE: I feel like Ive been to that bar you describe in London. The one that serves the cocktails called Blowjob and Dickhead. It doesnt seem like you needed much exaggeration there.
MA: Well no but thats my style, to exaggerate. Its become a habit. But you dont need to exaggerate much satire is pushed out by reality. There is nowhere further to take it.
DRE: Are you having trouble finding ways to exaggerate real life?
MA: Yes I am. Quite a lot of that newspaper stuff where [in Yellow Dog] he says keep your bog roll handy for masturbation and all that. That was all in that paper; its called The Daily Sport out of London. The Daily Sport is almost as bad as the one in my book. I used to read to get the feeling of it. I felt The Daily Sport could go no further. Theyve reached the kind of end zone. Satire could only keep up with them but cant get ahead of them.
DRE: I did read that you read quite a bit of science fiction as a young man.
MA: Yes I used to review science fiction up until my late twenties. I would read batches of it every month.
DRE: Has modern science fiction become insignificant and unimportant?
MA: Or redundant. I havent read any for twenty years. But you can always leap way into the future. There are a million possible futures. So they were never tied to the present.
DRE: You've had a lot of insane situations happen to you in your life. Have you assimilated them?
MA: Well people say whatever doesnt kill you makes you stronger. I say whatever doesnt kill, kills you later. But I dont think there is anything a psychiatrist would say I havent dealt with or that Im in denial about.
DRE: How do you deal with them? Do you deal with them in your work or in ways that as a journalist I cant find out?
MA: [laughs] No you work in your solitude. I count sitting in my study reading or picking my nose as a days work. Being alone is half the work and thats where you think through these things without always knowing thats what your doing.
DRE: A lot of people learn to be a father from their own father. After you wrote about your father did your relationship with your family changed?
MA: No I dont think it did. Philip Roth once said that when a writer is born into a family thats the end of that family. But I was very determined that wouldnt happen. I didnt cause any family trouble when I wrote that book or I hope I didnt. I disagree with Philip Roth. I think there is another way.
DRE: Are any of your kids writing to possible ruin your family?
MA: Not yet no. My grown up daughter is in TV documentaries and my boys are just coming up, finishing school and about to go to university. Its a bit early for them and of course my little girls are just little girls. But it wouldnt surprise me if all five of them turned into writers. Theyre all good with words.
DRE: How did this discovery of a long lost daughter happen?
MA: I had an affair with a married woman when I was in my twenties and it was fairly obvious that I was the father of this girl. Then when she was 17 or 18 she found out, was very upset about and then the man who she thought was her father, who I knew, wrote to me about it. I met her and weve had a relationship for the last ten years. She is definitely sort of part of my family now.
DRE: Did you ever think it was a strange coincidence that all these mad things happen to a writer who writes about such situations?
MA: Flaubert said that a writer should be dull and conventional in his life so he could be savage and original in his work. I always thought it was a good idea that nothing too much should happen to you. But you dont choose the direction of your life. Maybe a bit too much has happened to me but it hasnt stopped me from writing.
DRE: Do you believe in destiny or fate?
MA: No I dont believe in anything. Im sort of anti-belief. But you have to believe in certain emphases in your life. Its my fate at least in England. Theres nothing I could do about it. I think a lot of it was determined by having a writer for a father. I think people were very generous when I first showed up, they didnt hold it against me. Now, perhaps without even knowing it, they are holding it against me. Up until now its just been an evening ride and now Ive taken over the firm.
DRE: When I read about how your first marriage broke up and then it ruined a good friendship. Do you ever think, damn thats one more thing I could be attacked about?
MA: Im pretty sterile about it. If it didnt happen then they would think up other things and find new things or invent new things. If the will is there, theyll find a way and the will is there.
DRE: Back in the 1980s you said that if you and your father had switched birthdays "there's a good chance that I would have written his novels and he would have written mine." Do you still believe that?
MA: Yes I think weve got a lot in common but we just grew up under a different ethos. If he had grown up under mine then something very like that would have happened. Were both very much of our time.
DRE: I know that he thought you looking into the bedroom and bathroom was in poor taste. Would that have changed for him?
MA: I dont know. He said sex was a dead end in fiction. Theres something in it because the second you start writing about sex youve become not a universal figure which a writer shouldnt try to be. Youre left with your own little quirks. But I dont try to write about sex as DH Lawrence or John Updike would. I do keep my distance even though I do go in there. I would adjust the rule as follows; good sex is a dead end in fiction. but all kinds of bad sex, failed sex is fair game.
DRE: I did read where you were playing with a journalist and he didnt know what a facial was. At the time you said masturbation and pornography hadnt gotten hip yet. What about now?
MA: Its certainly looks as though its edging into the mainstream. But I dont see how it can unless we think masturbation is hip. I dont think it is really. It will never be cool to jerk off.
DRE: Is that the Catholics fault?
MA: No its the nature of the activity. Its not you at your most glorious and you dont want people to pull up a chair.
DRE: It ceases to be masturbation when someone else is there.
MA: I guess. But youre never more alone than when you are doing that. Its not very dignified. Above all its not something you can do in front of someone else.
DRE: Is writing like a masturbation you show to the world?
MA: No its not a wank its a suck [laughs]. Thats the difference. Something is being achieved its not just a little physical habit. You come out with something at the end of it which cant be said of masturbation.
DRE: After the $20,000 of dental work which removed your upper teeth. Do you feel like a horse now when journalists ask to see your dentures?
MA: It doesnt happen as much as it used to. I dont know what they will be wanting to look at next.
DRE: I remember the great article you wrote about your visit to the porno movie set. At the time you wrote that there is this incredible emphasis on anal sex in the industry and you werent sure why. Have you come to any conclusions since then?
MA: No except that the guys like it. I think being against pornography is a bit like killing the messenger. Its there because men want it to be there. Men want it to be there because its in their nature. The excuse given for mens emphasis on anal sex is that with anal her personality comes out, thats how [Buttman] John Stagliano put it. What that means is that shes groaning and snarling. Thats the state many men may like to have. I think he meant that they couldnt fake it and they could fake when its vaginal. Something more animal, i.e. pain, comes out when its anal.
DRE: I did see this porno movie with this girl in it who looked just like she came off the boat from Korea. She was faking until the guy put it up her ass. Her eyes almost bugged out of her head and it became real.
MA: Yeah thats what theyre after. Reality sells.
DRE: Where are you living now?
MA: In London.
DRE: Do you have a place in America?
MA I have in-laws in America so we do have places to stay here in New York in East Hampton on the road to Sag Harbor.
DRE: Sag Harbor is beautiful but if you make a wrong turn you end up in the water.
When you interviewed John Updike you said "The literary interview won't tell you what a writer is like. Far more compellingly to some, it will tell you what a writer is like to interview. Is that the writer creating a persona?
MA: Yes you have to a bit because its part of your professional routine. Youre on and performing in a low key way. There are inhibitions and barriers involved that you have to erect. You cant bare your soul and your wounds in a routine way.
DRE: Thats what journalists would like to have.
MA: Absolutely. They would like you to have a nervous breakdown mid-interview or a fatal heart attack.
DRE: Someone called you fiction's angriest writer circa 1990. Are you less angry now?
MA: It never felt like anger because anger blinds you. You have to see things clearly and you have to rub them up against your heart and soul.
DRE: Have you ever encountered the Goth subculture?
MA: The daughters of some of my friends used to be into that look. Thats all the pale face right?
DRE: Yes.
MA: My six year old did the Goth look for Halloween.
DRE: Do you find that look attractive? Not on your friends daughters of course.
MA: No far from it. You spend enough time thinking about death as it is without having it across the table staring at you.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
fatality:
So glad that this interview is here. Trying to read every last Martin Amis book.
tohidemyhurt:
great interview. DRE obviously was a huge talent. he lives on! thanks.