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Rating:  -
In "Money", Martin Amis shows us John Self, a director of TV commercials who is moving up professionally to direct his first movie. The producer of this movie, Fielding Goodney, treats John as THE key player in the deal, despite John's serious drinking problem and his continuing embarrassing and bawdy misbehavior. Until the book's final section, John lives this crazy can't-be-real opportunity, with hilarious Hollywood-style production problems and apparently limitless funding.
In reading this novel, I kept wondering how Self's producer could overlook-even encourage-his personal shenanigans, which would obviously undermine a movie project in the real world. But in the last section of "Money", Amis explains, as he shifts his focus from John Self's hilarious debauchery to plot analysis. Then, a character named Martin Amis, a writer brought on board to salvage a disastrous script, unravels the mystery and reveals the true dynamic of John Self and Fielding Goodney. At the book's end, the achievement of Martin Amis, the author, is clear. He has written a brilliant, entertaining, risky novel, telling a funny and implausible story that ultimately makes perfect sense. Bravo!
Rating: -
This is the kind of novel Ilive for: intelligent and insightful, as well as being laugh out loud funny. John Self, the novel's narrator,lives a life of sheer, unadulterated decadence, jetting back and forth between New York and London (although the two cities merge over the course of the novel into a single depraved whole), attempting to put a film together, dealing with highly strung movie star charicatures, and all the while feeding his insatiable desire for junk food, alchohol, pornography and drugs.
What makes this novel work isn't the convoluted and sprawling story: it is the portrait drawn of nineteen eighties culture, the numerous and delightfully subtle jokes (Self drives an Italian car called a 'Fiasco', radically misinterprets Othello and various other incidents) and the worldview of Self himself who seems to serve as apair of eyes through which to satirize the decade and its attendent lifestlye trappings, never realizing that he himself epitomises all that is decadent and extraneous to the culture he inhabits.
Apart from Self, the other characters are less memorable, though no less humorous. Amis even incorporates a version of himself in the novel, symbolically taking a hand in the development (or not)of Self's movie project, and manipulating Self for his own ends in a similar fashion to most characters he meets. Perhaps the funniest thing about this novel is the way amis subjects Selfto so much humiliation and indignity: almosty as if amis attacks Eighties culture via satirising and bringing low Self.
This is a memorable and rewarding piece of work. Both as a comedy and as a aocial document it succeeds: although explicit scenes of sex and violence may put some off: be warned.
On the whole though a fantastic read for the thoughful and open minded reader.
Rating:  -
Martin Amis is a widely praised author, and with good reason. He's gone on record saying that writing is 'inredibly easy' for him, and I don't doubt that measure, and it's not a bad thing. Reading anything of his, one gets the sense of a highly sharp-witted man with an in-born feel for the way words work together, and for comedy. The problem is that this utter facility with the minute and the imediate-one liners and brilliant flares of imagery-tends to let in problems with the overall conception of the work, and Money is a case in point. The minutiae are virtually at war with the overall movement of the book.While Amis' CONSCIENCE is in good places with this one(satirizing 80s excess and greed, mysogyny, the media, and pornography), the book seems to shamble along for 300 pages, and then stop, and when its over, you feel as though nothing really happened, and, truth to tell, not a whole lot does, at least nothing decisive. One isn't entirely surprised to run aground on the surprise ending, which manages to be both completely and totally left field and a disappointing cop out at the same time. Put another way:it's like listening to a story somebody 'absolutely must' tell you for five hours, but they never actually get to the point. Along the way though, you can laugh, gag, and grimace along with John Self's always-entertainig adventures in drinking, pornography and the filmmaking industry. The tone Amis manages to sustain for so long is nothing less than miraculous, and Self's observations will always garner a reaction(Not always a good one:I remember quoting one particularly harsh paragraph to a friend of mine and her only reply was,"Nope. I can't do that one."). Taken with distance, and at small doses, it's worth having a look at.
Rating: -
I read this book a year ago and chuckled all the way through it. John Self, the protagonist, is a caricature of a senseless, ignorant, materialistic, depraved, pseudo, arrogant,oportunistic man of the yuppie "rat-race" early 80's. Ruthless, narcisistic, naive egotist, out to get the money for himself. He is also the narrator of this novel, taking the reader on a rough ride along him, in London and N.Y., and also within his chaotic, fragmentary and unruly mind and existence.
From what I've read in the previous reviews there seems to be a dichotomy of opinion: some people praise Amis work as genius and others consider it, to put it mildly, a waste of paper.
My view, for this novel in particular, lies somewhere in the middle. This novel has indeed no substance, and it is completely pointless. (The allusions to Othello are by the way ludicrous or at least to far fetched, and even if this was one of the books aims it seems very pretentious an aim to me.) You 'll find no worthy social commentary in here, except for the obvious and thin satire of materialist culture and early 80's excesses. Moreover you should be warned that the protagonist, as made clear from what i've written above, is in no way likeable and does not evolve any feelings of empathy from the reader's part, you might pity him or laugh at him at certain parts of the book, and I would wager this the way the author views his character as well. Now, some have said that soaking the reader up in depravity and ignorance is Amis's way of creating the opposite effect and demonstrating the emptyness of the whole early 80's yuppie scene. I 'd have to disagree on that. It is like saying that if i disapprove of something i would sit down and write a 500 page payan, a litany of it. Not so.
That said it's just one the funniest novels i've ever read, and if you do not expect much out of it then you can sit back and enjoy the mock humour, the parody, and the hyperboly of the whole construct, reading it in snippets of a few pages since neither the thoughts of John Self nor the structure of the book have any sort of coherency. You can also laugh at the author of the novel for choosing to cast himself in two roles in his story, as himself Martin Amis in London, and on the other side as the would-be-saviour of Self's life Martina Twain (or could this be Marc Twain transvestite?), to add a postmodern (or something) edge to the whole ensemble, or for whatever other reason.
So, two stars for making me laugh. All style, no substance as usual with Amis books, but I believe this one is the best he ever wrote, or wil write. Give it a go, and if you put it down because of the racism and misogyny and Self-loathing then you won't be in for the laugh.
Rating: -
What can you say. A high octane trip through the mad money-crazed world of the 1980s. Everyone's out for themselves, not giving a monkey's for anything, anyone or even themselves. And then comes the big payback when the whole thing's a cynical lie and you're nothing more than a little fish trying not to get eaten. It's a real world version of the US film, The Trueman Show - except no children would ever be allowed to watch and everyone is a loser.
Five stars, just for the swearing.
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