by
Martin Amis
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Money
Money
by
Martin Amis
by
Martin Amis
Money
by
Martin Amis
by
Martin Amis
There is a sense, as you sit in your cab and tunnel through the grooves and traps, there is a sharper sense (there must be) of the smallness of human concerns – in New York, where you always feel the height and weight of the tall agencies. Control, purpose, meaning, they’re all up there. They’re not down here. God has taken columned New York between the knuckles of his right hand – and tugged. That must make the ground feel lower. I am in the cab, going somewhere, directing things with money. I have more say than the people I look out on, nomads, tide-people. They have no say. Twenty-Third Street, and its running dogs.
Yes, she sounds sane, doesn’t she, among all these other people I’m working around? But then she has always had money – she has never not had money. Money is carelessly present in the cut and texture of her clothes, her leathery accoutrements, in rug-brilliance and mouth tone. The long legs have travelled, and not just through time. The clean tongue speaks French, Italian, German. The expectant eyes have seen things, and expect to see more. Even as a girl her lovers were always hand-picked, an elite, far above the usual rabble of irregulars, mercenaries, pressed men. Her smile is knowing, roused and playful, but also innocent, because money makes you innocent when it’s been there all along. How else can you hang out on this planet for thirty years while still remaining free? Martina is not a woman of the world. She is a woman of somewhere else.
Intriguingly enough, the only way I can make Selina actually want to go to bed with me is by not wanting to go to bed with her. It never fails. It really puts her in the mood. The trouble is, when I don’t want to go to bed with her (and it does happen), I don’t want to go to bed with her. When does it happen? When don’t I want to go to bed with her? When she wants to go to bed with me. I like going to bed with her when going to bed with me is the last thing she wants. She nearly always does go to bed with me, if I shout at her a lot or threaten her or give her enough money.
It works well. It is an excellent system. Selina and I get on like a house on fire. The thing about Selina is, she understands. She knows the twentieth century. She has hung out in cities . . . When we go to bed together, sometimes the conversation turns to . . . While making love, we often talk about money. I like it. I like that dirty talk.
So what can a poor boy do? You come out of the hotel, the Vraimont. Over boiling Watts the downtown skyline carries a smear of God’s green snot. You walk left, you walk right, you are a bank rat on a busy river. This restaurant serves no drink, this one serves no meat, this one serves no heterosexuals. You can get your chimp shampooed, you can get your dick tattooed, twenty-four hour, but can you get lunch? And should you see a sign on the far side of the street flashing BEEF-BOOZE – NO STRINGS, then you can forget it. The only way to get across the road is to be born there. All the ped-xing signs say DON’T WALK, all of them, all the time. That is the message, the content of Los Angeles: don’t walk. Stay inside. Don’t walk. Drive. Don’t walk. Run! I tried the cabs. No use. The cabbies are all Saturnians who aren’t even sure whether this is a right planet or a left planet. The first thing you have to do, every trip, is teach them how to drive.
‘I see this Garfield as a man of some considerable culture,’ said Lorne Guyland. ‘Lover, father, husband, athlete, millionaire – but also a man of wide reading, of wide . . . culture, John. A poet. A seeker. He has the world in his hands, women, money, success – but this man probes deeper. As an Englishman, John, you’ll understand what I’m saying. His Park Avenue home is a treasure-chest of art treasures. Sculpture. The old masters. Tapestries. Glassware. Rugs. Treasures from all over the world. He’s a professor of art someplace. He writes scholarly articles in the, in, in the scholarly magazines, John. He’s a brilliant part-time archaeologist. People call him up for art advice from all over the world. In the opening shot I see Garfield at a lectern reading aloud from a Shakespeare first edition, bound in unborn calf. Behind him on the wall there’s this whole bunch of oils. The old masters, John. He lifts his head, and as he looks towards camera the light catches his monocle and he . . .’'
I stared grimly across the room as Lorne babbled on. Who, for a start, was Garfield? The guy’s name is Gary. Barry isn’t short for Barfield, is it. It’s just Barry, and that’s that. Still, this would no doubt be among the least of our differences. Lorne now began mapping out Garfield’s reading list. He talked for some time about a poet called Rimbo. I assumed that Rimbo was one of our friends from the developing world, like Fenton Akimbo. Then Lorne said something that made me half-identify Rimbo as French. You dumb shit, I thought, it’s not Rimbo, it’s Rambot, or Rambeau. Rambeau had a pal or contemporary, I seem to remember, with a name like a wine . . . Bordeaux. Bardolino. No, that’s Italian . . . isn’t it? Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It’s so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You’re given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour, you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how hard, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.
‘It makes no sense. It just doesn’t add up.’ Lorne laughed. ‘If Butch is fucking Garfield, how could she risk that happiness, that fulfilment, John, on a young punk like . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Okay. Over that we can argue. But my scenario still holds. The way I see it, Butch has never had an orgasm before she meets this wonderful guy, who shows her a world she’s only dreamed of, a world of Othello jets and Caribbean mansions, a world of . . .’
I stared on. Time passed. [...]
‘All the fish respond to the manoeuvres of the alpha fish,’ said Fielding, his valved face reflected in the glass. ‘That’s the alpha fish – there, with the black tail.’ He looked at his watch, and straightened. ‘Now today we cast the girl, the stripper.’
‘The dancer?’ I said. ‘What about Butch?’
‘You know Butch is in. I know Butch is in. You know she’s a dancer. I know she’s a dancer. These girls, they don’t know nothing. You read me, Slick? We’re going to have some fun.’
christ
[...] ‘Now I shall leave the men together to enjoy their coffee and port, free of a woman’s chatter,’ said Caduta, and disappeared. Kasimir and I sat drinking heavily in total silence for forty-five minutes, until Caduta returned bearing three fat albums devoted entirely to her godchildren. [...]
amazing
'Answer me something. Do you sort of set yourself a time to write every day? Or do you just write when you feel like it. Or what.’
He sighed and said, ‘You really want to know? . . . I get up at seven and write straight through till twelve. Twelve to one I read Russian poetry – in translation, alas. A quick lunch, then art history until three. After that it’s philosophy for an hour – nothing technical, nothing hard. Four to five: European history, 1848 and all that. Five to six: I improve my German. And from then until dinner, well, I just relax and read whatever the hell I like. Usually Shakespeare.’
honestly kinda goals
‘The distance between author and narrator corresponds to the degree to which the author finds the narrator wicked, deluded, pitiful or ridiculous. I’m sorry, am I boring you?’
‘– Uh?’
‘This distance is partly determined by convention. In the epic or heroic frame, the author gives the protagonist everything he has, and more. The hero is a god or has godlike powers or virtues. In the tragic . . . Are you all right?’