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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

...in finding Martin Amis strangely sexy?

66 replies

Mumtabulous · 27/08/2011 01:04

Or is it just me!

OP posts:
exoticfruits · 27/08/2011 16:34

Just you! From all I have heard he isn't a very nice character.

HardCheese · 27/08/2011 16:46

I could buy the 'this is a mere satire of misogyny' argument, if it were only in one or two novels - but it's in all of them, over and over. So, for me, either his vile women-hating characters come from some deep stratum of misogyny within himself, or else he's a bit of a one-trick pony.

Mumtabulous · 27/08/2011 16:51

I agree yet again with you Yossarian, I like an older man as well! We must have exactly the same taste in men haha...if I ever do get married again I had better not let you near my husband! Wink
I wouldn't say he's "nice" exactly, but I'm not attracted to him for his niceness. I think bibbitybobbityhat hit the nail on the head with her post there. I have to admit I just went on to Amazon and ordered the book!

OP posts:
CarmenSternwood · 27/08/2011 16:56

Sorry, I don't want to sound like Mrs Amis, but you clearly haven't read very many of his books, HardCheese. I can think of several that don't satirise misogyny or sexism at all - 'Night Train' (told from the pov of a woman, as was 'Other People'), 'Time's Arrow' (about the Holocaust), 'The Information' (where's the sexism in that?), 'House of Meetings' (about the Gulag) and his memoir 'Experience', which contains nothing remotely sexist and, indeed, if anything, chides his father for being a bit that way inclined towards the end of his life.

Most of his undeserved reputation for this comes from people who have just read (or more likely, merely read about) his most famous three novels, 'The Rachel Papers', 'Money' and 'London Fields', which are clearly satirical in their treatment of masculinity and femininity.

Don't mean to belabour this, but i've heard enough of this rubbish at dinner parties by people desperate to be offended by something.

Mumtabulous · 27/08/2011 16:59

I think most people know him from Money, and that's where the whole thing comes from. I don't think he's misogynistic, arrogant perhaps.

OP posts:
YossarianLives · 27/08/2011 17:10

I also like a little bit of arrogance in a man Blush Not too much though!

Mumtabulous · 27/08/2011 17:13

Me, too! I mean, I don't want him to be insufferably arrogant, but I don't mind him being a tad pleased with himself, and bantering can be so much fun Wink

OP posts:
HardCheese · 27/08/2011 17:39

Carmen, I have a doctorate in English literature, and used to teach bloody MA aeons ago on an undergraduate course I inherited from someone else. I think I've read them all, bar The Pregnant Widow, and I assure you I don't sit around at dinner parties longing for sources of offence. For me, it goes beyond what you (I think very generously!) call satirical misogyny in the novels you mentioned, I simply don't think he can write non-satirised female characters at all - Mike in Night Train and Mary in Other People are like weird cardboard compendia of stereotypes. I think he's a beautiful prose writer, whose talent is deformed by a kind of limiting machismo. Nowhere near as bad as his father, though - fortunately.

BakeliteBelle · 27/08/2011 18:15

I think he is a sexy little ole beast - a bit seedy, smokey and dark. However, whoever mentioned seeing him joggling away at keep fit classes has poured a metaphorical bucket of water over my desire. Not a sensual image

izzywhizzyletsgetbusy · 27/08/2011 20:22

And he has a daughter that he did not acknowledge until she was 18 bibbity.

He's not greatly different from his late sire who was an odious misogynist and whose snobbery is legendary.

bibbitybobbityhat · 27/08/2011 20:33

Did he know about his daughter? Have you read Experience? She is very much acknowledged and written about extensively in the book.

BakeliteBelle · 27/08/2011 20:46

I thought he didn't know about his daughter until she was 18 izzy

SpringHeeledJack · 27/08/2011 20:58

I loved Experience in spite of my reservations about Amis (find him just about unreadable, usually)- the bits about the death of Kingsley, in particular, were really moving

I just find him awfully awfully misogynistic. And all the crap he spouted after 11th September was unbearable.

I love Julian Barnes, though. I'd much rather do him Grin

Mumtabulous · 27/08/2011 21:21

Wow I never thought this thread would get so busy - a whole debate has formed from my idle musing Grin

It's true about his daughter (I think her mother committed suicide as well - can't have been an easy childhood) but from what I've read in a couple of articles he's quite supportive of her as an adult and ditto of her son.

Kingsley definitely had both misogynistic and racist tendencies, but sadly so did the majority of Brits from that era. Love the name, though, but I guess that's another story...

OP posts:
AtheGoddessOfAtheism · 28/08/2011 01:39

Would that be the same Martin Amis who advocated collective punishment for Muslim communities and strip-searching for the crime of walking about whilst looking Asian?

Never mind the misogyny.

YABVVVVVU, I don't shag arseholes! Hmm

PS: I'd still not shag him even I knew nothing about him because he doesn't satisfy my shallow tastes in the looks department!

LadyClariceCannockMonty · 28/08/2011 13:05

There's loads about his teeth in Money too.

OP, I have to very grudgingly admit I can see where you're coming from, although he doesn't float my personal boat thank God.

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