 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Yellow Dog
By Martin Amis
Jonathan Cape $45.00
 Martin Amis is the son of revered/reviled author (the late) Kingsley Amis and a great deal has been expected of him. Mostly he has delivered, with his excellent late-1970s and 80s output being followed by an advance of $1+ million for The Information, a socially incisive satire set in the junction between London yuppiedom and the dodgy underworld. Then came the tall-poppy cutters whose knives were keened for his autobiography to-date, and razor-sharp for Koba the Dread, a feeble critique of Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin.
Now we have Yellow Dog, the novel that was to finally cement his reputation, or to confirm, as many were saying, that the best work was past.
Frustratingly, it does both, delivering scintillating passages and wild flights of fancy - a new English monarch named Henry IX, the ghastly 'yellow' (tabloid) journo Clint Smoker - but a jumbled plot involving the destinies of diverse characters.
Despite, or perhaps because of, Amis's deft command of language, his characters are driven less by credible emotions than by the writer's cleverness, and they caper out of control.
The 'plot' encompasses the bashing of an actor/film-maker/musician named Xan Meo by petty gangsters in the employ of an East End hardman; the tedious doings of the sovereign with his infirm wife and Chinese lover, a she named 'He' - you can imagine the puns; and various moral neer-do-wells whose lives revolve around the porn industry.
The journalism piss-take is the highlight. At a 'Morning Lark' editorial conference, the publisher is lamenting the size of the page 3 model's breasts.
"If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Keep the bosoms within reasonable bounds: forty-four triple-F would do as a benchmark." Columnist Clint Smoker agrees, saying, "More centrally Chief, it makes the paper too embarrassing to buy. I bet we're losing wankers."
We learn that, 'Even before the first issue had hit the streets, it was universal practice, at the Morning Lark, to refer to readers as wankers'.
This applied not only to specific features (Wanker's Letters, Our Wankers Ask the Questions, and so on) but also in phrases common to any newspapering concern, as in 'the wanker comes first' and 'the wanker's what it's all about' and 'is this of genuine interest to our wankers?'
From another writer, this novel might be a sign of a budding career, but from Amis it is, as the title suggests, something of a cur.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse in Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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