I woke up early this morning after a frenzied three hours of cleaning and tidying the night before. There is something about imposing order on chaos, purity on dirt, that grants the mind serenity. It stops wasting energy on low-level anxiety and displays its untrammelled, overflowing powers on whatever is the task at hand, which, in this case, was reading The Second Plane, Martin Amis’s collection of post-9/11 writings.
Martin Amis writes deliriously well. His sentences flow into paragraphs without ever getting caught on grammatical rocks or diverted by philosophical reeds. I can’t quote any of it because I’ve already took the book back to the library (although, of course, most of the essays can be found on the web), but it was a quick, sharp enjoyable read. Unfortunately, it also felt largely irrelevant.
Unlike Amis, I find it difficult to get as worked up about the Islam(ism)ic threat. One gets the sense that the news agenda has moved on. The immediate issue of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have been overshadowed by the more daunting prospect of peak oil, climate change and rising food prices — none of which Amis mentions. The people involved, who Amis sees as having Clio* whispering in their ear, are pitiful bit part players in comparison.
The only time Amis’s imagination gets really fired is when he evokes the possibility of a worldwide Caliphate. Here, stoked by the writings of Islamists, he writes of a world of terror and boredom, of nine year old wives, humourlessness, and misogyny. It is a vision he should have taken further, London Fields was a good sci-fi novel, I don’t why he doesn’t write more. As it is, Amis’s mind is too occupied by low-level anxiety to really get a handle on what’s going on.
* Amis is obsessed with the idea of Clio, the muse of history, to the extent of naming his daughter after her.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Leave a Reply