Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Part three of the Rake’s Progress interview

Part three of the Rake’s Progress interview (the Rake split the first half and may do the second so there could be up to four instalments, god help us) with Michael Fitzgerald should be up in a day or two. I wrote a profile on Marty Amis for US Poets and Writers magazine recently, entitled “The Crown and the Crowd” (in reference to a great Amisianism I quote in full below) and the Martin Amis Web has posted this as a .doc over here in their reviews section The original magazine version rewards checking out for a superb photo of a louche looking Amis surveying his domains from a hotel window like a skinny Nero.

I am the only person in the world who likes YELLOW DOG. (The text messages aside.)

There’s a new dfw story at the New Yorker.

“Don’t do anything for the crowd. Don’t do anything with the crowd. But you’ve got to be aware of the crowd. In the novel I’m writing now (The Pregnant Widow), remembering the seventies, girls would go to bed with you even when they didn’t want to, because they were responding to the peer group. Very weird feeling. A girl going to bed with you for ideological reasons. You get that, and you also get, if you went out with a girl from up north, or from Cornwall or somewhere, she would have an actual rule about no sexual intercourse. She’s obeying an ideology of sort of save yourself for your husband, and a bit of religion and all that. So I formulate the rule, don’t do anything for the crowd. Don’t fuck, and don’t not fuck, for the crowd. Fuck for yourself.”

- Amis in conversation at the Prince Alfred

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