Martin Amis, Yellow Dog

Martin Amis is a funny sort of a chap. He's rather diminutive, and he has he has something of a soft spot for writing about gangster violence.

The other thing that one can't help but mention when considering Amis Junior is that the press seem intent on characterising him as the great hope for stylistic modern fiction and the twinkliest of bright lights in the British literati, as it is so prosaically called. Thoroughly-modern-Martin seems to single-handedly shoulder the weighty burden of keeping up literary standards.

Poor old Martin, he has so much to do to keep everybody happy somehow.

Enter "Yellow Dog", his hugely anticipated novel since the greatly respected "The Information".

Grand in scale, "Yellow Dog", is a three-stranded creation structured around juxtaposed narratives that snap and snarl at each other as they vie for our attention. Let me introduce you to Xan Meo, who is one of the "new men" of the very old twentieth century, perfect husband, perfect father, great bum you know the kind of chap. So when he suffers a serious head injury after a particularly nasty assault our entertainment and disturbance can be gleaned from his moral transformation into a low-life, corrupt and corrupting cess-pit of amorality and vitriol. He's a Cockney and his language becomes more extreme as his transformation progresses. Xan says things like:

"Why? Because I'm trying not to corpse, mate. You're a f***ing old joke, you are, boy. Look at you, you f***ing old joke."

Now allow me to introduce King Henry IX and his charming daughter Victoria. Rather unsurprisingly Henry is an anachronism, out of touch and out of time but with some thoroughly modern concerns to worry him. Most persistent is the necessary work that must be undertaken to suppress the photographs of his darling daughter in her royal bath. Henry says things like:

"Why did How could it be so arranged that such creatures play a part in God's plen?"

Finally I bid you welcome First Officer Nick Chopko, Flight Engineer Hal Ward and Captain John Macmanaman as they attempt to safely fly CigAir 101 Heavy in conditions that can only be described as impossible. The passenger flight looks doomed and the reader would be forgiven for believing that the dead body of Royce Traynor which is in the hold, is somehow supernaturally intent on sabotaging the safe passage of the flight.

Royce Traynor doesn't say anything at all, but Martin Amis says things ABOUT Royce Traynor like:

"In the hold the corpse of Royce Traynor seemed to square itself. It was ready."

There are a myriad of bit parts, all penned to underline the thematic caricature of the central ones. So the post 9/11 commentary on the lack of morality, or changing shape of morality is to be found in the various sleazy worlds of Clint Smoker, the meagrely-endowed unheralded king of Fleet Street sleaze, of the ironically named Joseph Andrews, the aged king of the underworld and Cora Susan, self-professed queen of the burgeoning porn city.

The King and Princess are surrounded by the hand-wringingly sycophantic in the forms of the wonderfully named Love and Urquhart-Gordon and the persistently vegative Queen Pamela of England lies in a bed from which she will never rise to remind us all of simpler days when moral obligations and requirements were clear.

So what we have with "Yellow Dog" is a structurally interesting novel with many opportunities for laughter in a suitable Amisesque bleak world view. Clever, inventive, and stylistic Amis has created a structure in which the themes he wants to address can be hung out: the nature of patriarchy, where paternal love turns into incest, the changing role of a man, husband and father, the post 9/11 morality shift, the grey void that we leave for our children's children and the simultaneous threat from everywhere and nowhere. Big themes are here.

The strand that afforded me the most laughs was that of the dumbing down of language, something that I know is close to the author's heart, because I witnessed him giggle and chortle his way through a reading that chose to figure on just this theme.

Yet there is a blinding flaw with Yellow Dog and it has taken me weeks to put my finger on it. For much as we can admire this work for the wordsmithing and structural aplomb, some of it is heavy-handed and none of the characters are emotionally engaging. It is always an achievement to pen a character that is devoid of attractive traits but still manages to draw in the reader, but anybody who remembers the dart-wielding Keith from London Fields will know that this is one of the greatest skills Martin Amis has. Sadly here it is missing.

As much as I wanted to care, I did not.

Overall:

As structurally accomplished and stylishly written as you would expect with sporadic moments of humour interspersed with various jokes that I know Martin Amis found funny (I'm back to his giggling at his own reading ) but I just didn't. An interesting attempt at social commentary in these morally obscure post 9/11 days that doesn't honestly stand up as a great piece of fiction, and I say that as one of his many fans.

Tibor Fischer rather naughtily went to print saying that he didn't think much of "Yellow Dog" either and was roundly slated by the press for self-seeking publicity on the basis that his novel happened to be published on the same day. Maybe he was guilty of this and maybe he wasn't, but he writes smashing novels and it doesn't make him wrong does it?

Read London Fields, Times Arrow, The Information and pretty much any other Amis before you read this one. Or maybe read Tibor Fischer

Yellow Dog was published on the 4th of September 2003, you can pick one up on Amazon for £11.89.

Thanks for reading.