Charles Highway is a 19 year old student who has two obsessions with entry. One is to pass his Oxford entrance exams and the other is Almost Entranced
Charles Highway is a 19 year old student who has two obsessions with entry. One is to pass his Oxford entrance exams and the other is to sleep with Rachel Noyes before he [Charles] turns 20 in three weeks.
This isn't a quest to lose his virginity (that has already happened with Gloria or someone before her) or to have sex with an Older Woman (Rachel is only a month older than Charles).
It's more about an over-sexed, literary white English male arbitrarily setting out to enter the sexual realm that a new female acquaintance has theoretically made available to him (even if she already has an American boyfriend called DeForest Hoeniger).
Charles doesn't perceive anything special in Rachel. She will just be another ‼õ³Ü±ô±ôâ€�, his “last teenage fuck", another success or notch in his bedpost. The description of his first sight of her is unenthusiastic, uninspiring and lacking in romance:
“She was fairly formidable, a bit out of my league really. She didn't belong to the aggressively sexy genre...However: tallish, nearly my height, shoulder-length black hair conventionally shaped around strong features, she made much of her eyes, her nose made much of itself, black boots and black cowgirl skirt met at the knee, manly white blouse, expensive handbag, few bracelets, one insignificant ring, rather stern no-crap stance, intelligent lower-middle class with a good job, something bossy like public relations, living alone, older than me, possibly half Jewish.� (She turns out not to be Jewish.)
[image]
Ione Skye and Dexter Fletcher in the 1989 film of the novel (which I haven't seen)
The Techniques of Conquest
Charles scores high marks for observation and description, though in reality it resembles perving or preparation for a kidnap (a la John Fowles' “The Collector").
Charles uses the same approach for both entrance exams. He has a folder into which he inserts notes, quotes, diary entries, diagrams, lists, plans, poems, speeches, letters, prose, portraits and sketches. One folder is more academic, the other more literary (and pretentious). The latter is labelled “Conquests and Techniques: a Synthesis". His seductions, therefore, seem to be a self-conscious exercise in sexual praxis. By the time Charles has finished, he can more or less submit an extract from “Conquests and Techniques" in satisfaction of his course requirements. Hence, “The Rachel Papers".
All This Wanky, Intellectual Shit
Charles rarely accomplishes anything beyond his “adolescent egotism". The more you learn about him, the less appealing he becomes. His friend, Geoffrey, counsels him:
“No, man, don't get too wanky with her. And cut out all this intellectual shit. Chicks don't want to be over-awed.�
Still, he persists, and we get the novel in its current form (“a sorry jumble of cold facts and free-associative prose"). It under-awes. It's mildly amusing, so it's not quite awful. You have to wonder whether it’s a self-help manual for a chronic masturbator or an egregious exaggerator (Charles keeps a meticulous multiple orgasm count, whether or not they're achieved single-handedly).
SOUNDTRACK: (view spoiler)[ The Beatles � “Within You Without You"
"We were talking, about the space between us all And the people, who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion."
It's 5 pm on a Saturday in New York. The Reader walks into a bar where he works as a barman. In his bag is a copy of the Thank You, Dear Gentle Reader
It's 5 pm on a Saturday in New York. The Reader walks into a bar where he works as a barman. In his bag is a copy of the novel "Money", which he has been reading on the subway on the journey to and from work. He hasn't checked the pages, but he's almost finished. Soon after setting up, he is joined by his first customer, a dishevelled, but interesting looking, character he doesn't think he's seen before. The customer is holding a folded piece of paper in his left hand. He slips on the newly disinfected floor and almost knocks a seat over while trying to take a position in front of the Reader at the bar. He gets up off the wet floor, rubbing his left elbow. It's giving him some pain. His eyes are bloodshot, but he doesn't look obviously drunk. He orders a beer and finally sits down. He is still holding the piece of paper. The Reader recognises his English accent and initiates a conversation.
Reader: Are you OK?
John Self: I’m not sure.
Reader: Can I do something to help?
John Self: I don’t know.
Reader: Do you need anything at all?
John Self: Yes.
Reader: What?
John Self: Some more money.
Reader: Haha. We could all do with some more money.
John Self: I know, but it’s not for me.
Reader: Who’s it for then?
John Self: My author.
Reader: What do you mean, your author?
John Self: Martin Amis.
Reader: I know him. He's famous.
John Self: Yes.
Reader: Doesn't he have enough money? Isn’t he already rich?
John Self: No.
Reader: Wow, weird…so he depends on you for money then?
John Self: Yes. He depends on me for money, and I depend on him...for dear life, actually.
Reader: So what happens if you don’t make him enough money?
John Self: I’ll probably die.
Reader: But you’re alive. I can see you. We’re talking to each other. Here in this thread. In this bar. You're drinking a beer.
John Self: Yes, but it could all come to an end.
Reader: Why?
John Self: He could hand me a suicide note.
Reader: Is that the note you’ve got there?
John Self: I’m not game enough to look.
Reader: Where did you get it from?
John Self: Martin gave it to me.
Reader: Do you think he wanted you to read it?
John Self: Yes.
Reader: Well, why don’t you read it then?
John Self: It’s not the end of the novel yet.
Reader: How far away is it?
John Self: I think it must be very close. If I read the note, it will be the end of the novel.
Reader: What’s wrong with that?
John Self: It’ll be the end of me as well.
Reader: Oh, right. Is there any way we could make it last longer?
John Self: Yes.
Reader: How?
John Self: You could give Martin some money.
Reader: I don’t have any more money.
John Self: I can’t be much of a character then.
Reader: Hey, you’re a real character. As real as they get.
John Self: Thanks. You’re very kind. A real gentleman.
For a male reader, “London Fields" is, like "Lolita", a Nabokovian exercise in guilty pleasure.
Which, of course, begs the Male and Female Readings
For a male reader, “London Fields" is, like "Lolita", a Nabokovian exercise in guilty pleasure.
Which, of course, begs the question of what it represents for a female reader, assuming there is a difference in the response of male and female readers (i.e., assuming that men and women read fiction [or at least this fiction] differently).
We (male readers?) can get something of an answer from the experience of “London Fields� at the 1989 Booker Awards:
“Maggie Gee and Helen McNeil, the two female judges, were fiercely anti-Amis, accusing him of misogyny. The male judges � David Profumo, the American Edmund White and indeed [David] Lodge himself [the chairman of judges] � were keen on Amis� London Fields.�
Martin Goff, the administrator of the Award, recalls:
“To my surprise, despite having a three-two majority in favour, David Lodge submitted and London Fields was excluded.�
Thus, Amis� novel was excluded from the Booker shortlist and denied the chance to eventually win the prize, as a result of feminist intervention.
The Fictional Agency of a Female Character
Whatever was said in the discussions between the judges, it's difficult to comment on the arguments of Gee and McNeil, if only because they were private and aren't readily available. One of their complaints is that the character Nicola Six* was “a sexist figure of male fantasy.�
According to the literature professor Susan Brook, feminist linguist Sara Mills subsequently argued that the novel is not only structured around Nicola's passivity but also naturalises her lack of agency:
“It is not simply the case that the female character is acted upon...but the fact that she wishes to be acted upon and paradoxically strives to bring that about.�
However, this doesn't take into account Nicola's fictional agency and her total dominance of men in the novel. You could almost argue that this is Nicola's story/novel. Besides, the narrator explains that “some people get others to perform their greatest cruelties. They get others to do it for them.�
It's tempting to apply this principle not just to Nicola, but to authors, who, in a way, act vicariously through their characters.
Outsmarted by His Own Characters
The narrator (the blocked American writer, Samson Young) claims that this is a true story, a murder story and a love story. He knows the murderer, the murderer and “the foil, the fool, the poor foal�. As it turns out, he knows all the players, only he doesn't know which one is which.
Sam decides to overcome his writer's block by documenting (“just writing down") the murder that is about to happen around him. He is “taking down the minutes of real life". He purports to be writing the novel we are reading, while he himself is terminally ill. So, realising the murder and finishing the novel become a race against time. The novel must be completed before the death of the author.
But the protagonists have a mind of their own, they're rebellious, and defeat his (and our) preconceptions and expectations. The (post-modern) author is outsmarted by his own characters. The protagonists are creative in their own right: “You can't stop people, once they start creating.â€� This aspect of the novel resembles Christine Brooke-Rose's metafictional “T±ð³æ³Ù±ð°ù³¾¾±²Ô²¹³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô", whose characters want to survive the completion of the novel by its readers (which would otherwise freeze them in time).
The novel has been described as a satirical murder mystery, which is probably true. Sam says it's not a whodunit, it’s more a “w³ó²â»å´Ç¾±³Ùâ€�. He believes it has the makings of a “really snappy little thriller". The verbal exuberance justifies the label “s²Ô²¹±è±è²â", though at 470 pages it is hardly “l¾±³Ù³Ù±ô±ð". It flags for many of the last 100 pages, when it should pick up pace.
“Thou Hast All the All of Me" [Sonnet XXXI]
The murderee is supposed to be Nicola Six, a tall, dark, 34 year old Afghan princess, with the “Persian flesh", physique and temperament of a porn actress doing a major in literature. Though she's not a Kiwi, her surname is mistaken variously for “s±ð³æ" or “s±ð±ð°ì²õ":
“Potently, magically, uncontrollably attractive, Nicola was not yet beautiful. But already she was an ill wind, blowing no good.�
She manages to convince at least two of the male characters (whom she meets at the Black Cross Hotel in Portabello Road, Notting Hill) that she is a virgin, and they set about trying to deflower her.
She has previously left in her wake various “nervous collapses, shattered careers, suicide bids, blighted marriages (and rottener divorces) � no one would ever love her enough, and those that did were not worth being loved enough by.�
[image]
The Black Cross Hotel (as it's called in the novel [formerly the Golden Cross, and Shannon's Market Bar])
Ransacked by Men's Thoughts
Needless to say, Nicola is “the sexist figure of male fantasy�. Amis himself recognises (without judgement or approval) that “Every square inch of her had been ransacked by men's thoughts." However, to dismiss the novel on the ground of sexism, is to deny yourself the self-aware fun that Amis has with the setup. Amis is as aware as his critics that some readers will be offended by his novel. Ever the post-mdernist, he adverts to it in the novel itself.
The Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Nicola's diary (and therefore the novel, which is partly based on it) is “just the chronicle of a death foretold". The novel moves inexorably (like Cupid's dart or the arrows of desire) towards her murder on her 35th birthday.
It does meander a little on the way though. Even Nicola says, “Nothing's more boring, in any kind of narrative, than someone vacillating over something you know they're going to do.�
Sam comments that, in this time of millennial crisis (the novel, published in 1989, is set in a future 1999, when nuclear explosions have tilted Earth off its axis), “something has gone wrong with desire...Love made the world go round. And the world was slowing up. The world wasn't going round.�
Class Dissonance
Nicola's love interests come from totally different social class backgrounds, which reflect the gentrification that had started to occur around Notting Hill in the 1980's.
To darts-player and small time cheat, Keith Talent (the murderer), (who is “low company...a common criminal...a common working lad...just scum...a complete dunce...[an exponent of] gross lechery"), Nicola is a “posh bird", a “class skirt", a bit of “posh skirt", a reverse/female Henry Higgins (from "My Fair Lady") who will help him to earn a passport to television celebrity from his humble base at the Black Cross Hotel.
To wealthy, upper middle class Guy Clinch (the foil), she is “beauty, extreme yet ambiguously available.�
She supposedly wants one of her lovers to kill her (“You can do what you like to me. You can kill me if you like�) as if it would be the ultimate act of romantic love. Her lovers are so passionate about her that they would be prepared to kill her, given sufficient reason. So the post-modern murder mystery is grounded in a Gothic romance.
Deft Dabs of Facile Fancy
Sam himself worries that Nicola might be “a male fantasy figure", to which she responds, “I am a male fantasy figure...You should see me in bed. I do all the gimmicks men read up on in the magazines and the hot books...I'm not a Femme Fatale. Listen, mister: Femmes Fatale are ten a penny compared to what I am...I'm a Murderee.�
Sam's nemesis/Nabokovian double, Mark Asprey (= MA = Martin Amis), a successful English writer, with whom he has swapped his apartment in New York for one in Notting Hill, has the lead male of his own novel, Marius Appleby (another MA), describe the lead female Cornelia Contantine's “magnificent breasts" (elsewhere, they're “magnificent, splendid, awesome, majestic � and all the other words that mean ‘big'") which Asprey “created with two deft dabs of my facile fancy.�
Sam describes Mark Asprey's novel as “a thesaurus of miserable cliches. It's an awful little piece of shit. The thing is, I really want to know how Marius makes out with Cornelia.�
The Bitch in the Book
Of course, the (female) characters don't object to their portrayal. They're the stars:
“They all want to be in it. They all want to be the bitch in the book.�
Who knows what or who to believe when it comes to authorial sexism: “Boy, am I a reliable narrator,� boasts Sam, apparently ironically.
As an example, Sam ventures, “Christ, it’s only just occurred to me: people are going to imagine that I actually sat down and made all this stuff up.�
By the the end of the novel, Asprey counters:
“It doesn't matter what anyone writes anymore. The time for truth has passed. The truth doesn't matter anymore and is not wanted.�
Amis' novel is not just an amusing exercise in post-modernism, it anticipates the post-truth culture that emerged out of it and infected political discourse. Perhaps, Amis was suggesting that the infection had already begun, hence the references to the crisis that backgrounds the murder mystery. (Despite the fact that Earth has been knocked off its axis by nuclear explosions, the media is preoccupied with the illness of the American First Lady. You can imagine how this would play out if Melania had COVID-19.)
FOOTNOTES:
* Initially, the name Nicola Six made me think of Rachael, a Nexus-7 android, (or Zhora Salome, a Nexus-6 android) from the film or a post-punk musician.
TAINTED LOVE (VERSE):
Virus and Pain (Apologies to James Taylor)
I've caught the virus And I've felt the pain, Known plus and minus, Even missed your plane. I should have hailed a cab, Made it worth your while To stay on my tab, Guess I'm not your style.
Enola Graye to Little Boy
To you my dear, gratitude For awakening emotions that Until now have danced a dormant dance. In this time of crisis, it's a platitude, Nothing truly good eventuates. Remember me if you get the chance.
SOUNDTRACK: (view spoiler)[ James Taylor - "Fire and Rain"
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