'Dollar bills, pound notes, they're suicide notes. Money is a suicide note.' So says John Self, the hero of Money: A Suicide Note, and what he means is that money is destroying him. Self-destruction (along with several of its hyphenated pals: indulgence, interest, loathing) has become Self's hobby, what he does in his spare time, and what he spends his money on. But it's money's fault that this is what he spends his money on. It's money's fault that he hasn't got anything better to do with his spare time. 'The yobs are winning,' said a character in Martin Amis's Success, and one could almost take this as the 'burden' of his work so far. In earlier books, there have been yobs aplenty, and from the beginning Amis has scrutinised the species with some ardour. With John Self, though, he shifts the enemy to centre-stage, so that this time he can give him a real going-over.

LRB 20 September 1984 | PDF Download