Martin Amis's memoir, Experience, was recently published in paperback. The banned ads have returned to the Underground, now that the offending image of the boy Amis 'smoking' in short trousers - never mind that the cigarette was unlit - has been overlaid by a minimalist design of red and white text stamped on a wash of black, intimating No Logo chic. In the introductory chapter, in one of those famous footnotes, Amis remarks that 'actually there's a good reason, a structural reason, why novelists should excite corrosiveness in the press': namely, 'when you write about a novelist, an exponent of prose narrative, then you write a prose narrative. And was that the extent of your hopes for your prose - bookchat, interviews, gossip? Valued reader, it is not for me to say this is envy. It is for you to say that this is envy.' Gautier expressed the sentiment more gracefully, and not just because he did so in French: 'Avis aux critiques. C'est un grand avantage de n'avoir rien fait, mais il ne faut pas en abuser.' The only, feeble reply to which is: 'What would you know, achiever?'

LRB 19 April 2001 | PDF Download