This tattered copy of Martin Amis's The War Against Cliche has been on my shelf for several years. 'Happy 18th Birthday…' reads the biro scrawled inscription on the title page. It is a book that has enlivened many a solitary hour on buses and trains. There are sentences in each of the essays that lingered and lodged themselves in my mind. Amis's description of the moment in Pride and Prejudice at which all female readers fall in love with Mr Darcy ('You have a house in town, I conclude?' Mr Darcy bowed.) is one such. The best essays are on Larkin:
Larkin the man is separated from us, historically, by changes in the self. For his generation, you were what you were, and that was that. It made you unswervable and adamantine. My father has this quality. I don't. None of us does. There are too many forces at work on us. There are too many fronts to cover. In the age of self -improvement, the self is inexorably self-conscious.
and Bellow:
It was very American to insist on having a Great American Novel, thus rounding out all the other benefits Americans enjoy…Trying to find the Great American Novel, rolling up your sleeves and trying to write it: this was American. The Great American Novel was a chimera; this mythical beast was a pig with wings. Miraculously, however, and uncovenantedly, Saul Bellow brought the animal home.
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