Martin Amis and the idolatry of style over substance

To be a bookish young man in the late twentieth century was to be a Martin Amis fan. I was sixteen when I read The Rachel Papers, and it thrilled me as much as any novel ever has. In some ways more. For here, in its narrator Charles Highway, was a whole way of life. One could be into books, in an ambitious, obsessive way, and also be a cool dude, who smoked fags, chased girls, dispensed witty put-downs, sneered at squares. Here was a comprehensive ideal, mixing high and low, art and fun, the mind and the body, tradition and now. The novel is largely set in West London, and I remember the thrill of a scene set in Notting Hill Gate’s W.H. Smith’s. I knew it well! I belonged to Literature!

One of the lines I remember from that novel is when Charles gives a coin to a beggar who says ‘Gob less’; Charles replies ‘I’ll try’.