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September 10, 2006

UK: British Novelist Dissects Islamism On Eve of 9/11

The British author Martin Amis is lauded by those who can read his books. I had a friend once who felt Amis' novel "London Fields" was the most prescient piece of social realism ever to have been crammed between laminated covers. Part of my personal phobia about reading Martin Amis stems from his appropriation of an idea tossed out casually by the literary steam engine of Kurt Vonnegut, a personal hero, to become the basis of his novel "Time's Arrow". And I hated London Fields, the place. At night it has a strange creepiness, like a void in the heart of Hackney, where only muggings gave it life, that made me avoid it.

Another factor that makes me wary of becoming too engrossed in Amis' work is that the same friend who enthused on "London Fields" to the point of tedium caused me to steer away from him, unable to fathom his obsessiveness. And within a few months, this devotee of Martin Amis' work, who lived atop a towering condominium in Edmonton, north London, slashed his wrists. With bloody hands he threw his television through a closed window, where it fell 12 floors to the ground below. My former friend then followed his TV on its descent to annihilation.

So my caution concerning Martin Amis' writings is a caution based on a primitive fear. A fear that, should I become too engrossed with his thought-patterns, with his observations of the world around, then I too may find myself desiring to annihilate myself. I know the fear is irrational, and it ignores the other painful aspects of my friend's life - the ex-wife who would not let him see his son, the loss of his job and other factors. But my phobia remains.

So this morning it was with a sense of trepidation that I began to read Martin Amis' massive essay on "Islamism in our time", published in the Observer and entitled: "The Age of Horrorism". The essay, broken into three parts, is long, rambling, digressive, occasionally over-written and conspicuous for his choice of "bons mots" and obscure use of archaic words no longer in common parlance.

But I read all three parts, and though rambling and digressive, it contains little gems of insight that redeem it. Amis describes in some psychological depth the character of Sayyid Qutb, the sexually repressed Egyptian civil servant who became the philosopher of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Amis notes how he had tried to write a novella concerning an extremist who was based upon Qutb.

Amis' writing is still couched in a style I cannot relate to. I remember once being advised that minimalism is sometimes better than grandeur. As Samuel Johnson once said: "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter". If Amis' article only occupied one third of its threefold dimensions, it would be turgid and dry, and probably would not contain his little gems, which make it worth reading.

His comments on Ayatollah Khomeini, his comparisons between Islam's views on the West and how the West existed without ever considering Islam, his discussion of the appallingly low economic output of Muslim countries, are all worth reading in their own right.

So if you have the time, I advise you to make a strong cup of tea, brace yourself hard, and embark on the three sections of Amis' essay. You may need a dictionary at hand, for the archaic words that appear without warning. I cannot say Amis has the first clue about forming a cogent or structured argument, and admit that he seems to get lost in his own observations, which digress into other observations. But such is the method of the "grand auteur". And rest assured, by its end, you will not be opting for self-annihilation, the fate of one of his imagined characters in his once-imagined novella.

Read part one of Martin Amis' The age of horrorism. The Observer then provides links to part two, and if you have endured, ultimately links will direct you to part three, the conclusion.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 10, 2006 5:05 AM

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