The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America by Martin Amis

Author:Martin Amis [Amis, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Collections, American, General, Essays, Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780140127195
Google: KlalRCe5UxsC
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1987-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

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Postscript In agreeing to the interview Mr Vidal had armed himself with the stipulation that he would be able to see and check the piece before it was published. There was nothing sinister in this: naturally he wouldn’t attempt to trim my opinions. Nevertheless I had the ticklish task of calling on Vidal at the Connaught in London and sitting there in his room while he inspected the galleys. In the first paragraph he changed ‘homosexual’ to ‘pansexual’. A little later he said, in his grandest voice, ‘Now if you print that I shall most certainly sue,’ and deleted a chance scurrility with a stroke of his pen. (‘As one gets older’, Vidal has remarked, ‘litigation replaces sex.’) Thereafter he merely did a bit of gardening, corrected some misquotations (‘No, that’s not my style at all’), and inserted a new joke or two (‘If you take that out, I’ll give you this’). We haggled over a number of points; there were no real cruces. Occasionally, as he read on, he gave a reluctant laugh. ‘Mm,’ he concluded. ‘A bit thin on the work.’

This was perfectly true. I had read Myra and Myron (with difficulty), some of Williwaw, half of The City and the Pillar and most of Julian; I had also spent three weeks reading three chapters of Burr. I cannot get through Vidal’s fiction. The books are too long. Life is too short. In the interests of balance I append a piece about Vidal’s essays, where I am a little older and a little more forthright.

May I also take the opportunity here to pit Vidal’s account of his fight with Mailer against Mailer’s account of his fight with Vidal? Needless to say, at no point do they tally. When I asked Mailer for his version, he nodded, squared his shoulders, and spoke with solemn deliberation.

‘Vidal had written things about me. I had resolved that the next time I saw him, I was going to hit him. You understand? The next time I saw him was at Lally’s. I walked up and banged him over the head with a glass—a heavy cocktail glass. He looked very scared. I asked him to come outside. Then his little friend started in on me.

“All right,” I said. “Come on. I’ll take out the two of yous.” They stayed where they were. I walked away.”

Perhaps, towards the end, I am guilty of importing the accents of De Niro’s Jake la Motta; but that was it, in substance. One day I must triangulate the story with the version of an impartial onlooker, if any such exist. Whom to believe, though? In my experience of fights and fighting, it is invariably the aggressor who keeps getting everything wrong.

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