Just in time for Thanksgiving!
A woman in the current issue, for instance, specifies that she is looking for a man “who doesn’t name his genitals after German chancellors” (not even, the ad says, “Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingf??rst, however admirable the independence he gave to secretaries of state may have been.”)
Jay-Z has already performed in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon and Angola, nations not normally patronised by Western artists (in fact no other of today’s ‘artists with a conscience’ ??? no Madonna, no Coldplay, no U2 ??? has ever toured Africa).
The stories were unapologetically lurid, punchy, and featured all manner of colorful violence. They were often absurd, but they certainly grabbed your attention.
Amis’s key preoccupation as a writer – the key theme of much 1950s fiction, if it comes to that – is male selfishness, the absolute necessity for all those bright, ambitious grammar school boys purposefully at large in the post-war meritocracy to have their cake and eat it, to sleep with the girls for as long as they wanted, while stoutly resisting any representations from the girls as to where this sleeping together might ultimately lead.
Having read this post, I feel better about having stayed up half the night earlier this week, when I was finishing Snow.
A poem to be inscribed in dark places and never to be spoken aloud.