Books, Arts & Manners: The Content of His Characters

The Information, by Martin Amis (Harmony, 374 pp., $24)

WRITERS of fiction in the twentieth century can be divided into the champions of big texture and the champions of big content, and there can be no question that the texturalists have had the better of the conflict. The reassuringly Aristotelian beginning, middle, and end, which used to be thought a minimum requirement for a novel, have given way among the adepts of literary culture to what Ezra Pound called (and called for): “Beginning, Whoop! and then any sort of tail-off.” Since Joyce at least, it has become a mark of the cognoscenti to admire prose fiction for its prose, rather than its fiction.

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James Bowman

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The Information, by Martin Amis (Harmony, 374 pp., $24)

WRITERS of fiction in the twentieth century can be divided into the champions of big texture and the champions of big content, and there can be no question that the texturalists have had the better of the conflict. The reassuringly Aristotelian beginning, middle, and end, which used to be thought a minimum requirement for a novel, have given way among the adepts of literary culture to what Ezra Pound called (and called for): “Beginning, Whoop! and then any sort of tail-off.” Since Joyce at least, it has become a mark of the cognoscenti to admire prose fiction for its prose, rather than its fiction.