Martin Amis's Other People and London Fields
As Brian Finney points out in Narrative and Narrated Homicide in Martin Amis's Other People and London Fields although he is not classified as a crime writer Martin Amis’s stories are filled with crime and focus upon death and murder. . Finney’s critique of Amis’s stories revolves around the continuing themes of women, death, murder and victimization along with their relationship with the enigmatic narrator.
In his analysis Finney looks into the author and the zeitgeist of his era as well. He notes that Amis himself describes his work as “"playful literature" (Neustatter 71) and describes himself as "a comic writer interested in painful matters" (Smith 79).” . One of Amis’s observations he focuses on is that the notion of meting out punishment to bad characters and rewards to good ones no longer is valid in today’s literary world. Amis invites the reader to participate in his sadistic treatment of his characters which Finney sees as a reflection of the vicious age he is living in. Amis was raised during the “Cold War” in an era when protestors were bringing to light the dangers of nuclear and ecological discussion. As a result he does not deliberately create a frightful world, it is just that fear is an omnipresent element of his world.
Finney sees Amis as someone who cannot reconcile moral order and life’s random nature, so he releases it out onto his characters who are vaguely aware that they are playing roles in their lives. By expressing his personal unease in this manner he also implicates his readers as well, knowing they are enjoying the action of murder as a sport. In this he also allows his readers to discard the customary tradition of suspending reality, as a Metafictional postmodernists he creates instead a situation in which one where the readers themselves function as co-creators.
In his paper, Finney looks deeply at the role of the narrator, going through the various devices Amis uses him to develop the stories. The erstwhile central character in many of the stories is a woman, but the strong role of the narrator is an integral element that is more than a simple observer and chronicler of events. In some of the stories he is also a participant. He is expected to die at the end of A Suicide Note (1984) Finney suggests that his survival is because he is the narrator. In other stories we discover that the narrator is actually a character, although that is not clearly established until the end.
In individual analysis of each story Finney looks strongly at the role of the narrator. The opening sentence on Other People starts with a confessional quote from him to show his role in the story that is about to unfold. In the opening Prologue the narrator explains the he did not want to have to do it to her and would have liked to find a different solution but claimed that he could not because of the rules and because she asked for it. In this manner the narrator takes responsibility while spreading the guilt. The subtitle of Other People is A Mystery Story and Finney sees the first mystery as the identity of the narrator. The narrator owns an almost constant dominant presence in this story with almost every chapter ending up with a visually differentiated section by the narrator. This forces the readers to reflect back on both the topic and to recognize their own part in it, they are forced to view it in the light of the similarity between the action in the book and their personal experience. In Other People the narrator not only speaks directly to the readers, questioning them he goes on to offer advice. Instead of distracting the reader with metafictional interruptions Finney sees these as integral and necessary ingredients of these narrations that he then likens to those of Cervantes and Fielding. In Amis’s stories the narrator has an ambiguous role, sometimes removed, sometimes implicated as the perpetrator his role is rarely divulged until the end, and not always then.
Finney does not spend a majority of his time looking at the women who are the erstwhile main characters in Amis’s writings. It is as though they are both the main focus of the action and at the same time ancillary to the story. He sees Mary Lamb as inviting her own victimization and her life as one where she descends from privilege as she self-destructs, with her lover’s assistance to where she no longer remembers who she is from there she rebuilds. Finney uses this quote from the story to illustrate this: “She is afraid that her life has in some crucial sense already run its course, that the life she moves through now is nothing more than another life's reflection, its mirror, its shadow” . Mary’s start in life was as the evil Amy Hyde who destroyed those around her as she moved downwards from her wealthy, privileged existence to one of life among tramps and ultimately death at the hands of her prince charming who is also a demon lover and the story’s narrator.
London Fields which takes place in 1999 is sometimes presumed to be a “prequel” to Other People that is set in the late 1970s. There are also different characters with different names, never the less, there is a common emotional thread that ties them together. However, Amis himself “has called London Fields “a kind of prequel" to Other People. Other People Deals with the girl's death and London Fields sort of leads up to that. (Internal quotes removed). . His characters are still self-destructing as they also bring down others and plot murder. Although these two stories differ in plot and characters and take place in two totally different times they both have the death of female murderees, women who ask to be killed. The narrators also share the common element of being the men who comply with their wishes. Finney feels that the common element of the “responsibility of the narrator for the eventual elimination of the female protagonist” the element that links and connects both books.
In this book Amis does not imagine a future where the fear and uncertain he feels in his present existence has resolved and there is a bright sunny existence that awaits the planet. Far to the contrary the planet is facing destruction in what is referred to as the “Crises” and civilization is in full decline rushing towards collapse. The feeling of decline is felt throughout the book. The protagonist, “Nicola Six (pronounced "seeks," but also misheard as "sex "),” is the (anti)heroine. In light of the situation she decided to end her life rather than enter middle age. She knows that love is dead for her. Soon everyone else would be dead as well, as to God well, "The death of God was possibly survivable in the end.” . In this frame of mind Nicola plots a murder, her own. Nikita is like a female Ond Nick a fem fatale who draws men in and takes them down. Finney describes her as “A personalized black hole, she draws men in to her destructive magnetic field just as the black hole of physics threatens to swallow up our planet, our solar system, into its negative energy.” . She did not just cancel men’s love, she murdered it, and she was looking for a man to murder her in return. Her choices are between Keith Talent a plain ordinary working man, the kind of jerk the British call a yob and Guy clinch a nice, rich, hopeless romantic. Finney quotes from the book when describes him as "fall guy: fool, foal, foil" . Keith is modern and true to Amis’s perceptions he is not the more pleasant of the two having a "reptile modernity;" Guy on the other hand is more ready to please and malleable but would be held back from the final act by his "archaic heart." In that sense the tale is not so much a “whodoneit” but rather a “whydoit.” The end is inevitable, and in the end it is the narrator who does it.
Martin Amis is not a crime writer in the classic sense although his stories focus on death, murder and are filled with crime. In his critique of Amis’s work Finney observes how these are just elements to bring about a deeper theme of the psychology of the themes of women, death, murder and victimization along their social contest. He develops this and brings it forward by employing the device of his sometimes mysterious, always enigmatic narrator.
As an analyst Finney delves into the author’s motivations as well as those of his written characters. He finds that Amis is in many was a product of his times. Although Amis conceives of himself as a darkly comedic and ironically playful writer he seems to focus more on the dark side than the comedic. As a result he expresses the notion the crime and punishment are no longer actions that are tied together with punishment being the ultimate reward of crime. In his stories it is often the victim who absorbs the repercussions of the crime. Perhaps this is appropriate since no one seems to be purely innocent in an Amis tale. That applies not only to the characters, because of how the narrator is used he too is implicated. Without being able to mediate between moral order and life’s random nature his characters are vaguely aware that they are playing roles instead of living their lives.As Amis metes out punishment villains and victims even the readers cannot sit by and complacently watch. Their enjoyment of the tale has made them the cause of the writer’s sadistic treatment of his characters and use of them to act out murder as a sport. The readers are the reason for the writing them and the money they are are willing to pay for their pleasure. Their share of responsibility in the co-creation part in can only be passed on upwards as reflective of the vicious age that spawned it all.
Works Cited
"Narrative and Narrated Homicide in Martin Amis's Other People and London Fields." Critique 1995: 3 - 15. <http://www.martinamisweb.com/scholarship_files/finney_op_lf_1995.pdf>.
