Featured Reading Guide
Martin Amis
2 classic books for the price of 1: Vintage Lust is a limited edition gift pack which consists of beautifully designed separate volumes of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding and Martin Amis’s critically acclaimed The Rachel Papers . Vintage Lust is just one of ten Vintage Classic Twins to collect. Each twin consists of two books: a specially designed limited edition of one modern classic title and one established classic work. The books in each pair have been carefully selected to provide a thought-provoking combination. Tom Jones : One of the cleverest and funniest novels ever written, Tom…
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Martin Amis is the author of nine novels, two collections of stories and five collections of non-fiction. His memoir, Experience, was published by Vintage in 2001.
topAbout the Book
2 classic books for the price of 1: Vintage Lust is a limited edition gift pack which consists of beautifully designed separate volumes of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding and Martin Amis’s critically acclaimed The Rachel Papers . Vintage Lust is just one of ten Vintage Classic Twins to collect. Each twin consists of two books: a specially designed limited edition of one modern classic title and one established classic work. The books in each pair have been carefully selected to provide a thought-provoking combination. Tom Jones : One of the cleverest and funniest novels ever written, Tom Jones is Henry Fielding s greatest achievement. Tom Jones, born a foundling, grown into a gallant and irresistible hero, romps through the English countryside getting himself into all kinds of trouble through his good nature and eye for the ladies. Betrayed by jealous relatives, Tom is exiled from home and must undergo a variety of trials and adventures in his quest to be reunited with his one true love. The Rachel Papers: Charles Highway, a precociously intelligent and highly sexed teenager, is determined to sleep with an older woman before he turns twenty. Rachel fits the bill perfectly and Charles plans his seduction meticulously, sets the scene with infinite care – but it doesn’t come off quite as Charles expects…
topMartin Amis interview/review
Tom Jones was heavily promoted by the parliamentary grandee George Lyttelton (to whom the book was dedicated) and was an immediate hit with the general public, recommendations quickly spreading through London’s coffee houses. The initial print run sold out ahead of publication, 10,000 copies were published in the first year, and French, German and Dutch translations soon appeared. Fielding did not achieve universal critical acclaim, however, with writers including Dr Johnson and Smollett objecting to the novel on moral and aesthetic grounds.
‘I was told that it was a rambling collection of Waking Dreams, in which Probability was not observed: And that it had a very bad Tendency. And I had reason to think that the Author intended… in writing it, to whiten a vicious Character and to make morality bend to his Practices’ Samuel Richardson
‘This motely History of Bastardism, Fornication and Adultery’ Old England
‘I think Tom Jones is one of the most perfect plots ever planned’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Many critics, inevitably, took Martin Amis’s literary heritage as their starting point and focused on comparisons with his father (‘Not the son of Lucky Jim,’ proclaimed the New York Times ). Opinions differed over the narrative voice, some critics identifying Charles Highway with his creator, others detecting an ironic detachment in Amis’s tone. The Rachel Papers won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974.
‘Amis’s vision of adolescence is an unvarnished, terrifying and hilarious one’ New Yorker
‘A new novelist of intelligence, wit, and an apparently reckless honesty… a formidable and exceptional talent’ Auberon Waugh
‘Now, it takes a certain comic talent to make Charles the delectably unappetizing creature he is, and Martin Amis has it. What’s lacking is the ability to animate the other characters so that they become more than mere projections of Charles’ New York Times
‘Scurrilous, shameless and very funny’ Times Literary Supplement
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Henry Fielding
I hope my Reader will be convinced, at his very Entrance on this Work, that he will find in the whole Course of it nothing prejudicial to the Cause of Religion and Virtue; nothing inconsistent with the strictest rules of Decency, nor which can offend even the chastest Eye in the Perusal. On the contrary, I declare, that to recommend Goodness and Innocence hath been my sincerest Endeavour in this History. This honest purpose you have pleased to think I have attained: And to say the Truth, it is likeliest to be attained in Books of this Kind; for an Example is a Kind of Picture, in which Virtue becomes as it were an Object of Sight, and strikes us with an idea of that Loveliness, which Plato asserts there is in her naked Charms. Besides displaying that Beauty of Virtue which may attract the admiration of Mankind, I have attempted to engage a stronger Motive to Human Action in her Favour, by convincing Men, that their true Interest directs them to a Pursuit of her. For this purpose I have shewn, that no Acquisitions of Guilt can compensate the loss of that solid inward Comfort of Mind, which is the sure Companion of Innocence and Virtue; nor can in the least balance the Evil of that Horror and anxiety which, in their Room, Guilt introduces into our Bosoms. And again, as these Acquisitions are in themselves generally worthless, so are the Means to attain them not only base and infamous, but at best incertain, and always full of Danger. Lastly, I have endeavoured strongly to inculcate, that Virtue and Innocence can scarce ever be injured by Indiscretion; and that it is this alone which often betrays them into the Snares that Deceit and Villainy spread for them. A moral which I have the more industriously laboured, as the teaching it is, of all others, the likeliest to be attended with Success; since, I believe, it is much easier to make good Men wise, than to make bad Men good.
Taken from Fielding’s dedication of the book to the Honourable George Lyttelton
Martin Amis
This very brittle, sardonic tone that is Charles Highway’s voice…is that your own voice?
You haven’t got much else except your own consciousness, and I’ve always felt my own books are very good and dutiful examples of this…when you’re twenty-one, unless you’re very exceptionally empathetic, you’re really trapped inside your own consciousness, and what you do, and tend to go on doing, is you take a little bit of yourself and you push it very much to the forefront, and all the other facets of your character are suppressed, partly for ironic effect, and it has a stylising effect too. No, the only claim that The Rachel Papers has to originality is that it’s not ‘the portrait of the artist as a young man’, it’s more the ‘portrait of the literary critic as a young man’. I made him much colder than I am, and also he’s an anti-creative figure, he’s a pedant, a nineteen-year-old pedant… And what you hope is that everyone has a bit of that in them, and then the novel can claim to some kind of universality.
There is that intriguing statement in The Rachel Papers about the existence of the body giving rise to the existence of irony.
Yes, it is a clunking reminder of our physical existence. Another way of putting it is that we write about a parallel track though time. We write about change, planetary change, changes in consciousness, but also about our own ageing, which has a unique unprecedented affinity with the ageing of the planet because a seventeenth-century novelist or an eighteenth-century novelist would have no more sense of the planet getting older, than would the dog at his or her feet… It wasn’t in the consciousness. But now we do very much have a sense of finite time, vis-à-vis the planet.
Taken from Jonathan Noakes’ interview with Martin Amis, 10 July 2002, in Martin Amis: The Essential Guide pp. 13–18
topStarting Points for Discussion
- ‘My name is Charles Highway, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me. It’s such a rangy, well-travelled, big-cocked name and, to look at, I am none of these things’ ( The Rachel Papers , p. 7). Using this quote as a starting point, discuss the significance of the choice of characters’ names in the two novels (DeForest Hoeniger, Dr Knowd, Thwackum, Square, Allworthy and Mrs Honour are other interesting ones to look at). Do they suggest that Fielding and Amis were drawing stereotypes or being ironic – or both?
- Both novels show their young male protagonists struggling to define themselves in relation to their father figures. Compare the ways Tom and Charles go about this. Do you see it as a necessary stage in the ‘coming of age’ process? To what extent do they achieve a final reconciliation with their fathers?
- The two books have sections set in the town (London) and the country (Oxfordshire in The Rachel Papers , Somerset in Tom Jones ). Do these places embody different values? Tom and Charles leave London at the end of the novels – what, symbolically, do they leave behind?
- Compare the language Fielding and Amis use to describe the human body. How does this relate to the passages in the interviews section where Fielding personifies Virtue as a beautiful woman and Amis sees the body as a ‘clunking reminder of our physical existence’? Does Fielding portray physical perfection as allied to goodness? Does Amis equate Charles’s physical sleaziness with moral sleaziness? How much, as Amis suggests, are their attitudes explained by the different perspectives of the eighteenth- and the twentieth-century writer?
- Note how each book in Tom Jones opens with a chapter of authorial comment, while each chapter in The Rachel Papers opens with the countdown to Charles’s twentieth birthday. What effect do these ‘framing’ devices have on your reading of the main narratives? Do they interfere with your enjoyment of the plot, or give you a new perspective on it? And how do they play with the concept of the author?
- Discuss the importance of the class system in the two novels. Compare Mr and Mrs Highway’s attitude to the working-class Norman Entwistle – they refer to him as a ‘bastard’ but he’s not a ‘real bastard’ because he makes money ( The Rachel Papers pp. 39-410) – with Squire Western’s attitude to Tom as a potential suitor to his daughter (before and after his true parentage is known). How much has changed in two hundred years?
- Consider the ways in which Fielding and Amis use references to works of art in their novels. Fielding describes people several times by referring the reader to one of Hogarth’s paintings – what does this suggest about his characterisations? Now look at Amis’s use of the William Blake exhibition scene ( The Rachel Papers pp. 75 and 80 – 1). What is the significance of Rachel giving The Annotated Blake to Charles at the end of The Rachel Papers (p. 219)? How successful are the authors in using these works of art to convey a meaning?
- Charles disapproves of his father’s mistress while conducting his own infidelities; Tom is lecherous about Molly Seagrim, Mrs Walters and Lady Bellaston while pledging his devotion to Sophia. Are they both guilty of moral hypocrisy? What mitigating factors, if any, would you plead in their defence?
- ‘The section entitled, simply, “Gloria”, I now see, is done in a rather pompous mock-heroic style, like Fielding’s descriptions of pub brawls – the sort of writing I usually have little time for. But there is a sense in which this style is suited to subject, so I’ll let it pass’ ( The Rachel Papers , p. 22). In the light of this quotation, talk about the ways in which Amis and Fielding suit their writing styles to their subjects.
- Discuss how you would write Sophia Western and The Charles Papers in response to the creations of Fielding and Amis.
Other Books by Martin Amis
Dead Babies
Blitzed on uppers, downers, blue movies and bellinis, the bacchanalia bent bon…
Einstein’s Monsters
An ex-circus strongman, veteran of Warsaw, 1939, and Notting Hill rough-justice…
Experience
Heavy Water And Other Stories…
In Martin Amis’s short stories whole worlds are created – or inverted. In ‘…
House of Meetings
There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would…
Koba The Dread
Koba the Dread is the successor to Amis’s celebrated memoir, Experience. It …
London Fields
There is a murderer, there is a murderee, and there is a foil. Everyone is …
Suggested Further Reading
- Pamela ~ Samuel Richardson
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ~ James Joyce
- Henry Fielding: A Literary Life Harold Pagliaro
- Martin Amis: The Essential Guide ~ Margaret Reynolds and Jonathan Noakes
- A Harlot’s Progress (engravings)and Marriage a-la-Mode (a series of six paintings) ~ William Hogarth
- God Creating Adam and Ghost of a Flea (paintings) ~ William Blake
- Tom Jones (film)
- The Rachel Papers (1989 film)