BOOKS
705
According to a 'colleague' who knows Scozz well, he is "all bad
news,
all
terrible information." That's what the novel is about: bad news
presenting itself as "The Information." Are these voids navigable? Yes,
thanks to Amis's comic gift they are a pleasure cruise, more than naviga–
ble. But why is it that we feel so confident about our rush to embrace
bad news as Truth, as Reality. There seems to be an unexamined
Heideggerian premise lurking behind the self-congratulation implicit in
the severity of this attitude. We're in such a hurry not to be duped by
Gwyn-style 'reality-avoidance' that we join the nihilist stampede and rush
into a groundless and almost punitive declaration about the nature of
reality. Okay, so what is this precious information?
It
is the news of our
own mortality.
It
is the scoop on death, and on all the diseases, the
dread, decay and pain that precede it. With Amis this in not mere
metaphysical rambling. He has from the first had a feeling for the 0 -
words. As far back as
The Rachel Papers
he was on a first-name basis with
Despair. In
Money
and
London Fields
we endure the sickness unto death in
the dead of the night, and more of the same in the morning when we
look into the mirror.
The Information
takes us farther from solace than
we have been before. Think of it this way: If the old novel has been
about Love and Death, the theme of the new novel, the non-innocent
one, is just Death. The first move will be to cut all attachments anci
dismiss
all
connectedness (bye-bye E. M. Forster and his moronic slogan
"only connect") . Richard Tull has a recurring vision: he sees himself,
suitcase in hand, on his way to the callbox. Whom should he call?
Exiled, where should he go? What if there is no one to love or to be
loved by? The truly modem hero, if there is a grain of decency in him,
must necessarily be alone. Moreover, his thoughts and actions have made
him so disagreeable to the reader that he never will be missed. When
all
grounds for attachment have been removed, we are relieved from the
necessity of grieving for anyone's death. What's Death without Love?
Our post-modem decadent novelists (philosophers of death) will have
abolished death as a subject too.
But we've jumped ahead of ourselves. Does no one love Richard
Tull? If you're looking in the usual places (wife, mistress) you'll be sorely
disappointed. Amis intends to convince even the most devoted believer in
passionate love, in married love that his belief cannot be justified. No
ground can be found for it. One of Richard's twin sons, however,
Marco, the lastborn, "clinging, garrulous and ill" certainly loves his Dad.
This kid has asthma. He is often absent from school. He has a learning
disability. There is also more awareness, more feeling, more generous
impulse in him than in
all
the other characters in the novel:
