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Posted: 17 Dec 2007, 19:32
by silkov
Self has always struck me as a literary poser, ...writing by numbers really...
Posted: 17 Dec 2007, 19:33
by josh fg
Red Medicine wrote:josh fg wrote:Red Medicine wrote:A racist?
You've obviously never bothered to read his works and literary criticism. If you're referring to the Terry Eagleton feud, well, that was a case of the Marxist facist Eagleton blatantly distorting words that Amis used in an interview in a specific context.
He may well be a "mediochr" (whatever that means) writer, but he's certainly not a mediocre one.
I think Terry Eagleton was spot on there, I also simply don't see the fuss about his writing I have read a few of his short stories and they are crap. His comments were racist, if a tory MP had made them I would be asking for them to resign
"the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order"
or do you think there is an acceptical context to call for
"strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan"
You're just as slovenly as Eagleton.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... mis113.xml
In his first interview since the attack, Amis delivers his counter-blast. Eagleton is ''slovenly", says Amis, lighting his first roll-up of the afternoon.
He is ''a disgrace to his profession", and possessed of ''a not very charming combination of ill will and laziness".
First, he says, Eagleton got his facts wrong. Though the professor claimed to have taken the offending remarks from an essay written last month, ''none of them were from the essay I wrote – last year – but from a press interview he had dug up. How he imagined he was reading an essay when he read those quotes, I don't know".
Eagleton has also stripped the comments of their context, says Amis. The interview took place in August 2006, soon after the revelation of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up 10 aeroplanes flying out of Britain.
In the heat of that moment, Amis said to his interviewer: ''There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan…"
Amis argues that by omitting the prefatory ''There is a definite urge – don't you have it?" Eagleton has distorted his meaning, and obscured the fact that he had been describing an emotion rather than arguing an ideological position. ''I wasn't advocating it."
The ''urge", said Amis, ''evaporated within a few hours, in my case, and I don't think any of those measures would have been moral, or effective". Eagleton ''wants to have enemies," said Amis, ''but he won't check what they say or the context they say it in." He is ''looking for trouble, but he's not taking any trouble".
Eagleton has form in this matter, he believes.
Earlier this year, says Amis, his friend Salman Rushdie was also embroiled in a spat ''rigged up" by Eagleton, who, he claims, ''was reduced to helpless apology at the end of it. He just got it all wrong. He said Salman was pro the Iraq war.
Except that urge and that reaction are precisly what racism is, working at a subconsiouse level comming out in times of crisis. Its times like that when people whom set themselves up as interlectual and from whom one would expect a certain degree of interlectual probaty and self reflectism (I say one would because I personaly would not from such a 10th rate writer as Amis). However his reactions were not much better than that of a Daily Telegraph headline writer.
Rusdie did am I not correct write "a Liberal argument for regime chainge" in 2002 on the Iraq war.
Posted: 17 Dec 2007, 19:35
by josh fg
silkov wrote:Self has always struck me as a literary poser, ...writing by numbers really...
I think he writes well and pieces which are compelling, I wouldn't say he writes "great literature" but he rights good literature well if that makes sense.
For example Salmon Rushdie's book Midnights Children is Great Literature, Satanic Verses is good literature but more converted in style and thus less easy to read.
Re: Ricky Hatton vs Paulie Malignaggi is the best fight for
Posted: 17 Dec 2007, 20:29
by josh fg
jackthehat wrote:Hatton's excuses for not fighting an able boxer who has the tools to beat him.
Im sure Ricky Hatton has just fought Floyd Mayweather??????
sayin that though Witter is in the same class as Mayweather isnt he? not your an idiot
Yes an no, the risk reward ratio with Witter is greater. For years he has been telling his moron city fans who don't understand boxing that he is the dogs and witter is rubbish so he doesn't need to fight him losing to the best fighter in the world is no disgrace but if you prove your not even the best in your country then that hits his marketability badly without as much money.
Posted: 17 Dec 2007, 21:27
by E
Southpaw Stylist wrote:I like Will Self because he's immensely witty, anti-establishment, and he went to one of my favourite Oxford colleges.
Will Self is about as witty as scraping dogshit off your best pair of leather shoes. I hate him from my Medulla oblongata to my athlete's foot.......
Posted: 18 Dec 2007, 04:09
by Tykemania
Terry D wrote:Nightmare fight if you ask me. Paulie is not the right guy att his point but it depends on a number of factors.
Oh come on - Hatton had a poor night against Mayweather but there is a massive gap between losing to the P4P number one/two in the world in a basically respectable fight and losing to a powder puff no mark like Gobshiteinaggi. Want to know how this would turn out? Watch the tape of Malignaggi-Cotto!
Posted: 18 Dec 2007, 05:16
by jamesmcdonnell
Southpaw Stylist wrote:I like Will Self because he's immensely witty, anti-establishment, and he went to one of my favourite Oxford colleges.
Did you go to Oxford? If not, then why on earth would you have a favourite oxford college.
Posted: 18 Dec 2007, 05:16
by jamesmcdonnell
Southpaw Stylist wrote:I like Will Self because he's immensely witty, anti-establishment, and he went to one of my favourite Oxford colleges.
Did you go to Oxford? If not, then why on earth would you have a favourite oxford college.
Posted: 18 Dec 2007, 18:10
by harrygreb
terry you really cant moan at someone for calling nietzche a philosopher.
of course he was a philosopher, although a 19th century one. influenced genius/fools like DH lawrence and aldous huxley too much for their own good in my view. i had had my fill of that strain of early 20th century english lit by my late teens.
martin amis is really not a good novelist. i dont think even his dad thought he had much talent. will self i prefer but neither are fit to tie william boyds shoelaces.
Posted: 19 Dec 2007, 17:16
by harrygreb
well im sure you'd agree with me, terry, that nietzsche is probably the least likely "punk rock" philosopher ever. if you know about FN the whole idea is absurd in the extreme.