The Moronic Inferno And Other Visits To America (1991) - Plot & Excerpts
El novelista británico Martin Amis decidió hacer una especie de retrato de la sociedad norteamericana entre mediados y finales de la década de los ‘70 y ‘80 con una cantidad de crónicas periodísticas para diferentes revistas entre las que se encontraban “Vanity Fair”, “The Observer” y “London Review of Books” entre otras, con una muy variopinta selección de personajes públicos y de hechos de considerable relevancia dentro de la Norteamérica de esos tiempos. Siendo realmente honesto es mi primer encuentro con el trabajo de Martin Amis y ha despertado en mi un gran interés en seguir leyéndolo y descubriéndolo, en cuanto tenga la oportunidad debo de visitar “El libro de Rachel” por una gran cantidad de buenas referencias que me han dado amigos y grandes lectores. En este libro “El infierno imbécil y otras visitas a Estados Unidos” Martin Amis hace un arriesgado intento de mostrar solo un poco lo que puede ser un país tan complejo como los Estados Unidos de América ya que en sus propias palabras no es solo un país, en realidad es un mundo completo y mucho mas enrevesado de lo que se piensa o se conoce, Amis muestra una muy selecta parte de personajes públicos que van desde políticos, músicos, directores y por supuesto una gran gama de escritores que bien para el momento en que se escribe cada reseña se encuentran en el pico mas alto de su carrera o en una lenta caída de los altares de la fama y la gloria.De esta manera Martin Amis se pasea cómodamente por autores como Saul Bellow quien se encuentra en la búsqueda de la gran novela americana, la hermosa crónica para un genio ya en decadencia y casi falleciendo como Truman Capote, un análisis muy interesante sobre el trabajo llevado por Philip Roth y su relación con las mujeres dentro de sus libros, la violencia no solo literaria de un Norman Mailer uno de esos autores que supo ser él mismo violencia literaria en vida lleno de anécdotas como la pelea con podría decirse que su casi némesis Gore Vidal, un estrambótico Rey del Rock como Elvis Presley, el impresionante trabajo como director y la precisión que siempre buscaba dentro del set de filmación Brian De Palma dándonos de regalo todas sus grandes obras llenas de corrupción, sangre, dinero y sexo, por otro lado Martin Amis visita en el mejor momento de su carrera a Steven Spielberg con sus éxitos “E.T”, “Indiana Jones” y “Tiburón”, otros que hay que mencionar son William S. Burroughs, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut y la intensidad literaria según las propias palabras de Amis arrancándose libros de su propio cuerpo mientras escribe una Joan Didion, las elecciones y la política de un Ronald Reagan antes de ser presidente, finalmente encontramos algunas crónicas de hechos lamentables ocurridos en la Norteamérica de esos años donde el racismo era parte de ello.“El infierno imbécil” es un trabajo interesante de ensayos y crónicas periodistas que muestran en palabras una clara radiografía de la sociedad estadounidense de esos años, que quizás no haya cambiado mucho ante la realidad actual pero si es un libro muy interesante que muestra con mirada de extranjero a estos personajes tan variados y que cada uno de ellos ha pasado a la historia, algunos llegando a ser referencia obligatoria de los últimos 40 años.“El infierno imbécil”Martin AmisEditado por Ediciones Península (2014) 315 páginas
Although all the essays here are on American subjects, they were initially written for readers of newspapers like The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph, and thus for a British audience. In that context, one would expect the essays to reflect some cultural bias; indeed, insofar as Amis, a British writer, was writing for a British reader, a certain amount of cultural bias would be appropriate. However, as most of the subjects Amis writes about depict some of the less flattering aspects of American culture, it is difficult to determine how much cultural bias these essays actually reflect: while such topics as Elvis Presley’s final years, Brian Depalma’s gore-spattered films, the “televangelist” industry and a representation of the aging Hugh Hefner certainly function to call attention to differences between American and British culture, and even to reflect something of the way that the former is viewed within the latter, it is difficult not to feel in addition that the celebrity excesses Amis describes in fact emblematize for him something essential about the American experience. Honi soit qui mal y pense.While one might accuse him of snobbery and leave it at that, I think it may be more accurate to say that Amis is lacking awe with regard to those aspects of American culture about which he writes. It is because of this that Amis is able to write about American celebrity culture with such understanding (the distinction I am making here is that a “snob” would not make the effort to understand that which he or she is criticizing). Thus, although there were instances in which Amis was finding negative things to say about other writers whose work I enjoy, I often found myself nodding in agreement with his representations.Nor is all of it negative. Amis has some positive things to say about the work of writers like John Updike and Saul Bellow. Indeed, in his essay about Gloria Steinem, Amis seems to be making extra efforts to defend her, for instance from stereotypes about feminists.One thing that might keep one from reading it is that the book is rather dated. In the thirty years since Amis wrote the essays, Ronald Reagan has served two terms as president of the United States, Philip Roth has written many more novels and Steven Spielberg has made many more films. Indeed, some of the essays may have seemed dated at the time Amis originally wrote them: I doubt that the things he said about about Elvis’s death or about Norman Mailer’s or Truman Capote’s public personae were still new even in 1980. On the other hand, it can be interesting to see how little things have changed in the last thirty years: Hugh Hefner seems now, in his eighties, to be living the same kind of life he was in his fifties.However, if you’re not looking for a book about current events and like Amis’s writing style and are interested in his opinions with regard to writers like Kurt Vonnegut, William S. Burroughs, Joseph Heller and Norman Mailer, this is a good one to pick up. He has some interesting ideas about how Roth’s work is organized, as well as a penetrating analysis of Joan Didion’s rhetorical structures in her book of essays, WHITE ALBUM. In its simultaneous employment of the styles and approaches both of the gossipy tabloid and the serious literary analysis, the book is both intellectual exercise and guilty pleasure.
What do You think about The Moronic Inferno And Other Visits To America (1991)?
God, is Martin Amis's journalism good. In this first non-fiction collection (if we do as an embarrassed Martin would like and forget about Invasion of the Space Invaders: I read it and thought it was adorable) Amis tackles, as Saul Bellow deemed it, the Moronic Inferno, a.ka. The United States of America. In a brief introduction, our author makes no claim for the essays that follow standing as any real uniform say on the U.S., but instead suggests that the reader favors the writings as brief stabs at the idea of the Western Wonder of the World, each jab coming from a different angle. And so we get a delightful assortment of journalistic pieces with very different subjects and aims. When not chatting with a dreamy Vonnegut, or verbally resuscitating a pill-addled Truman Capote, or tiptoeing around an excitable, priggish celebrity like Gore Vidal or Norman Mailer, or fanboy-gushing over Saul Bellow, Amis turns his determined gaze to hot-topic issues such as the AIDs epidemic, feminism, the unsolved murder of black children in Atlanta, a media circus surrounding the possible attempt of murdering an American Heiress (of sorts),the unbelievable story of an aging actor actually acting his way into the presidency, the rise of Mammon-worshipping televangelists, and even a trip to the strange, troublesome little ecosystem that is the Playboy Mansion. Readers or refuse-to-read-ers should be pleased to hear that these articles reveal a voice closer to the actual Amis. He is not the hedonistic, misogynist that naysayers love to make a straw man out of, but instead we see the lively, generous mind of a deeply moral young man who is sickened by the causal cruelty with which society treats women, minorities, and the poor. In his fiction, Martin Amis may be able to stare down the deep, dark well of humanity and laugh and laugh, but remember: he is one of the good guys, folks. Martin Amis is one of the good guys and here it shows in every sentence.
—Anthony Vacca
Amis is a literary curiosity, seemingly reviled and exalted in equal measure for his garrulous prose, but I found him to be utterly superb in this collection of journalistic pieces and literary critique. Here, the tenacity of his prose is, uncannily, redoubled by the tenacity of his incisive surveillance of American culture circa the 1980s. There, Amis circumnavigates a torpid ocean of surreal delights, strange fixations (or 'fixities', to mimic Martin's amenable Amis-ness) and solipsistic morality of these United States, periodically washed ashore, eager to be swept under again.
—Charles Martin
www.emergenthermit.comAmerica is the subject of this collection of essays by the novelist, Martin Amis. Oscillating between warm affection and perfectly timed quips, Amis brings us close (or close enough to say something amusing) to the worlds of Hugh Hefner, Brian De Palma, Gore Vidal and Gloria Steinem.Hefner gets off easy, being a relatively easy target already, as Amis says after hearing what an average day in the old guy’s life is like, ‘That’s four movie’s a day.’ Norman Mailer’s career, on the other hand, gets a full moral and aesthetic interrogation in ‘Norman Mailer: The Avenger and the Bitch.’ Vidal earns referral as ‘probably the cleverest book-reviewer in the world.’Other familiar names serve not as pillars under our romantic idea of great America but more as celebrated checkpoints, now antiquated by time and changing circumstances. One gets this feeling with the interview-less book reviews. Of Joseph Heller’s God Knows, he says, ‘[the paragraphs] get bigger and bigger—and say less and less. No reader should be asked to witness an author’s private grapplings with his thesaurus.' Albert Goldman’s Elvis earns a place here as ‘a prodigy of bad writing.’His post scripts are written just as post-scripts should be. They don’t separate us from the Amis of the original article but give us a much wider perspective, sometimes to a mere tickling effect, as in the Gore Vidal piece where the reader is informed that it was Vidal who looked over his piece and changed ‘homosexual’ to ‘pansexual.’ At other times, the post scripts are explanations, not to things that were necessary to change, but things that were necessary to put back in, as the case with the ‘Double Jeopardy: Making Sense of AIDS.’The AIDS article, as well as the article on the child-murders in Atlanta, tackle their subjects unflinchingly, not sensationally, a brutal eye turned toward the truth with an earnest, definite sense of love and duty.Amis is not awkward in his praise as some clever revilers are. He gives the book a beginning and a coda devoted to two different articles about Saul Bellow and his works—someone who surely stands out in Amis’s mind, not only as the ‘great American novelist’ if there was ever a candidate, but as someone who has plunged the depths of America in such a way that, if there is going to be anything new to say about America, it would have to start with and surpass him.The book stands as a wonderful account of Amis’s love affair with the country and an invitation for us to open our eyes to its peculiarities, its violence, but also to its potential, its vigor and its impossible spirit. www.emergenthermit.com
—Shane Eide
