Well, you can’t, can you.
Robert Hanks, writing recently in the Independent, began a review of the latest Jonathan Coe novel as follows:
“With the withering of Martin Amis’s talent ...”
Not only is that line totally unnecessary for the review that follows; it is also an illustration of the kind of endless loop that can be generated when reviewers read too many other reviewers. One might even raise the suspicion that Hanks himself is one of the many people who have not read “Yellow Dog” but nevertheless “know” that it is one of the biggest “dogs” in recent literary fiction, thus qualifying themselves to perpetuate that “knowledge” (“the Information”, indeed) by tossing it, seemingly at random, into their own writing. “Look at me; I’m on the team.” Ignoring the huge contribution that Amis has made to English letters over the last 25 years. Ignoring that critics aren’t always right; they are just like you and me, except that they get paid for having an opinion (the bastards). But more significantly, ignoring that “Yellow Dog” is a damn fine novel in its own right, on its own terms. The sad thing is that I, too, was almost prepared to write Amis off, on the strength of the sheer weight of numbers of bad reviews (as well as my own disappointment with some of his recent fiction - fiction only, though; “Experience” was a stunning piece of autobiography/soul-searching). Which would have been my loss. It just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read.
