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Title: Yellow Dog by Martin Amis ISBN: 1-4013-5203-0 Publisher: Miramax Pub. Date: 05 November, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.05 (21 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Heavy-Handed Satire of Porn, Sexual Relations and Pretension
Comment: Do you ever feel like you cannot escape someone trying to sell you unwanted pornography, sexual aids, "dating services", information about "celebrities" and ridiculous ideas for your married life? Do you ever feel like those around you are posing to make themselves more pretentious? If you answered "yes" to any of these dimensions, you will appreciate Martin Amis' latest book, Yellow Dog. Like a dog who cannot escape a coupling with another dog, Mr. Amis sees our society as caught in a trap involving sexual relations of our own making . . . that is ruining our lives.
In Yellow Dog, he devises several interrelated stories to convey his harsh criticism of what passes for our "common culture" today. One involves a former actor, Xan Meo, turned writer who is brain-damaged by thugs when a criminal is offended by what Meo has written. In another, a fictional king of England struggles with illicit photographs of his daughter that should not be seen in public. A sex-obsessed "journalist" creates the type of tabloid stories and photographs that sell, but won't uplift literacy while dealing with an empty personal life. The remains of a loved one create a special type of havoc in the air while the Earth braces for a hoped-for "near-miss" with a comet.
In the middle of these stories, the characters find that their pursuit of what others want for them leads them away from their own fundamentally good natures. Edgy humor develops as they confront their temptations and inner-most desires. Give in to those temptations and bad things can indeed happen to good people.
The temptations are developed in pretty raw ways, involving such seldom discussed topics as incest, perverse sexual relations, excessive exhibitionism, and abusive uses of power. If you are easily offended in these subject areas, look for a different book to read.
The stories remind me of the sort of satire that Voltaire used in Candide. The situations are overdrawn deliberately to rub your face in the point Mr. Amis wants to make. I found them redeeming in one quality, though. He describes a sort of synchronicity that seems to suggest that nature will take its course and eventually clean out the muck in our lives . . . as long as we don't deliberately drown ourselves in the muck first.
Several parts of the book are very funny, especially the on-line exploits of Clint Smoker, the tabloid "journalist" and the ironic last trip of Royce Traynor. Several parts are sad, as men struggle to do the right thing with their wives and daughters.
I graded the book down primarily because I didn't find myself relating very directly to any of the characters except the king and his daughter. The rest just seemed like comic book characters to me.
After you read this book, I suggest that you read something tranquil and spiritual . . . to help remove the muck from your life.
Rating: 4
Summary: Much Brilliant Writing, Some Vintage Characterization
Comment: I really am not sure what to make of Martin Amis's YELLOW DOG. Before I started the book, I was sure I'd love it and there is a lot of "Martin Amis at his best" in this book. The pacing is good and Amis's sardonic wit abounds, but the book is odd and peopled with characters it's almost impossible to like (nothing new there, for Amis). Also, there are three different narratives in the book, and, while I usually love books with intertwining narratives, the three in YELLOW DOG didn't seem to come together like they should have.
One of the narratives concerns Xan Meo, actor, writer and loving husband and father who is hit over the head one day when exiting a bar in Camden. The attack, perpetrated by an assailant named Mal, was not accidental and we learn, later in the novel, why. The result of Xan's injuries form the core of YELLOW DOG and it's not a pretty or, surprisingly, even a funny, core. Xan's story was ultimately very sad and very brutal and some of Amis's best writing (writing that is not funny) concerns the encounters between the injured Xan and his daughter, Billie.
The other two narratives are hilarious, however. One is a satirical look at the "Royal Family," the other a send up of the yellow press that often borders on farce. The Royal Family that Amis has constructed for YELLOW DOG isn't today's Royal Family, but one that seems, somehow, to be set in the not-too-distant future (the present king in YELLOW DOG is King Henry IX). Some of the satire of Henry IX and his Chinese mistress is priceless, but there was also a lot of it I simply didn't get and even more that was just plain silly.
The satire centering on photographs of the future queen, Princess Victoria, in her bath, intertwined with the one centering around a journalist at the "Morning Lark," Clint Smoker. Anyone who has read Amis before will recognize Smoker as bad boy "vintage Amis." He's not at all likable, but it is his story that I found the easiest to follow. Smoker is much more concerned with pursuing his own e-romances than he is in getting any news written, yellow or not. I found Smoker's email with k8 very difficult to read, since it's filled with all sorts or text abbreviations, something I'm really not familiar with. However, when you finally meet k8, you'll know why Amis chose to include the texting.
There is another strand in this book that concerns a West coast criminal named Joseph Andrews, and yet another that revolves around a comet on a collision course with earth and yet another concerning an aircraft that was destroyed in flight by a coffin. While a lot of this is very good, a lot of it also feels like a bit "too much," sort of like literary overkill.
Amis is well-known for writing highly structured novels, but I didn't care for the structure in YELLOW DOG. It is written in three parts that each have their own chapters and subchapters. If this weren't bad enough, just when we get comfortable with a character, he disappears, only to reappear later, when we least expect him. This may seem like it's funny, but it wasn't to me. It created quite a strange, choppy effect.
If anyone but Martin Amis had written this novel, it would probably be either a one star disaster or a five star treat. I couldn't decide how many stars to give it but I finally decided to award the book four stars because it simply isn't Amis's best. It contains much brilliant writing, some vintage Amis characterization, but the narratives aren't really as coherent as they should be. Still, any book written by Martin Amis, even if not his best, is going to far, far better than most of the junk you'll find on the bestseller lists.
Recommended only for hardcore Amis fans and people who want something very different and "edgy."
Rating: 2
Summary: Interesting ideas + Characters, but why should I care?
Comment: When I read a newspaper review of this book, I thought, "Wow, this sounds weird and quirky, just how I like books to be." And so I waited patiently for it to arrive at the library.
Little did I know that I'd have it for way past the due date because it took FOREVER for me to finish it, and normally I go through books fast.
The reasons for this are thus:
Though the characters have interesting traits and I wondered what was going to happen to them...I didn't CARE what was going to happen to them. They didn't have enough personality. No matter how bizarre the circumstances became, I didn't plug along asking myself, "What is going to happen to ____?!"
Other things that annoyed me in this book are the attempts to be confusing, by naming certain characters with pronouns or common words like And, He, and so on. This just distracted me from the story, and when you're a good writer, you should want people to become immersed in your world, not have them trying to figure out what the hell you mean.
So I made myself finish this novel because I kept hoping it would improve. When I got to the end, the first thing I said, out loud, to a room of people was, "Well, that was a waste of time."
Not the best first impression, Martin Amis.
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