Sometimes I think of Amis’s fiction as akin to opera. And, as with the best operas, the story can sometimes seem beside the point. You’re there not for the plot but for the music and, of course, the voice. I will miss that voice. Oh, Martin, it was such a deep, recurring pleasure to hear it. —Bill Buford I still cry and babble and holler a lot, but then I always did. I drink and have fights, and gangway through the streets. I am still inner city.

Maybe if I didn't feel pressured at work,and felt more carefree I would have been able to read it faster. To me , this was not an easy read, but like I said, I am glad I read it,and I find Martin to be quite an interesting character....his friendship with Christopher Hitchens prompted me to read this book. I find Christopher's writing to be fantastic,and very very amusing. Martin's writing to me seemed more subtle, more subdued....intelligent writer,and for that I am glad I read the book. The actors in the film, which Self originally titles Good Money but which he eventually wants to rename Bad Money, all have emotional issues that cause them to clash with each other and with their roles. For example, the strict Christian Spunk Davis is asked to play a drugs pusher; the ageing hardman Lorne Guyland has to be physically assaulted; the motherly Caduta Massi, who is insecure about her body, is asked to appear in a sex scene with Lorne, whom she detests. It has been a profound privilege and pleasure to be his publisher; first as Jonathan Cape in 1973, with his explosive debut, The Rachel Papers; then as part of Penguin Random House and Vintage, up to and including his most recent book, 2020’s Inside Story. When I first moved to Cape in 1993 it still seemed, 20 years on from The Rachel Papers, that every young writer wanted to be on the list because Martin was on it. The fact that he was so overlooked for literary prizes only added to his allure.Typical line “When is the world going to start making sense? Yet the answer is out there. It is rushing toward me over the uneven ground.” After learning that his father is Fat Vince, John realises that his true identity is that of Fat John, half-brother of Fat Paul. The novel ends with Fat John having lost all his money (if it ever existed), yet he is still able to laugh at himself and is cautiously optimistic about his future. Money tells the story of, and is narrated by, John Self, a successful director of commercials who is invited to New York City by Fielding Goodney, a film producer, to shoot his first film. Self is an archetypal hedonist and slob: he is usually drunk, and an avid consumer of pornography and prostitutes; he eats too much; above all, encouraged by Goodney, he spends too much. Money: A Suicide Note is a 1984 novel by British essayist and screenwriter Martin Amis. Cinematic in style and content, it is loosely based on Amis’s experience writing for the British-American sci-fi film Saturn 3. The novel delves into the competitive politics of the film industry and is told from the point of view of an advertising executive named John Self who makes a foray into filmmaking in New York City. Self, a stereotypical failed creative who is lazy and overindulgent, is further enabled by the producer who hires him, Fielding Goodney. He falls into a life in which he squanders most of his money on sex and drug use. As Self repeatedly fails in this foreign, fast-moving culture, he slowly learns to navigate it and recognize his faults. For its rich characterization of American urban life, the novel is often considered one of the best works of American literature of the twentieth century.

Mi ripeto perchè è strano a dirsi ma io non l’ho odiato piuttosto ho provato gran pena per lui ( ”consumato dal consumismo”) e quello che rappresenta. This is a hard book to review. 'Money'. I'll probably have to let the whole thing soak. It was brilliant, nimble, sharp, hard, completely balls-out-nuts and pornographic (not really in the PORNporn way, but in the MONEYporn way--yeah, folks, listen to the book you won't understand till you listen to it). Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis at the 1995 British book awards. Photograph: David M Benett/Getty Images

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Once again in London, Self meets his father’s new mistress Veronica, who has just done a nude magazine shoot. His car, a Fiasco, gives him some mechanical trouble while he kills time waiting for the next phase in the movie’s production. After Selina accuses him of having real feelings for Martina, he invites Selina to move in with him. Her presence offers a temporary reprieve from his fears that he will end up in jail, as Alec has recently done. Finally, Self confesses that his father once sent him a detailed invoice for the expenses incurred raising him. He paid it; his father bet the money and won enough to buy the Shakespeare. Amis wrote about his father’s death in his memoir Experience, which was published in 2000. The book touches on Amis’s separation from his first wife and mother of his two sons, the American academic Antonia Phillips. Talking to BBC Radio 4, Amis said he wished he had put “greater distance” between himself and his father, with the “Amis franchise” becoming “something of a burden”. Now, 12 years later, he has died of the very same illness, oesophageal cancer, that killed Hitchens. And this is not just very sad (though it is most certainly that). Suddenly, the cultural continuum feels as though it is shuddering, warped out of shape by what Amis would have called a “Main Event”. When Kingsley died, he said that “we were all chastened by the dimensions of the void that replaced him.” Exactly. Probably, almost definitely, but really, I gotta ask: was this point really one that needed to be made? I think not, yet close to a year after I read it, Money is still ruthlessly imprinted on my brain. I mean, there are passages and scenes in here that I remember more clearly than I do my own actions at work this morning. So it couldn't have been all bad -- no, it was bad, it was worse, but it was memorably so.