Don’t low-bred people say the darndest things!? I haven’t laughed so hard since my butler got his head stuck in a bucket.
Even Lionel’s accent is over-mined for comic effect, as though Amis were Henry Higgins shaking his head over Eliza Doolittle’s dialect: “Truck: pronounced truc-kuh (with a glottal stop on the terminal plosive.). . . . ‘Labyrinth’, for instance came out as labyrinf, rather than the expected labyrimf.” A little of this goes a long way (pronounced “a looong way”).
(Knopf) - “Lionel Asbo: State of England” by Martin Amis.
(Isabel Fonseca) - Author Martin Amis.
As Amis’s class mockery curdles, we’re left with a misanthropic vision of human suffering compounded by venality and lust. The novel’s meandering middle section has the grating tone of an episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies” sketched on the back of an envelope by England’s finest stylist. If only Amis watched more TV, he’d know from “Roseanne” just how badly things go when a crass lower-class family wins the lottery:
1. Describe an outrageous purchase.
2. Describe a hilarious misunderstanding.
3. Repeat until ratings crash.
The problem is really one of initiative, even effort. In “Super Sad True Love Story,” you could smell Gary Shteyngart sweat as he labored to keep his outrageous satire one step ahead of dismal current events. Here, Amis seems unwilling to exert more effort than it would take to change the channel from “Jersey Shore” to “Half Pint Brawlers.” He’s ambling years behind The Situation and the Kardashians, serving up blanched stereotypes on the silver platter of his prose as though it contained enough spice to entertain or even shock. “You go numb,” Lionel tells his nephew. “Not happy. Not sad. Numb.” Halfway through, persistent readers will feel the same way.
Does any other truly great writer make us wonder whether his brilliant parts are worth the wearisome whole? Almost every page in “Lionel Asbo” contains an example of Amis’s marvelous style, from “the muscular violence that lies in coiled clouds” to “the unlooked-for prettiness of young wasps” to Lionel dressed as the “supervillain in a risque cartoon.” Hearing the details of his uncle’s sex life, Des “felt that a damp cobweb was being dragged across his face.” And at the end, Amis offers a surprisingly tender portrayal of a new father’s love — a section that echoes the author’s recent statements about the delights of parenthood that he’s rediscovered late in life.
But enduring this frayed satire for these moments of pleasure is a deal only the most devoted Amis fans should accept.
Charles is The Post’s fiction editor. You can follow him on Twitter: @RonCharles.
LIONEL ASBO
State of England
By Martin Amis
Knopf. 255 pp. $25.95
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