book data
713 ratings,
3.61
average rating, 68 reviews
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published
March 19th 1996
(first published 1995)
by Vintage
binding
Paperback, 384 pages
isbn
0679735739
(isbn13: 9780679735731)
description
Fame, envy, lust, violence, intrigues literary and criminal--they're all here in The Information. How does one writer hurt another writer? This is the...more
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avg 3.61
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in August, 2006
October 18, 2006
Martin Amis
c/oJonathan Cape Ltd
Random House UK Ltd
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
England
Dear Mr. Amis,
I had the pleasure of reading The Information this past August while living in a motel room in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh. Reading, and wandering the parking lot of Star City, an abandoned movie theater, were my sole diversions while waiting for a replacement windshield wiper to a...more
Martin Amis
c/oJonathan Cape Ltd
Random House UK Ltd
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
England
Dear Mr. Amis,
I had the pleasure of reading The Information this past August while living in a motel room in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh. Reading, and wandering the parking lot of Star City, an abandoned movie theater, were my sole diversions while waiting for a replacement windshield wiper to a...more
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13 comments
A great and greatly flawed book. Every sentence is written to perfection and beyond, Amis constantly challenges, delights, and exasperates the reader with his downbeat wit and intermittent bolts of insight and astrophysical philosophy. Five stars, six stars, a starry galaxy to Amis's intellectual and creative commitment, to his gutty persistence, to his never letting a sentence or a thought fade away without coming to a satisfying or at least unchallengable conclusion. Kudos. Martin Amis rul...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommended to Stacey by:
Mark
This is one of Mark's favourite books, so i thought i would give it a try. Almost three months of trying to get into it (it has a very stylized prose and be prepared to have dictionary.com at the ready; Amis's use of an extensive vocabulary is fantastic) i finally got through it in about 3 days.
It's mean, the characters aren't just flawed- they're downright unlikeable-, and it's pretty damn funny. But be careful, because if you don't have a VERY dark sense of humor (or you can't a...more
It's mean, the characters aren't just flawed- they're downright unlikeable-, and it's pretty damn funny. But be careful, because if you don't have a VERY dark sense of humor (or you can't a...more
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recommends it for:
no one
After reading "Time's Arrow", I thought I would surely enjoy other Martin Amis books. Man, was I wrong!
This story has a less than successful writer out to sabatoge the carreer of his very successful fellow writer/friend. I didn't make it even half way through, but felt I was reading a work of some one either insane or a genius. The story is jumping between two story lines - the day to day life of the main character, Richard, and his plans to destroy Gwyn, and the day to da...more
This story has a less than successful writer out to sabatoge the carreer of his very successful fellow writer/friend. I didn't make it even half way through, but felt I was reading a work of some one either insane or a genius. The story is jumping between two story lines - the day to day life of the main character, Richard, and his plans to destroy Gwyn, and the day to da...more
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Read in May, 2007
This book is almost as bitter and cranky as the guy I was dating at the time. Bile-black, I can still dig it. One thing I can say is that Amis knows his literature. His riffs on different topics within the story-construct are just as interesting as the story itself.
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The Amis book with an ending. Really funny and well-plotted and exuberantly languaged like Nabokov. So many American writers (the ones I know) over-value a simple style, are afraid of fat, passionate, in-your-face baroque. This is a good entray into that style.
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05/28/08
Tommy
added it
Have to say I'm struggling with this one.
Will finish the latest Neal Stephenson and have another crack at it.
Nah, given up!
Will finish the latest Neal Stephenson and have another crack at it.
Nah, given up!
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02/07/09
Catherine
marked it as to-read
recommended to Catherine by:
1000 novels, Joshua Henkin
from Joshua Henkin's Ten Terrific Novels About Writers, Writing, and the Writing Life: "Amis is one of the writers I mention when my writing students complain about unlikable characters. Has Amis ever written a “likable” character? (Actually, I like a lot of Amis’s characters, but that’s another matter, and the whole question of likeability tends to be a red herring.) Although his work is uneven, the best of it is first-rate. I would include The Information in that category, a n...more
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Read in January, 2007
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Read in April, 2007
recommends it for:
people who dont mind books with a great first half and a terrible/average second half
A really cool premise here - literary/professional envy.
One man - a failed novelist whose books are so willfully obscure that his readers tend to get to about page 9 or 10 when they find themselves suddenly attacked by a brutal migraine or some other such arbitrary physical nastiness.
Richard Tull lives in a poky flat with his wife and two absurdly named children, reviews hefty biogs of marginal literary figures for the abysmally named 'The Little Magazine' and drinks an awful lot.
...more
One man - a failed novelist whose books are so willfully obscure that his readers tend to get to about page 9 or 10 when they find themselves suddenly attacked by a brutal migraine or some other such arbitrary physical nastiness.
Richard Tull lives in a poky flat with his wife and two absurdly named children, reviews hefty biogs of marginal literary figures for the abysmally named 'The Little Magazine' and drinks an awful lot.
...more
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Read in December, 2008
Re-read for possibly the fourth time over ten years. I have yet to read a greater book about the literary mid-life crisis - although I appreciate that quantatively, that's rather a small genre. Also shows that Amis is much underrated as a humourist. On the downside, the book does have some basic realism problems when it comes to the success and fame enjoyed by its protagonist's bete noir. There were also bits of prosedy in there I recognised from the output of the author's dad.
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09/26/08
Joseph
added it
Read in October, 2008
I know very little about postmodern fiction. I read that the postmodern author, in this chaotic world, often playfully eschews the possibility of meaning. Also the post modern author employs the combination of multiple cultural elements including subjects and genres not previously deemed fit for literature. These elements are typical of this novel.
One of this author’s idiosyncrasies is his frequent digressions into cosmology. With his consistent pessimism he seems to agree with P...more
One of this author’s idiosyncrasies is his frequent digressions into cosmology. With his consistent pessimism he seems to agree with P...more
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This is one I pick up from time to time and just read without realizing that I'm starting it again. I get drawn into the book because I know envy. It's not a particularly charming quality, but it is a human one.
One day, if Guy Richie ever feels like returning to filmmaking, I think he'd be the perfect director to film it. I see Sting and David Bowie playing Richard Hull and Gwyn Barry. Maybe Bill Nighy and Bowie. Yeah, that's better.
Hell, even cast Madonna as Gwyn Barry'...more
One day, if Guy Richie ever feels like returning to filmmaking, I think he'd be the perfect director to film it. I see Sting and David Bowie playing Richard Hull and Gwyn Barry. Maybe Bill Nighy and Bowie. Yeah, that's better.
Hell, even cast Madonna as Gwyn Barry'...more
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Read in February, 2000
recommended to Jim by:
Read an excerpt in Granta magazinerecommends it for: Anyone who envies someone with more success but less talent
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Read in April, 2002
You really have to go back to Nabokov to find writing this exuberant:
'Richard sat in Coach. His seat was non-aisle, non-window and above all non-smoking. It was also non-wide and non-comfortable. Hundreds of yards and hundreds of passengers away, Gywn Barry, practically horizontal on his crimson barge, shod in prestige stockings and celebrity slippers, assenting with a smile to the coaxing refills of Alpine creekwater and saguinary burgundy with which his various hostesses strove to ...more
'Richard sat in Coach. His seat was non-aisle, non-window and above all non-smoking. It was also non-wide and non-comfortable. Hundreds of yards and hundreds of passengers away, Gywn Barry, practically horizontal on his crimson barge, shod in prestige stockings and celebrity slippers, assenting with a smile to the coaxing refills of Alpine creekwater and saguinary burgundy with which his various hostesses strove to ...more
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This guys is seriously cynical and kind of a dick - but has some insights into the darker side of the human soul that though I acknowledge exist, usually try to avoid (for good or for bad).
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One of few books to affect me emotionally, so that I had to throw it across the room when i finished reading it. Martin Amis is a pretentious asshole, but, MAN, can he write.
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Read in August, 2001
Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry at night and then say - Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams.
This is a very dark book, too dark for my taste.
This is a very dark book, too dark for my taste.
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Read in August, 2008
"His third novel wasn't published anywhere. Neither was his fourth. Neither was his fifth. In those three brief sentences we adumbrate a Mahabharata of pain. He had plenty of offers for his sixth because, by that time, during a period of cretinous urges and lurches, he had started responding to the kind of advertisements that plainly came out with it and said, WE WILL PUBLISH YOUR BOOK and AUTHORS WANTED (or was it NEEDED?) BY LONDON PUBLISHER. Of course, these publishers, crying out for wo...more
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Read in January, 1999
For some reason, people didn't like this book - I don't quite understand why! Tim C, who's also read most of Amis, agrees with me.
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