On holiday one year, I read Money, thirty pages of it until I remembered that I do not understand Martin Amis. The main character in the book is a dedicated smoker. He says, “I started smoking another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, I am always smoking another cigarette.” Unless I inform you otherwise, at intervals throughout my twenties and most of my thirties, I was depressed, mildly, moderately, severely, for a week, two weeks, half a year, all of one.
