Success Book

While Success may be young Martin Amis at his vilest, it also stands as his first fully realized work as a writer, introducing several themes, narrative tricks and character types which he would go on to develop until they fully flourished in the triptych of masterpieces he wrote from the mid-80's to the mid-90's: Money, London Fields, and The Information. Spanning the course of a year, this third novel from everyone's favorite author who kind of looks like Mick Jagger tells the story of two repulsive and fiendishly misogynistic foster brothers who share the same the flat and spend an impressive amount of time plotting humiliations to enact on one another. The blurb on the book cherry picks the quotes that best describe Terry and Gregory (respectively): "'a quivering condom of neurosis and ineptitude,' the other a 'bundle of contempt, vanity and stock-response'." The two obviously function as foils for Amis to better satirize the rotting remnants of the British class system'Gregory is urban, good-looking, a fop; Terry is unattractive, unconfident, a slob'but more importantly they represent everything the author despises in the casual cruelty of how men treat women. This is an oppressive read, and as the two cads trade-off first person narration duties, the reader is hard-pressed not to be disgusted by the wanton acts of brutal sexism these two enact and rationalize as perfectly normal ways to treat women. But remember, Amis has always been an author with a gamely Nabokovian awareness of the relationship between author and work and reader, and here he does a fearless if not admirably reckless job at painting a merciless condemnation of brute masculinity. Success is a work of comedic meanness'one cannot help but feel just awful for Ursula, the poor, mentally disturbed sister who clings loyally to her brothers in a tragic Ophelliaesque fashion' and shows a raw and exuberant talent hitting his caustic, polysyllabic stride. Success is a runaway train of a novel written with true verbose swagger.