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It is traditionally ‘not done’ to review books in terms of what they’re not. And yet: this book is not a novel. It says it is on the front cover; but it isn’t. And Martin Amis makes it clear it’s not, repeatedly, within the 500+ pages – almost as often, in fact, as he claims the opposite.

Nor is it – contra subtitle – a book on ‘how to write’. Nobody wants an Amis book on how to write (cf. his critical non-fiction [sic]); and if they did, they’d not be looking for the difference between ‘I’ and ‘me’ (I kid you not). And yet the book incorporates long memos, guidelines and what feel like half-recycled lecture notes, for which the kindest thing that can be said is that they should have all been excised some drafts ago.

Lastly, it isn’t principally about his lifelong, close relationship with Christopher Hitchens – despite the UK jacket’s clear suggestion otherwise.

No. What Inside Story is, is a rather baggy assemblage (a footnote nods approvingly to Don Quixote) of loving reminiscence, tough self-examination, hero-worship, historical enquiry, quotation, a 2015 New Yorker article on the German migrant-crisis, and, yes, some scattered writing tips. With footnotes. And a 13-page index.

Aware that he himself has not exactly lived the life of, say, a Solzhenitsyn, Nabokov, or even Rushdie, Amis employs the framework of three other, personally-relevant and occasionally-connected literary lives (and deaths): Saul Bellow (d. 2005) as supplementary father figure; Philip Larkin (d. 1985) as potential actual father; and Christopher Hitchens (d. 2011) as brother in arms, in literature, and all but in the sack(?) – their stories (and all the rest of it) threaded together by the amiable conceit that Amis is chatting to some young, aspiring novelist.

Supporting roles are filled by his (de)formative, years-long para-sexual relationship with ‘Phoebe Phelps’ (a classic Amisite character name, that); his significantly more-benevolent stepmother, Elizabeth Jane Howard; his wayward, needy father; and then the long-familiar coterie of boozy-lunchmates (Conquest, Fenton, Clive James), influences (Nabokov is named on page one, and then a further 42 times after that), and all the Big Things Amis is apparently incapable of not dwelling on (the Holocaust; the Gulag; and – of course – now 9/11).

No doubt he’s changed a few names. And moved things round a bit to suit. Sometimes he’s written himself into the third person. But so what? In his own words, ‘At least Mystic Meg [went] to the trouble of making it all up.’ This ‘novel’ thing is a distraction – and a pity too, since, taken in isolation (which probably no Amis book can have been for years), Inside Story is for the most part a compelling, if rather florid, memoir.

That’s not the only distraction, either.

The book opens with a strange, present-tense discussion of the looming 2016 US election (feat. ‘the Great Pretender’), and of Brexit, which he is comfortable Remain will win. Whatever effect this is supposed to have (scrupulous honesty?), the eye is trained from the beginning on how much else has badly aged here. Lunches that involve ‘potted shrimps’ and ‘oatcake’. Someone being ‘a pill’. ‘Gaspers’. Talk of ‘rugby football’, and girlfriends called ‘Doris’. These days, mind, Amis attends pilates sessions, smokes e-cigarettes, and eats ‘a softboiled egg’ for breakfast. The man the critics once identified as ‘Amis fils‘, the enfant terrible of modern English letters, is – one suddenly realises – old.

Accordingly perhaps, this ‘novel’ is lighter on the more aggressive flourishes of Amis prose style. But (fans rest assured) for every diamond-tipped incision such as ‘childsong [being] like a ventilation of happiness’, there’s still ‘the lime, the gold, the rose’ of – can you guess? – traffic lights; a train ‘now slaked of motion’ (i.e. stationary); and AN Other finance bloke who at once starts using words like ‘bonce’ and ‘gaff’. Amis snorts that you wouldn’t put a janitor called ‘Art Hitman’ in a novel; but has, himself, a US thriller writer called ‘Jed Slot’. He laments that no-one, still, writes well on sex, and then describes ‘her musky, smiley, gauzy, rumpy, nipply presence’.

Despite all this, Inside Story somehow emerges as an engrossing and courageous (slice of) autobiography. And thankfully – if tragically, and via a lot of other deaths – it ultimately returns to him and Hitchens. Amis heartbrokenly extracts some positives from this great personal and public loss, almost a decade past. The reader, though, now sits through the whole thing again – that slow, appalling diminution – and hopes, quite pointlessly, that Hitch won’t die. The book is worth it for that bit alone.
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Postscript: Needless to say, Inside Story comes pre-greeted with much industry fanfare; but only the PR teams will claim that this is Martin Amis’s best work. A more laymanly bemusement as to what, specifically, it is about, may be reflected in the fact that, at time of writing, the ‘novel’ is riding high as Amazon’s #1 Best Seller… in ‘Terrorism & Freedom Fighters Biographies’.

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For – in an abbreviated form – The Oldie

— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 23 1907
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The first pedestrian has been killed by a self-driving car.

Starbucks employees do not capitalise their As.

The sound of the bagpipe fattens the sheep and lambs of all Arabia.

125 academic papers mention Adam Smyth.

At 53 one is too old for Everest.

Moldiv Smooth Skin will make your skin flawless.

Babies learn the practicalities of distance by repeatedly punching themselves in the face.

Gustav Mahler put the word ‘schwer‘ beside certain passages in his musical scores.

In a fundraising speech, American president Donald Trump has said he made up facts during a meeting with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Cutlery should always be kept in the top drawer.

Easter Island – or ‘Rapa Nui’ – belongs to Chile.

Poetry readings are the worst form of entertainment that has ever been invented.

A five-star review is a five-star review.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, July 13 1908
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In January 2001 a BBC documentary crew filmed the everyday goings on in a typical workplace.

The skin of fantas melons smells of BO.

There’s 25% off Rovic floors.

Philip Hensher will read any old crap.

The Russians are now calling London ‘Londongrad’.

It’s advisable to turn off your computer.

The North Devon Journal is on sale now.

Paul Robeson was the greatest end ever.

Honey bees do not enter.

In 1876 Britain formally recognised Chinese authority over Tibet.

The chip-shop lady has the saddest eyes.

Among the many rivers of Mesopotamia there is one made of sand.

Some folk pronounce it ‘homage’ not ‘homage’.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, September 4 1906
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There is a whale whose voice is too low to communicate with other whales.

Seatbelts do not statistically improve your chances of surviving a car accident.

London’s Mithraic temple is buried deep beneath the new European headquarters of Bloomberg, the financial information company.

Aeneas and Euclid are both in limbo.

The name Lezard is not a Basque name.

One human male ejaculation contains enough sperm to impregnate every fertile female in the Western world.

All traditions must start somewhere.

Bell’s whisky doesn’t make you want to drink Bell’s whisky

Daniel O’Donnell will go live on Facebook from his show in Branson, MO, today.

We have no choice but to believe in free will.

The administration of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi has charged dozens of Burmese civil-society activists under a law that restricts criticism of the government.

The nation is divided over the John Lewis Christmas ad.

Clichés are piss.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, July 26 1906
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The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.

Though rare, there have been exactly 201 documented cases of spontaneous combustion.

J Sainbury plc is cutting 2000 Human Resources employees.

The collective noun for brown anchovies is a ‘finish’.

Typing and playing the piano can wear your fingerprints away.

Actors cheers each other up by exchanging bad reviews.

When a ship sinks, the crew are released from their oath of loyalty to the captain.

Translator and poet Paul Celan committed suicide in 1970.

It’s Van Month this October at Renault.

Just because it’s in the Guardian doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

The men of Crete are mostly fair, very tall, sometimes gigantic.

It looks very much as if Everton will be looking for a new manager in the morning.

Without George W Bush there would have been no President Trump.
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From a Cimabue cherub to Szydlowski/-lowska’s Lenin, simply everyone is pissing.

In pen and ink, paint on canvas, plaster, wood, stone, polymer, block prints, engraving, chamber pots, aquatints, dishware, film, manuscripts, inlay, public statuary, trick-photography, and in a Japanese video game played with live piss; men, women, children, angels, demons, and a limited selection of fauna; in gardens and in brothels, alone or in groups, in fancy dress or civvies; at divine revelations and in diplomatic meetings; onto walls, into wine-cups, into flagons, hats, baskets, rivers, coffins, and all over each other; drunk pissing, child pissing, simultaneous drinking-pissing, horseback pissing, piss sword-fights (obv.), and a boy pissing a urine halo over a young girl’s head. Snow White pisses. Cupid pisses (on his mother!). One doughty soul pisses onto Mars’s helmet – his actual battlegear, that is.

In fact, in the course of Jean-Claude Lebensztejn’s nine essays and 137-odd (sic) illustrations, you could be forgiven for thinking no-one ever does anything but piss.

But his survey steers us through the allegorical minefield of alchemical symbolism, homosexual love-codes, the overwhelming preponderance of small boys pissing in Renaissance art, and the entertaining hypothesis of a literal (OK, figurative) pissing contest between Michelangelo and Titian. And under his tutelage we approach a clearer understanding of the medical uses, ethnic ceremonies, trade applications, and other themes that have to do with urine, and the cultural shifts by which the innocence of those earlier acts and images was lost.

‘Christ’s penis’ and ‘fist fucking’ are unusual bedfellows, even in the world of academia; and I’ll have to take Prof. Lebensztejn’s word that ‘this is what imbues the stream of urine with a tortured subjectivity.’ But in Pissing Figures he has found a hitherto unilluminated corner of art history – and let fly all over it as only a French art critic/historian ever could. His deadpan is particularly delectable. Re Bosse’s Giving Drink to the Thirsty (via, yes, a pissing statue) he points out: ‘In the era of indoor plumbing, we rarely if ever consume water like this.’ Elsewhere, a hilarious note records the full mathematical equation for the piss-parabola.

And if Lebensztejn’s treatment of this schoolboy topic is otherwise disappointingly grown-up (no Lebowski’s rug? No Paula Radcliffe?), the unembarrassed orange cover makes the perfect complement to public transport, if only so you might catch somebody rubbernecking at the pics and then say smugly, à la Andrew Lincoln: “Actually, they’re not funny… They’re art.”

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For The Amorist

 
Arte Povera – affordable art
Brücke, die – German successors to the Fauvists (later disbanded amid accusations of Fauvoritism)
colour – the new ‘black’
deconstruction – critic’s hatchet-job
Edvard Munch – AaaaaaaaAAAAARRRGHH!!
Freud – act of ripping people off
Gauguin – one employed in knocking out Tahitian pearl necklaces
homage – plagiarism
installation – what curators do
Johns/Jaspers – suckers punters
kunst – art-dealers (those committing Freud)
Land Art – gardening
modernism – everything since 1872
Neo – ‘new’. As in Neo-Expressionism: expressing old ideas for new money
Objet Trouvé (‘found object’) – where there’s luck, there’s brass
Pompidou – the 19th President of la Republique Francaise. Not an artist
‘Qu’est-ce que le (freakin’) deuce?!’ – French expletive (cf. spazialismo.)
Ryman – retail stationer, Brit. Sells pens, paints, white canvasses, etc.
‘spazialismo!’ – most-frequently uttered put-down in contemporary art criticism (recent 12-month survey conducted by the University of Aesthetic Studies, Milan)
Tjapaltjarri – Aboriginal onomatopoeia indicating intellectual mortification
uglée – work of self-evident genius
video art – film
white –
 

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From the programme for Broken Leg Theatre Company’s sell-out production of Yasmina Reza’s ‘Art’, British Council, Colombo, July 1st-3rd.

Others did not.

What can you do.