Welcome to (what will possibly become) a new feature on this here blarg, Things in the Shop that You Should Buy, in which I, Steven Z. Helfenbaum, recommend to you, I don’t know your name, books, not necessarily new, that we have in the shop and that you totes owe yourself to read. Starting today with Martin Amis’s classic, Money.
Money by Martin Amis
“It must be the booze, it must be the junk, it must be all the pornography“
Money tells the story of John Self, a successful ad executive turned movie producer, and the perfect consumer of fast food, drink, drugs, and pornography. Throughout he travels between New York and his home in London, making a semi-autobiographical film (his father, Barry, hilariously and terribly, sent an invoice to John on his maturity for expenses involved in raising him) with young, tanned, athletic producer Fielding Goodney. Money is a satirical look at all the excesses of late 1980s ‘greed is good’ capitalism (and not surprisingly it works just as well today). Self is a hideous character concerned only with gratification and a desire for greater riches, and is the very embodiment of his self-centred age. But he’s also very funny. Consumerism and pornography saturate everything, creating an oppressive, ugly mood that Amis can create so well (see also London Fields, which is amazing), and the book rife with clever literary allusions to Shakespeare, in particular Othello. Important to the book is the question of motive, or rather the lack thereof in late modern society. Money is also very clever: Amis writes himself into the novel, in doing so implicating himself (and the reader as well) in the hyperconsumerist monster, and also allowing some interesting meta-fictional exchanges about Amis’s role in the novel (as character and author). As vital today as it must have been 30 years ago (I’m too young for the 80s buddy), Money is a fantastic novel. It’s in our shop and you should buy it.
Money by Martin Amis, $12.95
Sunflower Bookshop 