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The Information by Martin Amis — book cover

The Information

by Martin Amis
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Overview

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 question novelist Richard Tull mills over, for his friend Gwyn Barry has become a darling of book buyers, award committees, and TV interviewers, even as Tull himself sinks deeper into the sub-basement of literary failure. The only way out of this predicament, Tull believes, is the plot the demise of Barry.

"With The Information, Amis delivers a portrait of middle-age realignment with more verbal felicity and unbridled reach than [anyone] since Tom Wolfe forged Bonfire of the Vanities."—Houston Chronicle

From the acclaimed author of London Fields comes a totally mesmerizing and thoroughly entertaining novel. When his oldest friend, who's also an internationally bestselling novelist, announces that he will use his media access and popularity to launch a political career, critic Richard Royce plots to pull his friend's career down around his ears.

Synopsis

When Richard Tull, frustrated, failed novelist invited to tour America with this oldest friend, internationally bestselling novelist Gwyn Barry, to record the event, his envy and humiliation are complete.  He sets out to gather the information that will destroy his best friend and pull his career down around his ears.  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the, both men are being watched by a psychopathic ex-con and a young thug who have staked out their homes--watching their wives, watching Richard's small boys, the twins--waiting until the time is right...

Publishers Weekly

Amis's latest is a pitch-black comedy about literary envy and the declining state of literary culture. (Mar.)

About the Author, Martin Amis

Martin Amis carried the nickname of enfante terrible of British literature far past his youthful debut at 24. His novels focus on excesses -- drugs, sex, money -- prompting Christopher Buckley to note in The New York Times in 1995 that his terrain is the junkyard of the human psyche and Mr. Amis is his generation s top literary dog.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Amis's latest is a pitch-black comedy about literary envy and the declining state of literary culture. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Richard Tull, a fortyish book reviewer and failed novelist, is driven to distraction by the effortless and unmerited success of fellow Oxonian Gwyn Barry. While Barry's simpleminded novels become overnight best sellers, Tull's dense experimental manuscripts send a succession of literary agents to the hospital with migraine. Tull finally decides it's payback time, and this novel chronicles his slapstick attempts to annihilate his friend. Amis pads the narrative with irrelevant and sometimes erroneous scientific data, presumably to justify the book's title. (In one astronomical digression, he gives the speed of light as 186,000 miles per hour.) In general, however, this is a wonderfully cantankerous send-up of the British literary scene, similar to David Lodge's satire on academia, Small World (1984). Although the book has been greeted as a roman clef in Great Britain, no special knowledge is required to enjoy its comedy. Recommended for most fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/94.]-Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles

Michiko Kakutani

"Satrical and tender, funny and disturbing...wonderful." -- The New York Times

Book Details

Published
March 1, 1996
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pages
384
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780679735731

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