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Suicide Is Painless

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Suicide Is Painless Suicide Is Painless Night Train By Martin Amis Harmony Books 175 pages, $20 REVIEWED BY J.W. MASON hen sociologist Emile Durkheim investigation unfolds, it becomes clear turf-war, dog-eat-dog stuff we do all examined "Suicide and Cosmic that Amis' question is not "why?" but day will be revealed for what it is.... W Factors" in his pioneering study, "why not?" Why wouldn't any rational The truth is, Detective, the truth is Suicide, he was talking about climate's inhabitant of the late 20th century, look- that human beings are not sufficient- effects on suicide rates. When aging ing at life with unblinkered eyes, simply ly evolved to understand t h e place enfant terrible of British fiction (and choose to end it all? they're living in. We're all retards. son of novelist Kingsley) Martin Amis The book consists largely of Hooli- Einstein's a retard. I'm a retard. We writes about suicide and cosmic factors, han's interviews and exchanges with fel- live on a planet of retards. on the other hand, he means cosmic. His low cops and with various people in new novel, an introductory philosophy some way connected with Jennifer: her Meanwhile, life among the retards text in mystery-novel drag, concerns a philosopher boyfriend, Trader Faulkner; remains nasty, brutish and short. "Every motiveless suicide. Jennifer Rockwell is her boss, famed astrophysicist Bax Den- cop in America is familiar with the a 28-year-old cosmologist who kills her- ziger; a travelling salesman from Texas super-savagery of Christmas Day self for no earthly reason at all. she'd apparently picked up at a bar just domestics," Hoolihan reflects. "On The novel is written in the form of a before the suicide; her doctor; neighbors. Christmas Day, everyone's home at the diary kept by Mike Hoolihan, a female It's Denziger who first points Hooli- same time. And it's a disaster. We call cop and recovering alcoholic in a han in the right direction, toward cosmic them 'star or fairy?' murders." And the "second-echelon American city," who's factors: dark matter of the universe keeps sliding been assigned to investigate Jennifer's apart implacably, regardless. death. Hoolihan's investigation has The universe was still the size of Faced with this appalling whirl of stu- more than professional interest for her; your living room until the big tele- pidity, pettiness, cruelty and indiffer- the two women were friends, and Hooli- scopes came along. Now we have an ence, your best bet is to play dumb, han regards Jennifer's father, the city's idea of j u s t how fragile and isolated avert your eyes, not take it seriously, or police chief, as a kind of father figure our situation really is. And I believe, imagine that things could somehow be herself. as Jennifer did, that when all this worse. When Hoolihan was on the bot- Hoolihan is on the case because Jen- kicks in, this information t h a t ' s only tle, she anesthetized herself. Of her fel- nifer's father can't believe his daughter sixty or seventy years old, we'll have low cops, she observes that "our would kill herself—or, at least, not with- a very different view of our place and standards, for human behavior, are des- out some good reason. But as Hoolihan's purpose here. And all this rat-race,. perately low." "On the evening Jennifer IN THESE TIMES © FEBRUARY 22, 1998 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED lockwell died," says Hoolihan, "the sky then when I was plainclothes, and was clear and the visibility excellent." undercover, I had to train myself out Why did Jennifer Rockwell kill herself? of it, all over again. Because no other "A provocative "She just had standards. High ones. kind of woman on earth, not a movie Wliich we didn't meet." star, not a brain surgeon, not a head perspective on the In his insistence on the emptiness and of state, will stare at a man the way a indifference of the universe and the police stares. cultural implications inadequacy of human beings, Amis is really just picking up where he left off or years, Amis has been writing defi- of political and in his last novel, The Information, which Fantly anti-moralizing novels, depict- is a kind of distilled essence of mid-life ing a zero-sum world where winners win social protest." crisis. Night Train, if less vertiginous, is and losers lose, with no possibility of a more polished, coherent and interest- compensation or redemption. Like the —Library Journal ing work. pre-Christian pagans, he denies that there In Night Train, the effort to under- is any moral order to the universe, that stand what motivates a suicide is also human beings are in any sense equal, and the writer's not entirely successful that suffering and unhappiness are the JAMES JASPER effort to understand what motivates result of anything but bad hick. anyone except himself. From Amis' In each of his previous novels, luck, point of view, Jennifer is triply alien: the principle that separates the happy American, a woman and a suicide. from the unhappy, took a definite form: Americans have long been Amis' In Success, it was success; in Money, by The Art of obsessed-over other: In most of his far the best of these, it was money; in recent novels, he inflicts horrific (and The Information, it was fame and liter- meticulously observed) American trav- ary success. els upon British protagonists, and he For a long time, Amis' anti-moral has written a collection of essays (The sensibility was sustained by a kind of Moronic Inferno, a brilliant title he lift- manic energy: He was so amused by the Culture, Biography, ed from Saul Bellow) on his own expe- wheel of fortune's ups and downs that riences here. he didn't bother to provide his charac- a,»cS Creativity in That both the book's subject and its ters with meaningful inner lives or any Social Movements narrator are women is even more of a motivation except ambition. But as Tol- departure for a writer whose past work stoy, among others, long ago showed (in n important, well has sometimes been taxed with misogy- "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"), those who written, and well ny. It's only a little unfair to say the typ- devote their lives to status and success ical Amis woman is Success' "tiny have no response to life's most , a r g u e d book.... Tessa, a would-be nymphet of at least intractable problems but nihilism. Jasper guides us through the fifteen to whom you can do whatever Night Train, then, is the flip side of diverse literature on social the hell you like. (You can kill her if Amis' earlier satires. The seemingly movements with a critical you like—it wouldn't bother her)." You inexhaustible energy has been exhaust- intelligence and sorts it for can imagine the hypothesis forming in ed; the pagan spirit has cooled to freez- us, telling us which ideas Amis' head: But what if you couldn't ing; the wheel has spun down. Amis' do anything you liked with a woman? satire depended on his characters' are flawed and which are Thus Mike Hoolihan, beat cop, "and a single-minded pursuit of whatever goal especially useful.... An woman, also": he set for them, and his delight, in the outstanding synthesis that guise of fate, was in frustrating their will be essential reading for When I badge my way from door to hopes. But in a truly empty and mean- students of protest."—William door... and the women see me com- ingless universe, money, success and the A. Gamson, Boston College ing up the path—I don't know what rest of the worldly goods he has sent his they think. There I am in my parka, characters chasing after turn out to be my black j e a n s . They think I'm a worthless. If whining is nothing, maybe CLOTH $35.00 diesel. Or a truck driver from the it isn't everything, after all. Just in time Available at bookstores. Soviet Union. But the men know at then, that in Night Train he also seems once what I am. Because I give t h e m to be discovering a world with other the eyeball—absolutely direct. As a human beings in it. • 5801 South Ellis Avenue patrol cop, on the street, that's the Chicago, Illinois 60637 first thing you have to train yourself J. W. Mason is a former culture editor Visit us at http://www.press.uchicago.edu to do: Stare at men. In the eyes. And of In These Times. FEBRUARY 22, 1998 IN THESE TIMES LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Grossed-Out Surgeon Vomits he has opened the door to a serious all play crucial roles in the development Inside Patient! An Insider's Look examination of a medium that should be of racial identity. But by not quoting at Supermarket Tabloids taken seriously. • Texans who make or imply those con- By Jim Hogshire nections, the analysis feels contrived. • Feral House The White Scourge: 160 pages, $12.95 Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites Organizing to Win: REVIEWED BY PAT ARNOW in Texas Cotton Culture New Research on Union Strategies This book's lurid title, Grossed-Out By Neil Foley Edited by Kate Bronfenbrenner et al. Surgeon Vomits Inside Patient!, is mis- University of California Press Cornell University Press leading.
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