Word: tulle
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Information centers around Richard Tull, a ridiculously obscure, soon-to-be ex-novelist. Richard is of that most quintessentially English brand of heroes: he is a loser. (In fact, the first installations of Amis' novel appeared in an issue of Granta magazine called "Losers.") To some extent, the author embodies, in Richard the stereotypical English hatred of success. His (anti) hero is an unmitigated failure whose humiliations Amis delights in recounting...
...novel opens with the promise of another of Amis' feats of controlled chaos. The plot develops with the right balance of malice and merriment. At the age of 40, struggling novelist Richard Tull understands that he will never make it as a writer. His cerebral fiction no longer gets points for degree of difficulty. He reviews books for pittances, his wife earns more than he does, his children distract him, and he is impotent...
...contrast, Tull's friend Gwyn Barry, duller and less gifted, makes millions with two politically correct, feel-good novels. Tull, feeling only jealousy and hatred, attempts to wreck Barry's career and his posh life. The attempts backfire, however, providing a source for Amis' sardonic humor-his elaborate facade for intellectual disdain and largely unearned cynicism...
Perhaps this letdown might have been avoided had Amis included more than one of the seven deadly sins. Pride has possibilities. Then again, envy is not an insignificant emotion-not even in a book review. If not as envious as the caricatured Tull, a critic is still the sort who thinks faster when standing on someone else's feet than when standing...
...time, and spent the next four years fulfilling that promise. The songs here, happily, avoid the worst of the excess; the pleasantly catchy "An Elegant Chaos" captures the flavor of the period, and "Sunspots," Iyrically a doodle, is worth listening to if only to hear what a Jethro Tull flute solo over a Nirvana guitar break might sound like. With a tuba...