Koba The Dread: Laughter and The 20 Million

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Anyone else read this - Martin Amis' book about Stalin? I'm about a quarter into it now (NO SPOILERS ha ha).

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Thursday, 18 September 2003 12:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Many, many hatas exist on ILE. I thought it was egotistical, but I think he's got a good and interesting main point, and I was more ignorant before I read it than afterwards, so I give it a thumbs up.

― Sam (chirombo), Thursday, 18 September 2003 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I'd put this way up towards the top of the pile of his worst books! As has been pointed out more eloquently than I could manage on other recent threads, Martin Amis just can't really do profundity in the way he would like.

Again, his style and articulacy is faultless in this book, but the whole thing is so flawed in a 'what-did-he-really-think-he-was-trying-to-achieve-here?' sort of a way that it makes you just want to throw it out the window.

And as with the ridiculously over-defensive lists of how many Jewish people he knows that he used to counter any accusations of anti-semitic content in Time's Arrow (probably his very worst book) and Experience (probably his very best book), the sequence wherein he tries to put forward his own personal connection to the suffering wrought by Stalinism is toe-curling.
Sorry if this counts as a spoiler, but he claims he has some understanding of the suffering in Stalin's camps as his baby's screaming once kept him awake at night and he had to call the nanny to quieten said baby down again. I mean, really!

The pointlessness of the whole enterprise towers higher when you consider that he didn't even bother to do any investigative research beyond reading a shelf-full of books.

If it were that kind of thread, I'd have to vote DUD!

― M Carty (mj_c), Thursday, 18 September 2003 13:25 (twenty-two years ago)

I have never understood the Martin Amis thing. He's supposed to be this great stylist, but I just don't see it. I read a long extract of his latest novel in the Guardian Review, the style just reeks of the sixth-form show-off: "The contrails of the more distant aeroplanes were like incandescent spermatozoa, sent out to fertilize the universe." - I mean for God's sake. I could probably handle the try-too-hard style if Amis actually had anything to say beyond the bleeding obvious, but he doesn't.

― Susan (Susan), Thursday, 18 September 2003 14:00 (twenty-two years ago)

This book is more capitalist propaganda, isn't it?

― dave q, Thursday, 18 September 2003 19:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Dave Q is Ayn Rand in Whose Bank Account Is It, Anyway?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 18 September 2003 19:31 (twenty-two years ago)

i thought you hated pinkos dave!

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Thursday, 18 September 2003 20:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Dave's talent at mimicry again shows itself.

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Thursday, 18 September 2003 21:21 (twenty-two years ago)

what is the point of this Koba The Dread book? It's not like we didn't already know that Stalin was a BAD person and that foolish/wicked people in the west followed him.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 19 September 2003 08:20 (twenty-two years ago)

i think he's more precisely trying to deal w/ to what degree people in the west were actually foolish/wicked or rather deliberatly avoiding seeing how BAD stalin was... he also wants you to know that Lenin was v. BAD too - but it does have a "if you're not a socialist at 18 you have no heart/if your not a tory by 30 you have no brain" kind of feel to it which is a little obvious (not obviously true, i mean, just obvious in that its a cliche)

midway through now it seems a bit of a cliffs notes version of other books, esp by survivors of the gulags & his dad's pal robt conquest

as I don't know all that much about stalin, i do find it interesting, so the whole "WHAT'S THE POINT?" agrgument is a little lost on me...those with more basic knowledge of the subject may well be frustrated it by it.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Saturday, 20 September 2003 12:18 (twenty-two years ago)

to what degree people in the west were actually foolish/wicked or rather deliberatly avoiding seeing how BAD stalin was...

& to what degree the latter = the former, i think

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Saturday, 20 September 2003 12:19 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...

i finally got around to reading this the other week. despite the fact that amis himself comes off as insulated, smug, and rather obnoxious, i found myself agreeing with nearly everything he said.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 10 June 2006 07:57 (nineteen years ago)

I am more interested in reading this than most Amis books, as it looks like it might have a point other than "Isn't Martin Amis clever?"

― chap who would dare to be a nerd, not a geek (chap), Saturday, 10 June 2006 11:36 (nineteen years ago)

(By the way:

Martin Amis
http://www.billmon.org/archives/agent%20smith.gif

Agent Smith
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38235000/jpg/_38235244_amis_315.jpg)

― chap who would dare to be a nerd, not a geek (chap), Saturday, 10 June 2006 11:38 (nineteen years ago)

I had a crush on Martin Amis until I saw a second photograph.

― Abbott (Abbott), Saturday, 10 June 2006 16:33 (nineteen years ago)

I liked Time's Arrow too, for the gimmick. Probably the wrong book to read first because everything else I picked up after disappointed me. "This isn't backwards!" Like trying to read

― Abbott (Abbott), Saturday, 10 June 2006 16:35 (nineteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.