CityLife

Amis and Jacobson discuss sex, comedy and racial slurs - all in the name of Britain

Martin Amis

ASKING two of Britain's leading comic novelists to discuss Literature and Britishness is a bit like putting a blind greyhound on at Belle Vue stadium - it'll never stay on track.

Manchester-born Jewish author and columnist Howard Jacobson joined eminent novelist Martin Amis for a debate at Manchester University's Whitworth Hall.

Amis and Jacobson were in Manchester to discuss how well the novel represents the nation, and how ideas of ‘Britishness’ have altered over the past half-century.

The last of a dying breed

Amis, currently a professor at Manchester University's prestigious Centre for New Writing, introduced himself and sparring partner Jacobson as "Britain's two last great comic writers."

Jacobson acknowledged the compliment in the sardonic manner readers of his work will no doubt be familiar with.

"I have absolutely no doubt," said Jacobson, "that if I asked you to find me three pieces of great contemporary comic prose, one would be Martin's... and two would be mine."

Part stand-up, part ego-trip

Both men welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate exactly why they believe themselves to be the last in a long line of distinguished comic novelists.

Amis' droll one-liners and Jacobson's humorous interjections - complete with wild hand gestures - complimented each other well, and the novelists worked together like an odd literary double act.

Both Jacobson and Amis have an astute sense of comic timing and some genuinely funny anecdotes, which saved the debate from becoming too much of an ego-trip.

Political incorrectness

Given that Jacobson writes comic novels from a Jewish perspective, and Amis founded his early career upon the shock value of grotesque caricatures - such as Keith, the "flatulent dwarf" from second novel Dead Babies - it was hardly surprising that the debate became a diatribe against political correctness gone mad.

Amis began by testing the audience's tolerance with a string of jokes about racial stereotypes.  

"I sense a growing unease," he quipped, several minutes in. 

Comedy became a key focus of the debate, as the two men discussed how important a sense of humour is when dealing with national identity.

National pride

Jacobson quoted Sex Pistols manager Malcolm Mclaren on British multiculuralism:

"Being British is about singing Karaoke in Bars, eating Chinese noodles and Japanese sushi, drinking French wine, wearing Prada and Nike, dancing to Italian house music, listening to Cher, using an Apple Mac, holidaying in Florida and Ibiza and buying a house in Spain."

While Amis, as ever, quoted the rather more inward-looking views of his father, the novelist Sir Kingsley Amis:

"England - nice people, nasty food.  France - nice food, nasty people.  Italy - nice people, nice food.  Germany - nasty food, nasty people."

Amis declared that he was "proud to be of the nation of Shakespeare," and extolled the strengths of British poetry.

The shortcomings of British sex

Via an story about Amis' Welsh nanny ("for years I thought the Welsh invented schadenfreude") it didn't take long for the novelists to steer the debate around to sex. 

British sex, in particular - and its shortcomings.

Amongst numerous references to great British classics, Amis quoted an extract from Middlemarch to show how "only the British could liken sex to a spreading disease."

The debate drew to a close with the notion that the one of the defining characteristics of the contemporary British novel is an excess of common sense.

A short Q & A rounded off the evening, and the two men exited with the intention, or so it seemed, to continue the discussion in the pub.