Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203150227
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by ROBERT RIVENBARK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In his new novel, "Time's Arrow," best-selling British author Martin Amis (son of novelist Kingsley Amis) revives all the gloomy preoccupations of post-World War II existentialism and absurdism.
Throughout the book, we hear echoes of Beckett, Sartre and Camus. Amis's work suffers by comparison.
The book employs a clever device to unfold its tale of life's meaninglessness: the narrator, Todd Friendly, wakes up inside the body of an S.S. doctor on the lam in Canada in the 1980s. He relives the doctor's life backward, discovering along the way the crimes his host committed during the Nazi Holocaust.
The device allows Amis ample room to voice his gloomy views. Along the way Todd treats us to observations such as "We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses . . . But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, in turn, all jerry built." Later Todd informs us that "Probably all human cruelty is fixed and eternal."
Still later, Todd laments that "People move through something prearranged, armed with lies. They're always looking forward to going places they've just come back from, or regretting doing things they haven't done yet . . . Lords of lies and trash - all kinds of crap and trash."
Pessimism is justified in recounting the life of a man who tortured and butchered other human beings without remorse. But Amis makes it clear that his S.S. doctor symbolizes humanity at large, and that the doctor's misadventures represent the human condition.
It's a message we've heard before, from far more capable hands, and it has grown tiresome. After half a century of nihilistic hand-wringing, Western literature should be capable of moving on to new themes.
Robert Rivenbark is a Blacksburg-based free-lance writer.
by CNB