selfspeare

When reading Money, I like to imagine the character of John Self as a distorted stand-in who embodies the worst qualities of Amis himself. Although Amis establishes a self-titled character in his story in what I believe is an attempt to stray these ideas away, some similarities between the personal lives of Self and of the real Martin Amis leave it hard for me to believe that there is no connection. In an interview with Amis online, he reveals that he spent a year living in the United States. This might have lead Amis to believe he was partly American. The same can be said about Self, who is half american and immediately feels comfortable with the country, in contrast to traditional british protagonists who go to the US and are horrified by its excesses. The fact that Amis speaks to his audience through the lens of a fictional (but strikingly familiar) character applies to Shakespeare's belief that “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”.

Shakespeare's protagonists are always fully-drawn characters, while his minor characters are often one-dimensional representations of gossip, sinfulness, long-windedness, etc. In the same way, Amis's protagonist directly engages the audience and "breaks the fourth wall," whereas his minor characters, whose names usually consist of puns, are representations of vices or characteristics. Shakespearean acting also implies that certain characters will develop a relationship with the audience through asides, while other characters will ignore the audience. In terms of Money, the puns and vices used by Martin act as a way of developing characters by ignoring the audience: their names say enough alone.

Self's character is extremely actor-obessesed. He often notes certain actions and they take and movements they make with their bodies such as Spunk's "actor-stare". What is ironic about this is that within the movie he is making, each character is casted in a role that he finds embarrassing or uncharacteristic compared with his usual work. I am unsure of the significance of this, but would like to ask the class and Robin what you guys think.