MARTIN AMIS - THE INFORMATION

"I know you would, Balfour."

"We could do it on subscription. Make a list. Starting with your friends."

"Thanks. Thanks. But it's got to take its chances. It's got to sink or swim."

Sink or swim in what? In the universal.

The ancients used to think that the stars-all of them-lay just beyond Saturn. Go beyond Saturn, and you would encounter the slipstream of the Milky Way. And that would be that. It isn't the case. Go beyond Saturn, a long way beyond Saturn (more than doubling the distance of your journey from the Earth), and you will encounter Uranus. Go another thousand million miles and you will encounter Neptune, the last of the gas giants. Keep going and what do you get? You get Pluto.

Unlike the other gas giants, unlike the failed sun of Jupiter, Uranus has no internal heat source; it is tilted at a right angle-eight degrees more than a right angle, in fact, so its rotation is retrograde; it has black rings, and fifteen known satellites.

Neptune boasts its Great Dark Spot, its 700-mph winds, and, among its eight satellites, glamourous Triton: moon-sized, with geysers of nitrogen, and pink snow. Neptune has rings. One of its minor satellites, Galatea, is a ring-stabilizer-or a "ring-shepherd," as they are called.

Now Pluto. One must never mock the afflicted, of course, but Pluto really is an awful little piece of shit. Jupiter didn't make it as a star; Pluto didn't even make it as a planet. Tenuous atmosphere, a crust of ice (300 miles deep), and then rock. Pluto's mass is about a fifth of the mass of our moon, and its moon, Charon (another toilet), is half as small again.

There are no rings, so Charon is no shepherd: he is a ferryman, ferrying the dead to Pluto's underworld. The orbit of Charon matches the rotation of Pluto, so this terrible little pair, this terrible little pair of two-bob planetesimals are "locked." Depending on which hemisphere of Pluto you were on, Charon would either be permanently immobile or permanently invisible. Wherever you were on Pluto, you could stare at the sun. It would sometimes seem cruciform, like the brandished sword of god. But it wouldn't warm you and it wouldn't give you life.

The ancients also used to think of the stars as fixed: eternal and immutable. Human beings found such a notion hard to abandon, and it persisted well beyond Copernicus and Galileo. This is why they had so much difficulty with novas (what we would now think of as supernovas). This is why they had so much difficulty with "new stars."

Take this thing about Gwyn and carpentry. If you really want a terrible time (thought Richard, who was having a terrible time-that night, in his study), take this thing about Gwyn and carpentry.

In an interview Gwyn said, or was quoted as saying, that he always likened the craft of fiction to the craft of carpentry.

"You are chipping away, planing, sanding, until everything is smooth and everything fits. Above all, the construction has to work. The carpenter knows that what he makes has to be functional. It has to be honest." Q: "Do you actually do any carpentry or work with your hands?" "Yes. I have a kind of workshop area where I potter about. I find it very therapeutic."

The next time Richard saw him (this was some months ago), Richard said, "What's all this bullshit about you and carpentry? Do you do any carpentry?"

"No," said Gwyn.

"It's a worthless metaphor for writing anyway. They have nothing in common."

"Sounds good, though. It makes writing more accessible to people who work with their hands."

"Why do you want to make writing more accessible to people who work with their hands?"

A couple of weeks later Gwyn took Richard down to his basement to show him how the wine cellar was coming along. Richard noticed a workbench under the stairs. There was a vise, a plane, a saw, even a spirit level. There were also several blocks of wood which someone had perfunctorily savaged with chisel and mallet. "So you do do carpentry."

"No. I just got worried that some interviewer might ask to see the place where I did carpentry. Look. I even bought this handmade stool so I could say I made it.?

"Good thinking." "I even cut my hand." "How? Doing carpentry?"

"No. Messing around with that chisel to make it look like I did carpentry."

"Fucking up that chair to make it look like you made it." "Exactly."

It was midnight. Richard sloped out of his study and went to the kitchen in search of something to drink. Anything alcoholic would do. He experienced a thud of surprise, from temple to temple, when instead of the usual striplit void he confronted his wife. Gina was not a large woman, but the mass of her presence was dramatically augmented by the lateness of the hour. And by marriage, and by other things. He looked at her with his infidel's eyes. Her oxblood hair was up and back; her face was moist with half-assimilated night cream; her towel dressing gown revealed a triangle of bath-rouged throat. With abrupt panic Richard realized what had happened to her, what she had done: Gina had become a grownup. And Richard hadn't. Following the pattern of his generation (or its bohemian wing), Richard was going to go on looking the same until he died. Looking worse and worse, of course, but looking the same. Was it the kids, was it the job, was it the lover she must surely have by now (in her shoes, in her marriage-if Richard was married to Richard, he'd have one)? He couldn't object on grounds of ethics or equity. Because writing is infidelity. Because all writing is infidelity. She still looked good, she still looked sexual, she even still looked (you had to hand it to her) … dirty. But Gina had made a definite move toward the other side.

"I was thinking we might have a progress report," she said. "It's been a year."

"What has?"

"To the day." She looked at her watch. "To the hour."

Relief and recognition came together: "Oh yeah." He had thought this might have something to do with their marriage. "I got you," he said.

He remembered. A close and polluted summer night, crying out for thunder, just like this one. A late emergence from his study in search of drink, just like this one. A dressing-gowned and surprise-value manifestation from Gina, just like this one. There were probably one or two differences. The kitchen might have felt a little brighter. There might have

been more toys about. Gina might have looked a day or two younger, back then, and definitely un-grown-up. And Richard might have looked a bit less like shit than he looked now.

That time, a year ago, he had had a very bad week: the debut of Gwyn Barry in the bestseller list; the striking of Marco; Anstice; and something else.

This time he had had a very bad year.

"I remember."

He remembered. A year ago to the hour, and Gina saying, "How many hours a day do you spend on your novels?" "What? Spend?" said Richard, who had his whole head in the drinks cupboard. "I don't know. Varies."

"You usually do it first thing, don't you. Except Sundays. How many hours, on average? Two? Three?"

Richard realized what this reminded him of, distantly: being interviewed. There she sat across the table with her pencil and her notebook and her green tea. Pretty soon she would be asking him if he relied, for his material, on actual experience or on the crucible of the imagination, how he selected his subjects and themes, and whether or not he used a word processor. Well, maybe; but first she asked:

"How much money have they earned you? Your novels. In your life." He sat down. Richard wanted to take this sitting down. The calculation didn't occupy him for very long. There were only three figures to be added together. He told her what they amounted to. "Give us a minute," she said.