MARTIN AMIS - THE INFORMATION

The coffee came. They paused. They began.

First, the necessarily depressing issue of Richard's curriculum vitae. Attached to her clipboard she had a printout on him; she had information. Gal made notes and said "Mm-hm." Her manner suggested, encouragingly, that she was no stranger to the stalled career; Richard began to believe that she routinely dealt with greater prodigies of obscurity and pauperism-with seedier duds, with louder flops.

"What's this biography of Denton Welch?" she said, and frowned accusingly at her clipboard.

"I never did it. It fell through."

"AndofR. C. Squires?"

"R. C. Squires. A literary editor of The Little Magazine."

"Which little magazine?"

"The Little Magazine. The one I'm literary editor of. An interesting life. He was in Berlin in the thirties and in Spain during the Civil War." Respectively whoring in the Kurfiiirstendamm and playing ping-pong in Sitges, as Richard had learned, after a month of desultory research. "May I smoke?"

"What about this travel book? The Siberia trip."

"I'm not going."

"The Siberian lepers …"

"I'm not going."

"What's this? The History of Increasing Humiliation. Nonfiction, right?"

Richard crossed his legs and then recrossed them. This was a book he still wanted to write: one day. He said, as he had said before, "It would be a book accounting for the decline in the status and virtue of literary protagonists. First gods, then demigods, then kings, then great warriors, great lovers, then burghers and merchants and vicars and doctors and lawyers. Then social realism: you. Then irony: me. Then maniacs and murderers, tramps, mobs, rabble, flotsam, vermin.?

She was looking at him. "And what would account for it?"

He sighed. "The history of astronomy. The history of astronomy is the history of increasing humiliation. First the geocentric universe, then the heliocentric universe. Then the eccentric universe-the one we're living in. Every century we get smaller. Kant figured it all out, sitting in his armchair. What's the phrase? The principle of terrestrial mediocrity."

"…Big book."

"Big book. Small world. Big universe."

"What is the status of all these projects?"

"The status of all these projects," said Richard, "is that I've taken advances on them and not written them."

"Hell with that," she said, and now the exchange started speeding up. "They write it off."

"The new novel. What's it about."

"Modern consciousness."

"Is it as difficult as your other novels?"

"More difficult. Much more difficult."

"You didn't think you might change tack?"

"And write a Western?"

"What's it called?"

"Untitled. Its title is Untitled"

"We'll soon fix that."

"We will not fix that."

"I reread Dreams Are Hard to Find and I-"

"Dreams Don't Mean Anything."

"Don't say that. You're too easily discouraged."

"Point one," said Richard. He fell silent. He was applying the brake. In fact he had written a Western. He had tried to write a Western. His Western had petered out after a couple of pages of banging shutters, of hurrying tumbleweeds … "Point one. The title of my book is Dreams Don't Mean Anything. Point two. It-what I mean is dreams don't signify anything. Not exactly. Point three. I am not 'easily discouraged.' It has been difficult getting me discouraged. It has been arduous."

"Can I have a drag?"

He held the cigarette out to her butt-first. She met it not with her fingers-she met it with her lips. So Richard was mollified by a glimpse of star-bright brassiere, against Persian flesh. Gal inhaled expertly, and sat back. She liked to smoke; she used artificial sweeteners in her espresso.

Her hand, he noticed, was no less plump than it was ten years ago. A hand he had held, avuncularly, many times. Gal had a flaw. A predisposition. Weight wanted her. Fat wanted her. The desk she sat at was organized, but there was something in her that wasn't organized, not quite .. . Beyond was the window: in this frame of gray sky the cranes were like T-squares on a drawing board. The paper the architect was using was soiled and smudged. Too much rubbing out and starting again, with soiled eraser. Graphic cancellations, and the grains of the rubber shading the air, brushed and nudged by the hovering pinkie. A good idea, when imagining London, when imagining cities, to go back to the drawing board.

"I want to represent you," she said.

"Thank you," he said.

"Now. Writers need definition. The public can only keep in mind one thing per writer. Like a signature. Drunk, young, mad, fat, sick: you know. It's better if you pick it rather than letting them pick it. Ever thought about the young-fogey thing? The young fart. You wear a bow tie and a waistcoat. Would you smoke a pipe?"

"Well I would, probably," said Richard, stretching his neck, "if somebody offered me one. With tobacco in it and a match. Listen. I'm too old to be a young fart. I'm an old fart." Flatulence, as it happened, was on Richard's mind. That morning, while shaving, he had geared himself, expecting the usual pungent blare. And all he heard was a terrible little click. "Aren't we forgetting that I've got to get published first?"

"Oh I think I can call in some favors. Then we'll get everything working together. Your fiction is your fiction. I won't fuck with you creatively but we've got to get something else to play it off against. Your journalism needs a gee-up. It's too bad you review all over the place. You should have a column. Think about it."

"Don't mind me asking this. I gather you're very good at what you do. Do you find your appearance helps?"

"Absolutely. How about … how about doing a long in-depth piece about what it's like to be a very successful novelist?"

Richard waited.

"You know: what's it really like. People are very interested in writers. Successful ones. More interested in the writers than the writing. In the writers' lives. For some reason. You and I both know they mainly sit at home all day."

Richard waited.

"So how about this piece. I'll sell it in America. Everywhere."

"The one about what it's like being an incredibly successful writer?"

"Day by day. What's it like. What's it really like."

Richard went back to waiting.

"… Gwyn's new novel is published in the States in March. Here it'll be May. He's doing the eight-city tour. New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Boston, New York again. You go with him. I'll set it up."

"Whose idea is this?"

"Mine. I'm sure he'll be delighted to have you along. Those tours are a sentence. Go on. Do it. You're smiling. Do it. It'll show everybody how unenvious you are."

"Is that my signature? Unenvious?"

He said he would have to think about it (untrue: he was going), and they shook hands without the hug this time, like professionals. In the tube train to Soho and the offices of The Little Magazine Richard considered his signature: what marked him out. Because we all needed them now, signatures, signatures, even the guy sitting opposite: his was the pair of pink diaper pins he wore through his nose . .. Richard couldn't come up with anything good. Except-this. He had never been to America. And he would tell you that quite frankly, raising his pentimento eyebrows and tensing his upper lip with a certain laconic pride.

I quite agree. What an asshole.

Gal's right. Nothing ever happens to novelists. Except-this.

They are born. They get sick, they get well, they hang around the inkwell. They leave home, with their stuff in a hired van. They learn to drive, unlike poets (poets don't drive. Never trust a poet who can drive. Never trust a poet at the wheel. If he can drive, distrust the poems). They get married in registry offices. They have children in hospitals-the ordinary miracle. Their parents die-the ordinary disaster. They get divorced or they don't. Their children leave home, learn to drive, get married, have children. They grow old. So nothing ever happens to them, except the universal.