MARTIN AMIS - THE INFORMATION

Homer thought the starry heavens were made of bronze-a shield or dome, supported by pillars. Homer was over long before the first suggestion that the world was anything but flat.

Virgil knew the earth was round. But he thought it was the center of the universe, and that the sun and the stars revolved around it. And he thought it was fixed.

Dante did too. Virgil was his guide, in purgatory, in hell: because nothing had changed. Dante knew about eclipses and epicycles and retrogradation. But he had no idea where he was and how fast he was moving.

Shakespeare thought that the sun was the center of the universe.

Wordsworth did too, and thought it was made of coal.

Eliot knew that the sun was not at the center of the universe; that it was not at the center of the galaxy; and that the galaxy was not at the center of the universe.

From geocentric to heliocentric to galactocentric to plain eccentric. And getting bigger all the time: not at its steady rate of expansion but with sickening leaps of the human mind.

And prepare yourself for another blow, another facer: the multiplicity-the infinity, perhaps-of other universes.

So that's what you'd have to do. That's what you'd have to do, to make it all new again. You'd have to make the universe feel smaller.

Which is what Gwyn had done, Richard realized, as he typed out Amelior. Quietly, uninsistently, reassuringly. It provided the novel's only memorable phrase: "the naked-eye universe/' That's what Amelior was the center of: the naked-eye universe.

Of course, in Gwyn's novels, there wasn't much talk of astronomy. There was talk of astrology. And what was astrology? Astrology was the consecration of the homocentric universe. Astrology went further than saying that the stars were all about us. Astrology said that the stars were all about me.

Richard wanted to know how Gwyn was feeling these days. He called him and said, "How's your elbow?"

"Still bad," said Gwyn.

"So no tennis. And no snooker, I suppose. But why no chess? I know. It's that nagging brain injury of yours. That niggle in the brain. Better rest it. Rub some Deep Heat into your hair when you go to bed."

"Hang on a minute."

Gwyn was sitting on the armchair near the window in his study. He was between interviews. He had fixed it with Publicity that they all came to him now. All he needed was a tennis court in the basement, and a couple of restaurants, and he'd never have to go out. Pamela knocked and entered. She named a monthly magazine and said that its people were here.

"Photographer?" he asked.

"Photographer.?

"They're early. Have them wait . . . Interviews," he explained. "Where were we?"

Richard said, "We were talking about your brain."

"Look, I'd better tell you that I've been deceiving you these past couple of years."

"In what way?"

"I'm actually much better than you at games. Much better than you at tennis and snooker. Even chess. This sometimes happens, you know, after a great worldly success. There's a power rush. It overflows. Particularly into the, into the sexual and competitive spheres."

"But you always lose."

"That's right. I didn't want to win. I thought, you know, what with everything else, it might be more than you could handle. Losing at all games too."

"Oh dear. It's happened. I always knew you had a rogue maggot loose in your brain. Twanging its way from chamber to chamber. Well. It's happened."

"What's happened?"

"The maggot's had kids. Demi said you weren't yourself anymore. Not yourself. Whatever that might have been."

"Listen. Clear a day for it. We'll have a triathlon. Bring a change of clothes. We'll play tennis. Then go and play snooker. Then I'll give you dinner here and we'll finish up with a couple of games of chess."

"I can't wait. No excuses now. No checking into Intensive Care."

"Listen. What was it exactly Demi said to you? About my work?"

"I've got it written down. On my typewriter. Gwyn can't write for toffee comma you know full stop."

"You're sure she was talking about me."

"I ran it by her the next morning. She said, 'Well he can't, can he?' And I said-"

"Clear a day."

Gwyn stood up and walked toward the window and stared out. The world loved him, but the world loved him not. Poor Gwyn, and all this cognitive dis.

Outside, now, he didn't know where or how to look. The world said it loved him. So why was it stinging him in the corners of his eyes? He was the unrequited. The pink lips of the cherry blossoms were kissing him and mouthing his name, and whispering, and showing him the papillae of their tongues. Mother Earth was blowing hot and cold, as hot as Venus with its trapped gas and ceaseless lightning, as cold as Pluto and its frozen rock.

In truth, Gwyn's interests didn't extend very far above ground level. Up to the troposphere, because weather came from it, and even as far as the stratosphere, sometimes, if he happened to be flying in it. He knew the earth went round the sun-he knew this twice a year, when he adjusted his watch because of it. The cosmology of Amelior owed nothing to Richard Tull. What Gwyn had been trying to provide, as usual, in that book and its successor, was the reassurance of honest practicality. He sought to represent the universe only to the extent that a sensible person (himself, for instance) had any use for it. There was a sun, made of whatever it was made of, which went in and went out, which rose and set, which helped grow things and gave you a tan if you lay in it. There was a moon with a man in it. There was a backdrop of stars, if you looked at it, which could guide you at sea, if you needed it. And beyond all that-don't worry about it.

He lingered by the window while the new photographer deployed his lights, his tripods, his white umbrellas. The new interviewer was a girl (unattractive). With nonspecific hostility Gwyn noticed that Pamela had at some point deposited a fresh stack of weeklies onto the round table by his armchair. Next to last week's weeklies. And he hadn't even . . . An avid reader, Barry always. He felt it was his duty to keep up with as many. Here as elsewhere, Barry was committed to the spirit of serendipity: everything was grist to his-

"Do you mind if I use a tape? .. . Could you say something? What you had for breakfast?"

"Let me think. I had half a grapefruit. And some tea."

"You once said, 'Nobody seems to like my books. Except the public.' Would you still say that?"

Beyond the window the cherry blossoms rolled. London went on from there, spreading out in all directions.

"How, then, do you account for your universal appeal?"

London went on from there, spreading out in all directions. The world was like a lover that loved you only sometimes. Sometimes, when you touched her, she went mmmm and enveloped you with all her warmth.

"Is Amelior a kind of promised land? Does it play on that myth and on that appeal?"

Sometimes when you touched her she went mmmm and enveloped you with all her warmth. But sometimes she was hair-trigger, was fingertip, in her hate. And she twisted to your touch.

"Are the two books formal Utopias?"

She twisted to your touch. And this you could live with, could even understand. Only: all her brothers were out there.

"Could they be described as pastorals?"

All her brothers were out there. All her brothers were out there, waiting to break your face.

"Do you see the reinvention of society as one of the novelist's responsibilities?"

One last interview after this interview. He hoped the last interview would be easier than this interview. He wanted an interview with more questions like Did he set himself a time to write every day? or Did he use a word processor? or (come to think of it) How much money did he earn? or Who was he fucking? These days he was being taken far more seriously. Because it worked the other way round now: the literature-and-society people came in through the back door, to investigate an incidence of mass appeal. Gwyn liked being taken seriously and wanted-and expected-much much more of it. He felt strongly attracted to the idea that his work was deceptively simple. But he wished they'd make their questions easier. Now, as he traipsed through his answers, Gwyn checked the schedule to see who was coming next. Someone from the in-flight magazine of a charter firm based in Liverpool. Good.