Martin Amis Pronounces...and Provokes

The ever-provocative novelist and critic Martin Amis, in a review of Don DeLillo's new book in the 11/28/11 issue of The New Yorker, makes the point that "When we say that we love a writer's work...what we really mean is that we love about half of it." He goes on to say that Joyce's reputation relies mostly on "Ulysses." More controversially, to me at least, he asserts that "George Eliot gave us one readable book, which turned out to be the central Anglophone novel." As readers of this blog know, I certainly agree with the second half of that sentence, but not the first. Just one readable book? What about "The Mill on the Floss"? "Daniel Deronda"? But in general, I must admit, there is something to Amis' thesis. He goes on to say that "every page of Dickens contains a paragraph to warm to and a paragraph to veer back from. Coleridge wrote a total of two major poems...Milton consists of 'Paradise Lost.' Even my favorite writer, William Shakespeare, succumbs to this law...who would voluntarily curl up with 'King John' or 'Henry VI, Part III'?" But then Amis goes on to say that "Janeites will never admit that three of the six novels are comparative weaklings." Those are fighting words! It is true that some of Austen's six are stronger than others, but it is all relative; compared to other novels by other novelists, they are all gems, shining stars, treasures of literature! The world would be poorer if any one of them did not exist. So while I more or less accept Amis' main argument, I certainly reject some of his examples. (I am sure he knew as he was writing that his examples would be controversial and provoke exactly the type of responses I am giving here!)