Amis Reading Misrepresented

I'm writing about the pathetic observations in Daley C. Hagar's article about Martin Amis ("Amis' Information, on Our Shores," May 12, 1995). Country to Hagar's assertion, "I couldn't find a single person at Harvard who had even heard of him," I managed to round up two of my friends here at Harvard who had not only "heard of him" but had indeed read most of his novels and essays.

Hagar goes on to state that she was perplexed that the audience attending Amis' reading at Waterstone's "were all, well, old person." This astounded me. I was probably the third person to arrive at the reading, and my friend and I commented about all the people who were fast filling up all the seats. They were filling up all the seats. They were mostly hip-looking professsional people who read books. I'd say at least 80 percent of the people at the Martin Amis/Will Self reading were 35 or younger. Does this mean I am "old" at 29? it gets better.

Hagar says, "The few college students I saw [this must define youth] must have been there to get an autograph from Will Self, who apparently following a self-styled recovery plan, has stopped shooting heroin and started getting drunk at seven o'clock." I should say that Hagar admits to "digressing" in that sentence. Hagar must have the same skewed opinion on the definition of "drunk" as he or she does on "age". Will Self approached the podium with a beer in his hand, and without even reading from a text he recited a lengthy short story which he had learned by heart. Hagar ironically states that is was "recited quite beautifully...a morbid, witty short story." Albeit while the author was "drunk?" Will Self was not drunk. He simply veered away from the conventional and often stoic approaches to giving a reading by bringing a beer to the podium. He was still nursing in after the hordes of "old people" had finished getting their books signed.

These savagely inaccurate observations don't measure up to the overt pretentiousness that fills up this book review. Hagar not only had problems with the "old people" at the reading as well as Will Self's choice of beverage, but apparently she assumes one must possess some sort of British "roaring boy" background to fully comprehend Amis' work: "Amis hasn't made any waves on this side of the Atlantic...At Oxford, Amis is a normal topic of discussion." That statement is a firm justification for doing away with those semester-abroad programs. The pompous and presumptuous Hagar had just the perfect amount of self-righteousness and awe of the crown to be an absurd satire in an Amis novel. John Burke   Boston, MA