Disclaimer: this is going to be explicit, so if you're under 13 or if you're easily offended/disgusted, you might want to skip this one.
Dead babies. By now we've all heard the extraordinarily disgusting and perverse "dead baby jokes", where the teller of the joke tries to push the very limits of just how disgusting and perverse they can make them.
And that so ends the connection (disgust) between the jokes themselves and the book Dead Babies written by Martin Amis, shown below:
When I finished this book, my immediate reaction, and pardon my French, was "What the flying fuck did I just read?!" (Yes, the f-word had to be involved because there is literally no other word I can think of to explain this book).
To give you an overview without spoilers:
This book is probably the worst, yet best written book that I have ever read, that is populated by horrible, infantile assholes juxtaposed next to advanced vocabulary, doing unspeakably horrible things to each other. When they aren't being horrible to each other, they are horrible to neighbors (crapping down their chimneys), visitors (so much to say here, that I won't), and local wildlife (shooting birds after laying down seeds for them in their yard).
The examples above that I have given are the least offensive in the entire book. There is no break in the debauchery (it's essentially about four super rich people in England who invited over three sexually adventurous friends from America to do drugs in a big house together with a really ugly fat short guy, a prostitute with "a heart of gold", and Johnny who we don't meet until the last four pages), depravity, and douchebaggery. Being published in the 70s, I had to wonder how this book was perceived in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. I don't think it aged well, but this book is glorious. It's hilariously dark, and grotesque. I've wanted to read Amis for a long, long time as he's been always in the back of my mind, and I seriously think I've stumbled upon my favorite writer. Which probably makes me really effed up. The entire book is comprised of short, fucked up back stories of each character, interlaced with the drug induced sexual encounters of the present.
I expected satire when I opened up this book for the first time. What I didn't expect was the amount of debauchery. Once I got used to the constantly drunk and high characters, described in such a way that even someone who has never done drugs before would understand (not that I would know), I then had to adjust to the discomfort of this book. I couldn't read it on my way to work on the T, due to the fear that some curious bystander would take a look over my shoulder and read a few sentences and step back far, far away from me. I laughed, I cried out "ew!!" a few times, and then the last four pages are unexpectedly terrifying, memorable, kind of funny in a weird way, illuminating, and different from anything in the whole book.
The entire weekend that the book takes places over is careening towards only one ending: utter destruction. It's just a matter of finding out how. What I didn't expect was what happens in the last few pages. If anything, read the damn book just to be utterly surprised. It's so surprising and over so fast, that I actually had to go back several times and reread the last chapter, just to make sure it actually happened. The characters, although unfamiliar and unsympathetic, are believable. They are engaging fuck-ups.
If I had to pick one character to relate to, I would pick the constantly drunk, gin loving Giles, who by 12:30 in the after noon had "consumed five Gin Rickeys, four gin and tonics, three gin and its, two gin and bitters, and one gin" (Amis, 47). This could possibly reflect an outing after a particularly bad wait shift at the restaurant. My love for gin is the only thing that connects me to any other person in this book.
It's impossible to think that this book wasn't written by someone on a lot of drugs, but it's very possible that the author has done no drugs whatsoever. He writes at the beginning:
"Not only are all characters and scenes in this book entirely fictitious; most of the technical, medical, and psychological data are too. My working maxim here has been as follows: I may not know much about science but I know what I like."
Damn.
So why the title Dead Babies? The "dead babies" in this book are the sobering moments. There is a sinister character in this book who remains a mystery until the very end, who makes his presence known in little blips of their weekend. Writing scary letters, destroying personal property, playing on irrational but very real fears of the other characters. This is a terrifying character who we as readers tend to forget exists, along with the others, in a book that is only slightly over 200 pages. He only comes into complete fruition on page 203. The book ends on page 206.
This is a book that I could totally see being a Kubrick movie. In fact, if you mash together A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut, you might get a sense of what this book is about. Somebody did try to make a movie adaptation. While searching for a real trailer, I found this, which gives us little information as to the plot, but offers a pretty good snapshot of what is in store:
The movie wasn't well accepted, from what I have read. Even watching interviews of Martin Amis and hearing him speak about his work, you would never expect a book like Dead Babies to be written by any sane person. I think what I like about it is that it's ballsy writing. Who writes two, count 'em: two satires...about the holocaust?
His others works vary from fiction no non fiction, and it's very good writing based on really not good subject matter, and you feel like you're going to go to hell if you laugh, but you just can't help it sometimes.
Just one big dead baby joke.
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