Dead in the Water

Martin Amis’s most recent novel told a story about the summer of 1970 from a modern standpoint. Strange fact: The Pregnant Widow revealed, without exactly meaning to, that cultural attitudes have gone virtually nowhere in the last 40 years.

Martin Amis, Tina Brown at the London launch of ‘The Diana Chronicles’ (2007)

It’s not one of Amis’s best, but Widow (reviewed here by Ted Gioia in April) is a memorable and striking book. It is also a case study despite itself. The story is about sex, money, and religion (mainly sex) in the minds of European young adults four decades ago. Through the varied translucent colors of the characters we see the cultural background of 1970—which is strikingly familiar. Feminism, victimism, contempt for the West and especially America, hostility to religion, indifference to art. The intellectuals, academics, reporters, and the other culture leaders who have seats in the choir of Western civilization have been at this dirge for nearly half-a-century. If they seem testy at times, who can blame them? The song is tired, but it’s the only one they know. If hell is other people, it is also a song that repeats forever.

One of the most important characteristics of this postmodern age is so familiar we often miss it: It doesn’t move. We are stuck. Imagine a novelist in 1970 writing about the world of 1930—or for that matter, of 1950: The changes in educated attitudes, in ways of talking and thinking, would have been large and obvious. The word “postmodernism” itself is a sign of our stuckness and refusal to think. Postmodern tells us what we used to be, not what we are.