The Information (novel)
The Information is a 1995 novel by British writer Martin Amis. The plot involves two forty-year-old novelists, Gwyn Barry and Richard Tull. Amis has asserted that both characters are based on himself. It is, says Amis, a book about "literary enmity".
Synopsis
Gwyn Barry and Richard Tull have been friends since they roomed together at university. Richard Tull was a promising writer with a seemingly bright future. His first novel, 'Aforethought', was published, but 'nobody understood it, or even finished it.' Three years later, his second novel, 'Dreams Don't Mean Anything' was published in Britain but not America. His third, fourth and all subsequent novels were not published. His career flags and he finds himself becoming depressed, writing book reviews, articles for a small literary magazine and sub-editing for a vanity press. To his chagrin, Gwyn Barry—whose literary skills Tull holds in low esteem—has written a phenomenally successful second novel, entitled 'Amelior' and is in the running to win a lucrative and respected literary prize. Barry enjoys a rarified life, with his agent striking lucrative deals for 'Amelior Regained' whilst Tull toils away with his unsuccessful pursuits.Tull, increasingly envious, begins to manufacture ways of bringing Barry down. These begin relatively innocently as attempts to cause Barry inconvenience. Later, however, things become much more serious as Tull makes contact with violent men he later finds he cannot control.
Themes
In a later interview Amis elaborated on the subject of midlife crisis, describing it as "an hysterical overreaction to the certain knowledge that you're going to die."Throughout the narrative Amis digresses into depicting different vistas of interstellar space. Looking on the vast range of the Universe and its lifelessness serves the theme of mortality. In addition the book deals with ideas of success, failure and envy.