It takes a certain courage to speak your mind, or a lifetime of disappointment. Martin Amis has disparaged awards, which he says are given only to boring books- “It all started with [Samuel] Beckett, I think. It was a kind of reasonable response to the horrors of the 20th century – you know, ‘No poetry after Auschwitz," he says, and I don't know about awards, but I have a few friends who, if they find a book interesting, would blacklist it as trivial.
Speaking of which, I remember one of them saying that he wouldn't touch Agatha Christie with a pole, or P.G. Wodehouse for that matter. He spend his life poring over Sartre, Camus and the like. I'd like to say he went mad and killed himself, but he didn't- one of his closest friends did.
He had read widely, and would quote with a sardonic laughter, something by Heidegger to the effect that it would be suicidal of philosophy to make itself clear. Something similar is the case with all works of intellect if they are to find approval and added to a canon.
The friend who died- he burnt himself to death. He was a sensitive man, worried himself to death over matters of philosophy- being and time, and so on.
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