Consider me dazzled, yet the very flurry of distorting mirrors and laser images reveal more about Mr. Amis and England than about The Novel (as it were) or The End -- in whatever eschatological capacity is extended to the present day punter. The figure of Keith Talent is amazingly realized, aside from the slurs, the belches and the nudges, there is something monstrously vivid in his haunts (both senses) and struggles. He may be Martin's Bloom.

Nicola Six's machinations were as uncomfortable for the reader as for poor Guy Clinch and yet. . . I feel envigorated by this marathon. This is the lash as penitence and as encouragement. Hail Marty the Knout!