Nonfiction by Martin Amis, 1971–2005

The soul in Time’s Arrow: A post-Enlightenment presence

“…The fidelity and care that soul shows towards Irene is one manifestation of what James Diedrick calls its ‘unconditional love for others’ which he adds is ‘the only antidote for the horrors the novel unsparingly records’ (2004: 141). This generosity of spirit and intolerance to the suffering of others, without prejudice, 8 is largely the reason that the narrative voice is considered, by critics, to be that of Odilo’s consciousness or soul.…”

“…This passage is one example of how the reverse narrative of Time’s Arrow negatively measures the Holocaust; as Diedrick notes: ‘In his descriptions of breathing life back into the victims of Nazi genocide the narrator effects a poetic undoing of the Holocaust, all the more poignant for the reader’s knowledge that it can never be undone’ (2004: 134). The deep sense of regret and shame is heightened by the narrator’s enthusiastic celebration of the ‘birth’ and ‘flourishing’ of the Jews as, unlike the miraculous power to ‘dream a race’ (Amis, 1991: 124), soul’s attitude falls within the realm of possibility and human capacity.…”

“…For instance, the ‘success’ of Auschwitz, it appears to the narrator, lies in co-operative effort, the working of the whole: ‘It is a commonplace to say that the triumph of Auschwitz was essentially organizational’ (Amis, 1991: 132) and earlier, when Odilo worked as a doctor in New York, the narrator observes that the activity and processes of the hospital subsume the individual lives that the hospital contains: ‘All the intelligent pain of the victims, all the dreams of the unlistened to, all the entreating eyes: all this is swept up in the fierce rhythm of the hospital’ (1991: 96). Diedrick suggests that the patients ‘surrendering autonomy and control intimates the radical victimization the Auschwitz inmates suffered at the hands of Unverdorben’ (2004: 140). We might add that in placing agency not with individuals, but an institution – the hospital – this observation (bearing in mind its implicit foreshadowing of Auschwitz) also intimates the dehumanizing and depersonalizing of the perpetrator, whose individual will is supplanted by that of the regime and race.…”