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Were the choice between fame and long life?

The death of the great British novelist and satirist Martin Amis last week at the age of 73 provoked a cascade of thoughts and emotions. Sadness first of all. I’d only read a couple of his books but was impressed and not a little envious about the pure brio of his writing – the brilliant sense of humor, the off-the-cuff erudition. I resisted telling my wife the news after it popped up on my phone for fear I might choke up.

But then another thought occurred to me – I won’t deny there might have been a bit of envy and defensiveness involved at a fellow writer of overwhelming talent and ambition. But I wondered what I’d choose if God or the devil offered me this deal: Amis’s fame and fortune or a good, long life? At seventy-three he wasn’t that much older than me. And I hope to keep going for a while.

The most flattering thing you can say about a writer, at least a writer that traffics in wit and humor, is that you can watch his or her mind at work. You can watch them having fun. The example I often site to my children, and anybody else who’s willing to abide me, is Cole Porter’s song “You're the Top”:

“You’re the top,” starts one of the stanzas.

You’re Mahatma Gandhi

You’re the top

You’re Napoleon Brandy

You’re the purple light

Of a summer night in Spain

You’re the National Gallery

You’re Garbo’s salary

You’re cellophane”

Martin Amis’s writing is seeded with that kind of joy. I wish I could find the exact Amis quote that relates to it. I’ve tried hunting for it on numerous occasions but failed to locate it on websites of Amis quotations, perhaps because it’s more true than pithy or clever. Amis said, in essence, that the most exciting moment in a writer’s day occurs when he’s sitting at his desk, just sitting there, and to the outside world appears to be doing nothing at all. And then all off a sudden something happens. Something clicks in his brain. Some wonderful idea that seems to have come out of nowhere. It wouldn’t have happened if the writer hadn’t shown up. But showing up isn’t sufficient. And when it happens the writer is no less awestruck at his good fortune than the reader. I’d like to see AI do that.

Bob Dylan said something similar regarding his productivity in the early Sixties. He doesn’t take credit for the work. He was just a conduit. There may be a bit of false modesty there. It’s an unavoidable fact that some of us are more creative than others, though I think most of us are more creative than we allow ourselves to be. Perhaps the best way to describe what both Dylan and Martin Amis were observing is freedom. You never feel as euphoric as when your mind becomes unbound. “You’ve got to program your brain not to think too much,” Dylan said wryly.

One of my favorite Amis passages, and I’ve also never been able to track it down again, involves his description of one of his characters. My apologies to Amis because he surely put it better than I remember it and because I’m sure I’m missing several steps in his thought process. “To meet him was to know him,” Amis wrote. “To know him was to drink with him. And to drink with him was to pay for him.”

So to answer my own question: would I rather have Martin Amis’s fame and fortune or my own more modest career? I suppose that’s like asking would I rather have had his life than mine? The answer is emphatically no. I’ve had my share of good fortune. But more importantly I subscribe to Ken Kesey’s notion: “Stay in your own movie.” Be the hero of your own life. Feel gratitude for what you have and who you are. Feel gratitude most of all that you were born and live on this beautiful planet.

I was visiting my grandmother one afternoon. She was well over a hundred years old and hadn’t said a word for some time. She seemed out of it. I was talking to her caregiver, telling her about another relative who was in the hospital at 96 and said he was ready to die, when my grandmother suddenly piped up. “Nobody wants to die,” she said in a clear, emphatic voice.

I’m not sure I’d agree with her. She’d lived a charmed life. But it was probably that passion for living that kept her going as much as anything else. I’d like to think I share it. I have no interest in dying. I want to see how things turn out, what happens next. All of us exit the stage prematurely, in a sense. We’ll never know how things turn out. But that’s a good thing. It would be a bummer if the world ended with us. The best we can do is revel in the process of being alive as long as we possess that gift. The example that someone like Martin Amis’s writing gives us, and gave himself, is the courage and audacity to live life to the fullest.

Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found be found on Substack.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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