John Self: the actor

John Self's opinion of actors is a generally negative one.  He makes a specific point to call out " the actors of real life you want to watch--yeah, and the actresses" (175).  John is a character in a book, but Amis' narrative style makes the reader feel as if he or she is watching a play or a film.  John Self is playing a role.  He himself is a real life actor playing the part of a low-life, money obsessed, sex crazed advertising director.  John Self, when discussing his paranoia compares his aggressive, concerned glare to that of an actor.  "I don't mind, happens all the time.  If a car follows me round two corners, I narrow my gaze and tighten my hold on the wheel, covertly, like an actor" (223).  

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances" (II.VII)  Much like Shakespeare writes, John Self is just a man interacting with other actors or characters in his reality.  He is only worried about Money, and is merely a pawn in Amis' narrative.  John himself says, "Actors are paid to pretend that they are unaware of being watched, but they of course rely on the collusion of the watcher, and nearly always get it.  There are unpaid actors too (I thought): it's them you really have to watch" (126).  Ultimately John Self is describing the existence of himself in Money.  He is an actor performing a part, pretending that he is just a regular person, living his life.  But when he addresses the reader, it is the same collusion between actor and audience.  He relies on the reader, and is not getting paid directly to "act", and is yet again warning the readre about his debauched actions. 

money neurosis

It is always an interesting tact when an author inserts his or herself into the narrative of a novel.  In the case of Martin Amis as a character in Money, I was somewhat perplexed.  John Self's simultaneous acknowledgement and unfamiliarity  of Amis' work left me wondering about the reality of the novel.  Edmondson points out that Amis masters, "the art of postmodern prose: his style, with multiple layerings of fiction upon fiction, and a deluded narrator imbedded somewhere in the middle, is itself a story."  I liked what Brian Finley wrote, claiming that, " Amis wants his readers, like a theater audience, to recognize their simultaneous immersion in and exteriority to the action."  Looking at Money as if it is a play being performed makes a lot of sense.  The reader has to suspend their disbelief and give themselves wholeheartedly to the narrative.  Much like in Cronenberg's Crash.  By the end of the novel the idea that one can be aroused by car crashes is no longer strange and macabre, but just a parallel reality.   In Money, Martin Amis says to John Self, "The distance between author and narrator corresponds to the degree to which the author finds the narrator wicked, deluded, pitiful or ridiculous" (229).  Though Amis the character is referring to the movie script, he is also alluding to his own appearance in the novel, and Self's direct inclusion of the reader.  Edmondson describes it as, "the postmodern technique of involution, the inclusion of the author as a character within the text, as a method of distancing the reader and as tacit admission of the author's lack of control over himself. His presence in the text is an acknowledgment that he, as writer-creator, is also constituted by a larger narrative line, a player on the stage. Simultaneously with Amis's entering the text as a character, John Self directly addresses the reader, drawing him into the narrative."