The Elegant Variation: WELL HE DOES DO THAT THING WITH HIS TONGUE

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January 29, 2008

WELL HE DOES DO THAT THING WITH HIS TONGUE

Inevitably, the size of Amis's salary was instantly condemned by the general secretary of the University and College Union, Sally Hunt. "One might question the wisdom of a university using such a large amount of its budget to fund one member of staff," she sniffed.

Amis has a new book coming out in the UK - The Second Plane (a collection of his writings on Islam, described as "not just wilfully ignorant … but … at its heart disturbingly bigoted.”) - which means we're likely to be subjected to another endless round of endless profiles like this one. (Thanks to David Rose.)

Posted at 12:15 AM in World Beat | Permalink

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This business seems silly to me. The article says that Amis is getting a salary of £80,000 (or just under $160,000) per year from the university. That's not an outlandish figure for a superstar professor. I wonder what Harvard Law School pays Alan Dershowitz and Charles Ogletree, who spend most of their time not giving lectures or grading papers but writing bestselling pop non-fiction. I can tell you it's a lot more than $160,000 a year. Music schools in our country pay HUGE salaries to superstar performers (like soprano Silvia McNair at Indiana University) in return for a masterclass or two and a recital. They must find that the investment pays off.

Just so here. If Amis's university admits just five extra students who want to go to a school where Amis teaches, the salary will be paid back several fold.

Posted by: Michael O'D | January 29, 2008 at 10:26 AM

But, Michael, bashing Amis for *whatever* he does, at this point (can't wait until we find out he's been bonking the au pair), is such risk-free fun!

Posted by: Steven Augustine | January 29, 2008 at 12:10 PM

Presumably Amis is spending time reading his students' work as well. So I doubt he's spending an hour a week at work. More like five or six hours a week.

Posted by: Kingsley | January 30, 2008 at 10:58 AM

The last time around, all the bitching was about all the piles of filthy money he was receiving so he could get a tooth job for a new wife. Of course, in reality he had cancer of the jaw and was eating his fish and chips through a straw.

Slagging authors is nothing new, but I can't remember another writer who's been hit with the money thing so often. I don't know why this is. I mean, I dunno, when's the last time you went in for a job and didn't ask to be paid as much as you thought you could get them to pay you? Athletes -- this is not a joke -- will soon be measuring their career earnings in *billions*.

I say pay every single writer out there as astronomically as you can get away with. Good on 'em.

Posted by: Jude Bloom | February 04, 2008 at 01:53 PM

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Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
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*Now in Paperback*

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SECOND LOOK

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The Rider by Tim Krabbe

Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

The Elegant Variation

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"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

January 29, 2008

WELL HE DOES DO THAT THING WITH HIS TONGUE

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

January 29, 2008

WELL HE DOES DO THAT THING WITH HIS TONGUE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism