The Rachel Papers
By Martin Amis
Jonathan Cape, 1973
Anyone fearing the emergence of an Asbo generation, characterised by under-age binge drinking, teenage pregnancy and the reckless
consumption of illegal drugs, might be well-advised to go back and read this, Amis’s impressive debut novel. The story of Charles Highway, a ‘precociously intelligent and highly-sexed teenager’, it follows the single-minded quest of a nineteen-year-old Oxford candidate to sleep with an older woman before he turns twenty. The woman picked for this task is the eponymous Rachel, for a short time the object of Charles’s fickle sexual obsessions.
Amis, who famously wrote the novel while working as an editorial assistant at the Times Literary Supplement, is an electrically charged new voice who stands head and shoulders above his peers. Dynamic, energetic language and sparkling dialogue herald the emergence of a striking new literary talent, one which earned its owner that year’s Somerset Maugham Award. Amis has courted controversy throughout his career, and his first novel sets a tone of incorrigible, attention-seeking misbehaviour.
Amis has long been targeted by critics for the apparent misogyny of his writing. It would be difficult to defend The Rachel Papers on these grounds, but to be fair to him, the men of this book are no more likeable. Charles’s brother-in-law, Norman, is the boorish antithesis of the New Man whose appearance in mainstream society was but a few short years away. His father is a coolly distant figure with little interest in, or time for, any of his six children. Charles himself is arrogant, insensitive and fascinated by his own superiority. Yet his cocky charm is such that we find ourselves leniently chuckling, ruffling his hair and gently admonishing the cheeky little rascal.
Perhaps Charles’s biggest crime, and one for which we cannot forgive Amis, is his unrelenting narcissism. In a narrative where the writer’s eye becomes a vehicle for alarming magnification, an inordinate amount of time is spent inspecting Charles’s spots, indulging his hypochondria and detailing the bodily functions with which Charles is obsessed (although he is simultaneously unable to forgive Rachel for hers). Beyond this, the rest of our time is spent reflecting on Charles’s sexual history and being pushed to agree that yes, he is indeed the enfant terrible that he longs to be. The marginal characters who appear so fleetingly provide a welcome break from the protagonist’s incessant self-obsession, and it is a pity that Amis spends so little time with them.
Despite the fact that this is, essentially, a book focused almost entirely on one irritatingly smug individual, The Rachel Papers is nonetheless a surprisingly far-reaching portrait of youth culture in 1970s London. Amis brilliantly captures the relationship between the brash over-confidence and (however scant it is in the novel) nerve-wracking uncertainty that is a fundamental aspect of adolescence.
More than that, it is unstoppably witty; we may not sympathise with Charles, but there is no doubting our propensity to find his adventures nothing short of hilarious. It is this sharp, dry cynicism which gives Amis a voice utterly distinct from such coming of age bibles as The Catcher in the Rye, the reading of which has itself become a major rite of passage amongst teens. To long for Amis to emulate Salinger’s touching and insightful philosophies upon the theme of adolescence is to miss the point of the book entirely – we are deeply entertained by Charles’s antics but, ultimately, the lessons he teaches us about life, and the world, are shallow and soon forgotten. Plus ça change ...
