John Self reminds me Raoul Duke in Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Self is drunk and out of control, but surprisingly introspective.  Like Duke, he is thrown into a crazy city, vulnerable due to outside circumstances.  In Self’s case, he is preoccupied with his relationship with Selina, who is back home in London.  He is insecure about the state of their relationship, and this is his main preoccupation through the first 50 pages of the book.

John Self is a sympathetic character.  But Martin Amis forces the reader to relate, or at least engage, Self intimately because Self addresses the reader directly.  With questions like – You know something? or Wouldn’t you think? – the reader can’t help but feel somewhat implicated in the hysteria.  That being said, I’m not sure Amis appears as a presence in the novel.  Self is the conduit through which he communicates certain ideas and emotions.  Amis, as the architect, certainly dictates tone and plot, but I’m not sure I feel him directly in the novel.

Self is a sympathetic character because he is not afraid to admit his flaws, yet he behaves in ways that wouldn’t indicate he wants to change.  He is an alcoholic and he knows he is dysfunctional when drinking, yet for most of the story he is drunk and roaming the streets of New York. 

“Where is she now?  It is six o’clock over there, when the dark comes down.  She is dressing herself for the evening, and she is worried.  She is worried.  The night is young over there, but Selina Street is not so young, not any longer.  You know something?  I’ve got to marry her, marry Selina Street.  If I don’t, probably no one else will, and I’ll have ruined another life.” (Amis 46)

I find this passage to be very exemplary of Amis’s style.  He has created a character who constantly repeats himself.  We know this to be a symptom of either his drunkenness or his insecurities.  In addition, this passage shows us erratic nature of Self’s thoughts.  One second he is suspicious of what Selina is doing in London, and the next he is right there with her sympathizing with her.  She is aging and someone needs to marry her so it might as well be him?  Sure, we follow Self’s logic, but we also are forced to ask the question: does he really want to marry her just because she is getting old and he might as well, or is he madly in love and unable to confront his obsession with her?